I think Scarlet Wines & tapas bar in Lelant might just be my new favourite place in west Cornwall. I had suspected it might indeed be rather cool when I stopped by Beaten Green next door the other day, but after attending their South American wine & food tasting on Tuesday night, I am now officially in the fan club.
For £20 each, owner Jon Keast took 20 of us on a gently narrated journey through six South American wines – with a caipirinha to start and each wine paired with some pretty exceptional tapas: spicy refried bean empanadas, orange-zesty pollock ceviche and pork quesadillas. Cue much South American nostalgia on my part (I left my heart in Buenos Aires a few years back).
Apart from the chance to try great wine, what I have always loved about wine tastings is the propensity for people to act like they really know their shit at the beginning (‘Gosh, I find Chardonnay so oily!’, ‘This one is so understated’), and then as the wine flows, not be able to control their descent into the use of random adjectives.
I wanted to share a few choice cuts I found the next day scribbled on our tasting notes: from me, ‘this one’s just so mild-mannered’, from Aimee ‘It tastes of skiing’ and from our new friends Polly and David across the table (seating is communal), ‘pure grown-up South America’.
We instigated a ‘guess the price’ game, which I think I lost, but when we asked Jon to reveal the prices, they were surprisingly palatable: from £6.75 to £12. There’s free delivery on cases within a certain radius, discounts for members and on biggish buys (5% on over £25, 10% off £75 or over).
If this place doesn’t make us all give up unimaginative supermarket wine, really nothing will.
Scarlet Wines, The Old Forge, Lelant, HAYLE, TR27 6JG (www.scarlet-wines.co.uk)
ismay atkins
pasties & cream cornwall blog 
4 comments
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May 28, 2010 at 11:40 am
ismay atkins
Um, OK, yeah… have to admit I did have a few ropiness issues the following day but nothing a medium steak from Lavender’s and a can of coke couldn’t handle. ;-)
May 28, 2010 at 11:36 am
ismay atkins
That’s a shame about the dud bottle – all the stuff we tasted was great so hopefully it was just a one-off (will keep you posted!). PS I *think* their bread is Baker Tom.
May 28, 2010 at 11:33 am
Grazing Kate
Really liked the look, feel and vibe of this place – we visited during the Easter hols in April – we just popped in for a look around and bought a bottle of wine to take over to some friends for dinner. Very friendly staff.
I needed some bread – their collection of bread in a basket looked wonderful but I needed some plain bread and all the loaves had additions (parmesan, herbs etc – all sounded lovely, but not ideal with butter and jam!)
I love what they’re doing here – it reminded me of the Enoteca idea in Italy – a wine shop with tapas-y style food…….. but they sold us a fairly duff bottle of wine. It had a beautiful label, but didn’t taste great – however, I think there can always be dud bottle of wine in any case, and I wouldn’t want to let this put anybody off – unless others have also been victims of the style over substance offer of a pretty label? If we lived locally, we would have gone back and explained our disappointment, but after dinner we had to head back towards Devon.
The wine tasting sounded really good – I like your description of people’s reactions – it’s funny how wine can make people pretentious – it’s just fermented grapes for gawds sake!
May 27, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Aimee Middlemiss
Can I just add that owner Jon had some fetching shorts and a floral shirt, Polly was looking for more sophistication than Hayle environs normally offer, David was formerly known as “the butcher of Camborne” and Pasties and Cream was too hungover to post next day as she had promised?
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