Restaurant Review: The Three Buoys
Waking this weekend to sunshine that makes resistance futile, my desire to be on an Island was overwhelming. Yes, I know that Britain is an Island, but I confess to having a “thing” about Islands off Islands – it’s something about the double feeling of escapism which gives that frisson as you step off the ferry onto the Aeolian Islands (off North Coast of Sicily) or onto Bruny Island (off Tasmania). But somewhere closer for the day was needed and so the Isle of Wight beckoned. Sixty one minutes later, one excellent train connection with the ferry and a charming transfer along the pier in a vintage London Underground Carriage and our feet were in the sand on Ryde beach! Ryde, although the largest town on the island, often is overlooked in favour of more stylish yachtie Cowes or beautiful Bembridge, but Ryde has an eclectic mix of shops dotted along Union Street (including the wonderful Aladdin's Cave of Elizabeth Smith!)and of course the excellent museum of Donald McGill, designer of the saucy postcard which caused Police Raids in the1950’s for being offensive!
After a blustery stroll along the long sandy beach alongside Appley Tower, although slightly eerie with a 21 Gun salute booming out of the mist somewhere on the mainland (as a Happy Birthday Your Majesty!), lunch beckoned. So what a heavenly surprise it was to discover The Three Buoys Restaurant. On the top floor of an unassuming building, the bright & airy New Englandesque décor is a pleasing surprise. Beautiful 
paintings by Penelope Walford, (a local artist who lives on a houseboat in Bembridge) adorn the walls. The tables on the terrace were deemed a tad chilly, but the tables inside still look out over the beach. Hard to choose a pre-prandial G&T from their Gin menu, but with the restaurant focusing on local produce, it had to be the Mermaid Gin distilled just a stone’s throw away! Lovely Citrus notes, backed up with slight salty tang which was echoed in the samphire & lemon floating amongst the ice. To stave off hunger pangs, the bread board came with two flavoured butters – smoked cardamom and the other with fennel seeds – quite delicious!
Unlike a recent visit to a “Celebrity” Chef’s restaurant, the Three Buoys menu was balanced and well thought out, so for starters I plumped for Scallops served with wild garlic, black caraway seeds & fermented grains, whilst PJ was struggling to choose between the Beetroot Salmon Gravlax served with Kohlrabi or the Pig Cheek with sweet potato, mango glaze & miso.
Whilst the descriptions might sound slightly like a Chef who is trying too hard to prove seasonality alongside trendy ingredients, the actual delivery of the dishes was spot on – scallops cooked to perfection, the pig cheek melt in the mouth.
Mains on the principle menu included temptations such of Isle of Wight Lamb, with aubergine & harissa chickpeas as well as a mountain of Mussels cooked in a Thai Coconut broth, but the Daily specials were impossible to resist. PJ’s choice of Plaice, a fish which inexplicably seems to have fallen out of fashion, delicately cooked and served with black olive crumb & 
poached radishes. For me, the Sea Bass - a thick fillet with perfectly crispy skin, topped with samphire, excellently cooked flakes falling apart alongside charred asparagus & fennel seeds. The only thing awry on the plate was an small odd polenta cake but apart from that it was pretty close to perfection – especially the seasoning which can make or break a dish – this is a Chef who understands balance!
The Wine List is well chosen and fairly priced – something of a surprise in restaurants these days. A Clare Valley Riesling matched well with the scallops and the Sea Bass. Made by two MW’s (Masters of Wine – of whom there are only 370 in the world!) , the Courtesan Riesling from Wild & Wilder had lovely lime & pink grapefruit notes, wonderfully fresh with no oak, but thanks to a couple of months lees contact, was rounded and rich enough to compliment the mains. Good to see wine by the glass were not just the run of the mill, but included a 
Feteasca from Romania – the best way to get people to sample something different!
Sadly despite the delicious sounding desserts – Textures of Rhubarb or Spice Pineapple with Coconut Ice cream will have to wait for our next visit.
