Diary of a Shopkeeper, 9th March

I started my A to Z of deli food and drink in the dark days of mid-January. Now the mornings are lighter and the daffodils are peeping through. But misinformation is just as rife, and the need for reliable facts as great as ever, so I’m going to finish with a solid XYZ.

I swithered over X. Several grapes that make interesting wines were possible: Xinomavro is used for hearty reds in Greece (but it’s hard to find in this country); Xarel-Lo is crucial in good Cava, and increasingly used for whites from northeastern Spain (though I haven’t found a white I love yet); Pedro Ximenez is the grape behind the famous sweet sherry of the same name (but I’ve written enthusiastically about that in the recent past.)

So instead I’m going to Burgundy, and the tiny village of Fixin. Yes, the X is hidden away in the middle of the name, but it captured my attention because no one can agree how to pronounce it. When we first started selling the glorious Pinot Noir produced there, I assumed it was said with an X sound: Fix-in. However, meeting the winemaker, Bernard Vallet, at a trade tasting, I noticed that he pronounced it with a long S in the middle: Feess-an. I immediately copied that pronunciation, feeling rather superior about my knowledge of obscure French village names. Until…

In 2016, I was discussing with Bernard the possibility of importing a barrel of wine and bottling it in the shop. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I think Fix-in would be perfect.’

‘You just said Fix-in, not Feess-an,’ I exclaimed.

‘Ah oui! Well, some people say it one way, some another.’

‘But don’t you always say it the same way?’

Bah non! This is the glory of the French language, and French wine. One day it strikes you one way, the next day it strikes you differently. It is complex, it is human. It is delicious!’

He was certainly right about that.

I remember Bernard was unenthusiastic about the British cheese we gave him when he visited. Stinking Bishop was the only one strong enough to please him. Luckily for us, he’s very much in a minority, with cheeses from all over the UK being appreciated more than ever before for their variety and depth of flavour. One of our stalwarts is Y for Yarg, a crumbly artisan cheese, light lemon in colour, with a distinctive wrapping of bright green nettle leaves.

The cheese is made in rural Cornwall, and though Yarg might seem like an obscure word from the ancient Cornish language, it’s actually just the name of its creators spelled backwards. Alan and Jenny Gray were 1980s farmers who found a 1600s cheese recipe in their attic and decided to see if they could replicate it.   They could, and they did, and it’s become one of the iconic cheeses of southwest England. The nettles affect the acidity of the cheese, changing the way it matures and bringing deeper flavours. And they really make the cheese stand out on a cheeseboard.

A few years ago, tourists from Truro told us that the dairy gave teams of schoolchildren buckets and rubber gloves and sent them out to pick the young green nettle leaves for pocket money. I’d like to think that’s true, but as this column is meant to be strictly factual, I’ll have to class it as a plausible story rather than proven reality.

 What is definitely true is that there’s a popular grape from California called Z for Zinfandel. It ripens beautifully in the hot Californian climate to produce full-bodied, powerful reds that make an excellent match for barbecue or steak with caramelised onion. Sometimes the grape is allowed to overripen and the resulting wine is so concentrated and sweet that it starts to resemble Port. I attended a lunch a few years ago where a leading producer matched different single vineyard Zinfandels with different courses of the meal. The wine overwhelmed all the savoury dishes, with the only good match being a supposedly dry Zin matched with the chocolate brownie pudding. Red Zinfandel can be a great wine, but it can also be Too Much of a Good Thing. Ask your friendly local wine merchant for advice!

And what, I hear you say, about White Zinfandel? Is it made from the same grape? And why is it called white but coloured pink? Yes, it’s made from the same grape – with the skins being removed from the juice soon after crushing, so only a strawberry-pink tinge is imparted rather than the deep red of a traditional Zin. The sweetness was accidental, a result of a fermentation that got ‘stuck,’ providing winemaker Bob Trinchero with a much sweeter, lower-alcohol blush than he’d been trying to make. He thought he might as well try and sell it and was astounded to find he had an enormous success on his hands.

And the name? US authorities demanded an English name for the wine rather than the French phrase Trinchero had originally been planning. In a flash he suggested White Zinfandel, and the name stuck, even though it doesn’t really make sense. It’s a good story, but not my favourite wine: I find most White Zins lacking in freshness. But there’s no arguing with its popularity: it accounts for 9.9% of all wine sold in the USA!

That pleasingly precise statistic provides a perfect place to end my factual A to Z of deli food and wine. Thank you for reading.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 13th March 2025. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.