Cheltenham Food & Drink Festival 2012

Just had a great presenting weekend at the very busy Cheltenham Food and Drink Festival www.garden-events.com in the lovely Montpellier Gardens in the centre of Cheltenham. The Cheltenham Food and Drink Festival  which really does have a terrific selection of specialist food, drink and craft exhibitors.Despite the wet weather on Friday and Saturday, the punters still rocked up to this show; whilst on Sunday, the weather was almost summer like!

The Wine Tipster was acting as the MC for the masterclasses and also presented Waitrose’s English Wine Selection and Wines from Rioja, with Chapel Down Bacchus, Nyetimber Classic Cuvee 2007,  Navajas Graciano 2008 and Vina Albina’s Semi Dulce 2010 amongst the wines that had a big thumbs up.  The other masterclasses featured Helen Kelly from Chateâu de Claribes presenting Chateâu Life in Bordeaux, Judith Burns from Pacta Connect featuring a range of complex, high quality wines from Croatia featuring indigenous red varietals like teran and refošk; Concha y Toro wines from both Argentina and Chile, proving once again what a consistent and quality producer they are; Ken Sheather with a fine selection from Portugal including Sandeman’s Callabriga Douro 2008 and Mel Jones from Birds with Bottle  finding some new sherry lovers (including my sister), who, like me, loved the Manzanilla Gitana Bodegas Hildalgo and Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Dry Oloroso from Lustau.

Thank you to all the speakers and the audiences who filled every season and were prepared to queue in the rain. See you there in 2013!