A great meal is never just about the food, but whole experience – The Three Buoys ticked lots of boxes – seasonal food cooked brilliantly with precision & flair, fairly priced wine list, great panoramic view of the beach and best of all - friendly, knowledgeable staff. Very pleased to have discovered this small gem of a restaurant, and on an Island! The Isle of Wight produces some great food from garlic through to tomatoes – so a longer gourmet weekend away exploring the Island is needed - but a lunch booking at the Three Buoys will certainly be included again!
www.thethreebuoys.co.uk
Wine Evening at Hambledon Vineyard with Joe Wadsack
Salvador Dali, the calorific value of Guinness and Georgian Architecture. It may seem find to find a link between these subjects, but they all featured in the fascinating presentation by Joe Wadsack at the “How to be a Winemaker evening” at Hambledon vineyard, which I’d bought for a birthday present for my fizz loving other half!
Arriving to a backdrop of beautiful winter skies, nestled on the side of a valley on the chalky hills of the South Down National Park in Hampshire (England), Hambledon Vineyards hosts a creative calendar of events from the perhaps expected ones such as wine tastings, WSET qualifications through to the more eclectic Yoga in the vineyards. Hambledon is the oldest commercial vineyard in the UK, started in1952 by Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones, with lots of advice from the Pol Roger Cellar Master, their vines are planted with the classic Champenoise grapes of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir & Meunier.
But the evening’s event with Joe, was not arrogantly designed to promote their own (superb!) sparkling wines – but an opportunity to directly compare a variety of fizz in the company of one of the most knowledgeable & entertaining communicators in the Wine Trade. A real tour de force, with endless energy, whose enthusiastic presence is
quite compelling, Jo’s mind works like a Classic American Pin Ball machine - bouncing everywhere, landing on subjects at a tangent, scattering fascinating nuggets of knowledge as he enthuses around the central theme. I wish it were possible to have Joe on a rewind function, you are so overwhelmed with the depth of knowledge, it would be fabulous to have him on catch up to listen again later!
Tasting events can often be too formal and rather off putting for the consumer, but this was a remarkable privilege whilst being great fun! There were only 6 wine lovers at the event (due to the bad weather) listening to Joe’s years of experience of the wine world for almost four hours! With such a select number, there was a great opportunity for interaction & discussion – the lady who was there as part of her Year Long celebrations of her 50-th birthday, who was emphatic about her love of Bolly through to the lady from the New Forest decided dislike of Cava – for all, it was fascinating opportunity to taste a range of sparklers side by side.
A glass of Hambledon on arrival was served with some delicious patés, including vension and smoked salmon to stave the hunger pangs!
The tasting kicked off with a glass of Prosecco – Conegliano Valdobbiadene La Marca to be precise – which qualifies as DOCG, Italy’s’ highest wine classification. Prosecco has really taken off in the UK, since 2008, sales have increased by 6000%!!! Joined now by the Scandi counties and the US in their love of this classic Italian sparkling wine, this marketing phenomenon shows no sign of abating. A shaft of brilliance from Joe described Prosecco as the Lager equivalent of the Sparkling wine club (not in a bad way!) . Uncomplicated, reliable, low acidity, quite mono dimensional, this is easy drinking fizz ideal for BBQ’s or rainy Tuesday evenings after a bad day at work.
Personally I am not a fan of Prosecco (except for some Colfondo styles, which are bottle fermented but this is a tiny production compared to the big companies), but the La Marca poured as first wine was fresh crisp green apples, simple clean and unchallenging – and would find great success in many wine bars. Moving up the production method scale, using oak barrels and bottle fermentation, next up was Cordoníu Cava from the vineyards of Penedès, just an hour outside Barcelona, Spain. Although Cava has lost out recently to Prosecco in the UK at the entry level price, it 
still is huge consumption in Spain. Our small group were not that enthusiastic, it was more yeasty which was more layered in flavour, but slightly flat on the fruit, and as Joe pointed out, suspect it was a bottle fault (it happens) as certainly usually a much more enticing wine. Top end Cava is a heavenly delight such as the Grand Reserva 457 but at a price over £100 a bottle, I should expect so! But despite the poor showing of the Cordoníu this evening, generally speaking for a party wine, you get more complexity from your Cava than Prosecco at same price point. Interesting also to hear about how one of Cava’s main grape variety, the weirdly named Xarel- lo which gives acidity to the wine, is now increasingly being planted for still wines in the region.
