Good afternoon everybody,
The last email before our annual summer break traditionally calls for a moment of reflection; with so many of our lives revolving to one degree or another around school or university calendars, it feels in many ways like the end of the year. At Hamblin it has been a year of quiet revolution, as we've added an extra trading day and behind the scenes created a more robust and sustainable operating model that can withstand the temporary absence of Kate, the heartbeat of the bakery. It's taken the best part of a year to plan and implement these changes and needless to say we couldn't have done it without our wonderful team or indeed you, the people who read our newsletters, buy our bread, and in your own ways, share your lives with ours. Thank you.
However, there is still a week to go, five more days of building leavens, mixing dough, shaping buns, and baking, baking, baking. Competing for top billing on the pastry counter, there will be a raspberry cream bun, a puff pastry galette with new season plums from Styan Family Produce, and streusel-topped muffins studded with blackcurrants.
Finally, allow me to suggest some vinous delights for the holiday season. We are delighted to welcome back Coup de Jus, a dangerously drinkable and intriguing Alsacienne red/white mash up. Whole bunches of Pinot Noir are fermented, suspended in the free run juice of pressed Riesling and Pinot Gris. The result is a wine with a fruity, slightly earthy Pinot Noir profile, lifted with acidity and aromatics from the white grapes. Have it cold, but not too cold. Next up, Les Herbes Folles - wild grasses - is a Loire blend of Chenin and Sauvignon Blancs with the lesser spotted Grolleau Gris. This is the kind of wine the word zippy was made for - light and fresh but with plenty of personality in the form of citrussy fruit, herbaceous and floral aromatics and crisp acidity. Perfect summer drinking.
If you fancy really treating yourself, we also have one of the truly great wines of the Loire... With it's rise in popularity over the last few decades, much of Sancerre has followed an all too familiar and dismal pattern - the promise of profit leading to a glut of semi-industrially produced wines made with unripe grapes, filtered and sulphited to within an inch of their lives, to be served ice cold as the prelude to a headache. Thankfully, there are still vignerons like Gèrad Boulay, whose vineyard holdings in the natural amphitheatre around the hamlet of Chavignol are some of the finest in Sancerre. Needless to say his wines are made without inputs with the exception of minimal sulphite additions, and from fully ripe Sauvignon Blanc grapes that have been grown without chemicals. The followng words are from importers Vine Trail:
In Chavignol, the best wines have nothing to do with varietal character; the grape simply plays conduit to the mineral freshness of the limestone-rich soils and the sun trapping, south-facing expositions. This terroir creates (in the right hands) whites with that rare combination of hedonistic texture and racy, crunchy minerality. Importantly, Chavignol tempers sauvignon's herbaceous tendencies and produces great smoky, stone fruit noted whites of fabulous clarity, texture and energy.
We have a few bottles of Gérard's Sancerre à Chavignol and also his elegant, red-fruited Pinot Noir rosé, Sibylle.
Finally, if even in these scorching months you long for a robust, powerful red, perhaps to have with a barbecue or celebratory dinner, then line yourself up with Roucas Toumba's superb old-vine Vacqueyras Les Restanques de Cabassole. Aged in barrel for two years, this is a red you can really sink in to, spicy, rich and layered.
Well, that's about all for this week. We very much hope to see you in or around the bakery very soon and thank you once again, from the bottom of our hearts, for continuing to support us.
Hugo and Kate