I started the morning off with my first English breakfast in 4 months

Sausages, eggs, bacon, fried bread, black pudding – the whole works. Can’t get that in France either! The full English breakfast was a good move because today is the first day of the manic annual Sunday Times Vintage Festival. Firstly though, Libby and I hopped into a black cab and went shopping for a few nibbles to accompany our wines.

First stop was the famous boulangerie ‘Poilane’ in Victoria and then to Neal’s Yard cheese shop for a small piece of 3 year old Parmesan (16.7kg to be exact!). After a bit of a delay due to three grown men (cheese chisels and hammers in hand) grappling with a huge round of Parmesan in order to quarter it up for me, we finally headed back and just in time for the opening of the show!

The festival was missing a few producers who were unable to make the show due to the volcanic ash. It was still a great day and I proudly even managed to pick up not one but two Wine of the Show Silver medals for my Chai Font del Bosc Maury with which I matched some superb dark chocolate from Ecuador made by the Rabot Estate! I accidentally found this great shop in Borough Market only yesterday and as soon as I tried some of the chocolate on offer all I could think of was how well this would go with my Maury, so I went back this morning to buy some!

The wine grower dinner afterwards was brilliant and kicked off with some lovely Oriol Cava rosé. We sat amongst the other winemakers where we could discuss and taste their wines in a relaxed environment, the Felton Road New Zealand Pinot Noir and the Giant Steps Chardonnay shone for me on the night.

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