Amongst the critiques of the wines, the aim of the evening was to show how a winemaker would approach making the final sparkling wine blend. Joe shared the brilliant BLIC theory (I am not going to explain here as would spoil for anyone yet to attend the evening) - but it shows consumers an insight into how the professionals in the wine trade approach a wine.
Our third glass was back to the classic Home of sparkling, with the omnipotent Champagne Laurent Perrier on show. The bubbles were much finer than previous two, making it a more appealing texture and sensorial perception. Joe’s refreshing honesty about the marketing aspect of the big Champagne brands and how that has helped them to dominate this market for so long – working out to an average of £10 a bottle of your Champagne bottle price goes on marketing alone! The LP (whose strong market presence is down to the trade off as wine bars still clamber to get their hands on the delicious LP Rosé) was discreet but with lovely pink grapefruit note on the nose, notably more complex but to my taste just too technically perfect – everything was there but no passion.
Last in the flight of finished wines was the Hambledon Classic Cuvée, which although is a NV was based on the 2014 vintage, when the quality of the Meunier (previously known as Pinot Meunier)
grapes was outstanding. Keeping an objective view, despite tasting it in its spiritual home, of the four the Hambledon won for pure individuality, complexity and interest in the glass. Blend of 40% Chardy, 31% Meunier & 29% Pinot Noir made with 7.6 gms residual sugar per litre, it charmed the group.
This stage of the evening is where it became fascinating technical for those who have never blended wines before. Hambledon’s brilliant Events Manger, Katrina Smith along with their Wine Maker Felix Gabillet (yup – French!) had lined up four versions of Hambledon to taste – in which the only varying factor was the amount of dosage added at the end of fermentation. This decides the mouthfeel, texture, taste and aging potential of the wines, and for famous names of Champagne is usually about 10 gms per litre added, but Hambledon have done extensive research on varying dosage levels.
Kicking off with the Zero dosage, understandable racy acidity, with a nose like a Nashi pear, with waxy white lilies - it simple danced on the tongue, a thrilling wine but not for those of a nervous disposition! The 4 gms dosage per litre had more roundness – and interestingly 5gms / litre is the magic number to help the wines aging slowly and gracefully. 6gms / litre in comparison felt quite heavy but with attractive biscuit notes and good long finish – very easy to drink! 10 gms had a different bubble formation and to my personal taste was slightly unbalanced as lacked the necessary acidity. But totally fascinating and the group loved having the possibility to taste these wines side by side for a direct comparison. Even more fun, was the choosing of which dosage to 
go into the bottle we were each given to take home – so all off to the cellar to bottle and label our own Hambledon after a delicious supper cooked by South African Steve, one of the team who makes a mean Coq au Vin, ideal to soak up the tasting and paired superbly with a surprise Alsace Pinot Noir!
Having first focused on getting the vineyards as they wanted, Hambledon is currently undergoing a huge investment with new gravity fed cellars and tasting room. So do go and visit them at this exciting time in their (and English Wines’) development. The momentum of English wine is on a roll – no longer a laughing stock to amuse our cousins over the Channel – but there are some outstanding sparkling wines being made in England. Certainly, where I live on the South Downs, there is an explosion of vineyards being planted all around. Increasingly also the still wines are gaining attention – but the sparklers are the stars, even getting listings on export markets (including France!).
A brilliant evening, and a real privilege to have the company of Joe and his immense knowledge – not to mention pithy quotes – not sure how we got onto the subject of Merlot, but his view on this grape variety was “The Tofu of the wine world, only to be used to numb the pain of attending a child’s party”! Joe’s parents ran a gastropub, he was an RAF pilot for a spell, before heading to Bordeaux to study wine making and went onto to become wine buyers at several UK companies including Waitrose. His enthusiasm for all things food & drink – along with a healthy dose of refreshing honesty – meant for a brilliant – both fun & informative - evening in his company.
Hambledon are holding another date for this course later this year – for details do contact Katrina Smith on katrina.smith@hambledonvineyard.co.uk
Oh and in case you’re wondering apparently Guinness brewed in the UK is only 210 calories a pint vs 600 for that which is cask conditioned in Ireland!