English Wine Week
We always love to hear what our fans eat our fruit cakes with – and often it inspires us to try new things too!
We regularly do tastings and pairings for various events and groups and have recently worked with a lovely Tea company based in Sheffield to pair our different cakes with a variety of teas. We have also partnered with a Yorkshire Deli and had lots of fun tasting cheeses to find the perfect accompaniments for our cakes! One of the highlights was making Wensleydale Ice-cream to accompany the Cinnamon Pippin fruit cake – it went down a storm!
So it was with much excitement that we set off to Ryedale Vineyards, set at the foot of the picturesque Yorkshire Wolds, to pair all our fruit cakes with some of their award-winning English Wines to coincide with English Wine Week
English Wine Week is a national campaign, designed to raise awareness of English wine across the country. Vineyards across the country will be opening their doors to welcome visitors, offering tours, tastings and special offers. There are a wide range of activities which take place across the country to celebrate English Wine Week.
Stuart and Elizabeth Smith planted their vines in 2006 and have been producing award winning wines since 2009. It is a family run business, with four generations of the family being involved in the work on the vineyard and in the winery.
We all enjoyed tasting the different wines and cakes and matching them up with their ideal partners!
Here are our suggestions (although if you want to enjoy yourselves as much as we did – why not have a go at making your own pairings?):
Cinnamon Pippin
English white wines tends to have green fruit characteristics, with floral bouquets and crisp zesty flavours due to the cooler English climate.
The Cinnamon Pippin fruit cake is a sweet fruit cake as Cinnamon is a naturally sweet spice, so to accompany this we chose the East Coast Dry White Wine – light and fresh and delicately fruity – it provided the perfect balance.
Cocoa Bazaar
For our exotic Cocoa Bazaar laced with pistachios and honey, spiced with cardamom and infused with an exotic Chocolate Rose liqueur we chose the Yorkshire Lass, a more aromatic and fruity white wine that has just won a Commended in the International Wine Challenge 2016. Lovely peach flavours from the Ortega grapes with a hint of grapefruit. This wine has a lovely complexity of flavours. Overall a very classy wine to match a truly exotic fruit cake.
Cherry Orchard
With our Great Taste award winning Cherry Orchard fruit cake, packed full of succulent cherries and bursting with almonds, we thought both of Ryedale’s Rosé wines were lovely accompaniments. The Yorkshire’s Sunset, (winner of a Bronze in the International Wine Challenge 2016) is an off dry rosé – refreshing and light, it would be an ideal accompaniment to the Cherry Orchard fruit cake for a picnic or an afternoon treat “al fresco” in the garden.
The Shepherd’s Delight Rosé, made from 100% Rondo grapes (also a Silver Medal Winner) is a medium rosé – a very fruity wine – it would be perfect with our Cherry Orchard Cake and a delicious blue cheese for supper.
Ginger Tingle
For our award-winning Ginger Tingle fruit cake we were looking for a wine that would best compliment the fiery, mouth-warming ginger and chose Wolds View, a slightly fuller bodied wine and less aromatic than the other whites. A winning combination.
Total Fruit Cake
Finally it was time to find our Total Fruit Cake a partner. This cake is the only one not infused with a liqueur as it was created for cyclists and walkers to give them that extra boost of energy. Instead it is packed full of fruits such as apricots and dates that have been steeped in tea and honey from Yorkshire. We chose the Strickland Estate Red, a light, fruity red made from Rondo and Pinot Noir grapes – a lovely combination and a perfect reward after some fresh air and exercise!
If you would like to join us to celebrate English Wine Week and try some of these pairings for yourselves both the Tipple Tails fruit cakes and Ryedale Wines are available in local stockists in Yorkshire (see their websites for details). You can also order both the fruit cakes online – www.reallygreatfruitcake.co.uk and the wines at – www.ryedalevineyards.co.uk