Last year I attended the Fizz Festival in Altrincham and had an absolute top drawer time of it. Read my account below and book your tickets for this year’s before they sell out! 🥂
(Below originally published 17/11/2016)
Imagine a world where a whole festival of Fizz arrives on your doorstep.
Run by Cracking Wine, last weekend was Altrincham’s 2nd Fizz Festival, Hale Geezer’s 1st attendance and 30 seconds in; red-faced. Not the ‘glow’ of someone who likes their drink more than just a friend, but more the deep puce that bedecks only the foolish.
I’m no stranger to wine, sparkling or otherwise. My drinking career now in double figures, two wine-tastings and a champagne masterclass under my belt, I hoped not to show myself up at the first stall.
Hope springs eternal…
wrote Alexander Pope.
And so it was only a matter of time before I made my first fizz faux pas.
This lovely lady looked at me as I awkwardly approached Fizz Guru
Hello!
Hello!
Awkward pause on my part as I read out the lady’s own flyer to her as she waits patiently for me to say something normal.
I don’t. Lady offers me prosecco, still stone cold sober and socially awkward, I make a kind of ‘mmmm’ noise. More of a still wine/champagne fan, I usually drink prosecco as a substitute for the latter, feeling hard done to, (please note I no longer hold that view) and so I’m ready to roll out my usual
I drink prosecco but it’s actually a bit sweet for my taste
line when I clock the bottle from which I’ve just tasted and, noting the ‘extra dry’ on the label, gleefully add
Although this is lovely and dry and so really nice.
I’m pleased. I was too sober and awkward to even notice what it was but I’ve nailed it here. I’ve begun the tasting with not only a declaration but an intelligent one.
I wait for the lovely lady to place a crown on my head and pronounce me attendee of the weekend when she tells me sweetly (which as it goes is apt) that extra dry on prosecco bottles often means the opposite. The Fizz Guru proved her credentials in one sentence.
My prosecco education only just beginning, I next meet this lovely man from Con Gusto. I look at him pleadingly, and his six open bottles of prosecco. Keen to erase the memory of the daftness surrounding my first Fizz of the Festival, I clutch my flute like a 21st century adult female version of Oliver Twist towards him.
Please sir, can I have some more
No that would be mental and technically incorrect as I hadn’t yet tasted any of his wares. I just like an oft-used literary analogy.
No, he came to my rescue and before I had chance to show myself and my co-taster up (yes there was a witness to my woe – my husband who is a kind of passive foot in mouther, such is the regularity to which he bears close witness to my acts of awkward), the lovely man started talking. He left no room for me to trip up. And so I learnt that prosecco should not just be treated as a substitute for when I tragically can’t have champagne, it should be tasted and treated with respect. As I’ve tarred all prosecco with the same rude brush, I missed an obvious clue as to why the ones I don’t like, I don’t like. For a start a good prosecco should have the name of the house/vineyard on the label, not just an Italian random word (Vaporetta a case in point).
Speaking of labels, I truly was seduced by the first of the wines I tasted:
The picture is of the house where the grower and his family live. This blog post won’t be me trying to impress you with my notes of notes of apples and hay, and so forth but know that I bought this lovely tipple as consider it a light aperitif and, dare I say it, a session prosecco.
Having tried another three we were swayed by this more flavoursome affair and when a Fizz preserver was thrown in, I was in love.
We even managed to throw in some knowledge of Italian sparkling wine – we knew from experience that the Italians do not consider the flute necessary and that the Italian’s version of champagne was not prosecco but in fact one that I had been introduced to in Northern Italy a couple of years ago. Yes reader, I cannot remember what it is called.
A google later – Franciacorta.
Buoyed, we visit Hush Heath and I fully admit to being one of those heathens scared of the prospect of English Sparkling Wine. In fact as with prosecco, I have been educated and have a new found respect. Attending the festival, I was accompanied not only by my husband but an attitude of ‘I am looking forward to the champagne, not so much its fellow fizzes.’
Silly me.
The lovely lady (I know: I do know other adjectives but they were! They were all lovely!) grabbed us immediately with her enthusiasm and passion for the Kent based producer and family who run Hush Heath, that interest was piqued even prior to anything being popped.
Reader, I walked away with two bottles, one of which is served in 1st class on British Airways and on the Orient Express. How quintessentially English. And what a lovely drop!
By now I was feeling very happy and very confident (read pleasantly…tipsy) and headed over to the Champagne Thienot stand.
A wonderful gentleman regaled us with tales of this champagne house which, for 30 years, is fast building a reputation for modern luxury. Not a mass producer, the champagne is reassuring difficult to come by and the chosen house Hollywood opted for at the Oscars.
Thienot we liked you, we really liked you!
(if just one person gets this reference, I’ll be ever so pleased)
Red Squirrel really opened up our eyes (and wallets) with its sparkling Chardonnay where the wine is bottled before fermenting is finished, leaving the fizz to happen inside the glass. As our (yes) lovely teacher taught us, that means each bottle is unique.
After trying a Canadian sparkling wine and revisiting an Austrian sparkling wine last tasted on a trip to Salzburg almost 10 years ago, we took away with us this lovely NV:
Finest Fizz flashed its fairylights our way and we enjoyed a journey which began with Skinny Rose (275 calls a bottle if you’re wondering) and lovely. As well as bringing with me a bias against prosecco and English sparkling, I’d never rated Rose but in a Fizz form it’s generally delightful.
From this lovely fellow in the checked shirt, we took away a Fizz stopper accompanied by this fantastic Lopez-Martin Carte D’Or Premier Cru NV:
Anyone still reading may have noticed that this post has gone from being quite text heavy to decidedly image led. This may or may not directly correlate with my levels of sobriety by the time I’d reached the latter stands.
may or may not
Over at Laurent-Perrier, we joined a great family with whom we enjoyed a talk from a gentleman who took us through his famous wares, providing a great context to each bottle – which champagne was the polite gathering, which was more Christmas morning, which was the more heady New Year’s Eve. After the funny anecdote about the Frenchman and the scotch egg…
I’ll just leave that there
We all needed a break. We needed a Kit Kat and so we all took our fingers and our fizz and tasted the Demi Sec which was perfect for dessert; the Kit Kat proving a superb substitute for a chocolate fondant.
With wobbly legs and a fuzzy head, I took respite from the fizz and headed over to Booze and Burn and their amazing array of candles.
In the absence of smelling salts, this was just what I needed to reawaken my senses and separate brain from booze.
Recycling at its best, they use eco soya wax and recycled wine bottles and their heady scents are sensational. I also learnt a none Fizz fact too – soya wax also burns evenly and so you don’t get that wasteful ring when the wick has burnt down.
The two lovely (yes) ladies s(c)net (sorrynotsorry) me on my way with a beautiful Pomegranate Noir:
Last and not least (really not) was the friendly fizz purveyor of Oddbins (Chorlton)
His stand was pretty and I drank my first (and admittedly) not my last, sparkling red, the beguiling yet ominously titled Black Queen Sparkling Shiraz.
Cold, red and sparkling, your senses don’t know what to do. Thankfully (for my diginity) my brain did and, reactivating, told me that after upwards of 30 tastings, it was time to collect my purchases and leave this fantastic scene.
With 5 bottles, two fizz stoppers, a candle and a wealth of fizzical education, I cannot wait to attend next year’s – if only to redeem myself with the Fizz Guru.
Hale Geezer 