The shop team picked up the gauntlet to find the best wine matches for great British beef and fine artisan cheeses and tasting tables and master classes were laid on to help customers discover the best matches.

Sarah Purdon made a welcome return to the shop with her mouth-watering Belted Galloway Beef.  She’d specially made some delicious meatballs which customers could try plain or with a choice of two sauces. The beef match of the day was the plain meatballs with 2009 St Joseph Rouge, Domaine Michel et Stéphane Ogier. Although Finca Allende’s 2006 Rioja Tinto and meatballs with Armenian Jajig was an excellent match too. Recipe cards to takeaway were available on the day and were snapped up by customers eager to try them out for themselves.

Nick Page who is renowned for his food and wine matching expertise – and Graham Goodall of The Cheese Stall conducted the cheese and wine master classes. After a whirlwind tour of the fascinating similarities between wine and cheese – yes, familiarities such as how terroir affects the flavour, quality and ripeness of both cheese and wine; and like grape juice, milk can be fermented into an alcoholic drink – the ‘class’ was treated to a lesson in matching wine with cheese. Nick had done a great job of selecting the wines and cheeses and all the combinations worked well, but the stand out pairings were:

Crottin de Chavignol and 2011 Sancerre Blanc, André Dezat

Mimolette and 2009 Ch. de Pressac, St Emilion

Stichelton and 1997 Smith Woodhouse Vintage Port

This Saturday, 20^th April, there’s another event in the Bin End Shop. The theme this weekend is ‘Whisky’. Two master classes will be conducted:

11.30am Battle of the Bottlers – We will be comparing our Berrys’ Own Selection bottlings with distillery bottlings – will you be able to taste the difference amongst the line-up of superb Whiskies?

2.00pm Lost Distilleries – our very own canny Scot, Alex Ross, will show you a selection of irreplaceable Whiskies from some now closed distilleries, which will offer an opportunity to taste some rare Whiskies that will soon be lost to the world forever.

Plus, as is always the case on these special days, there’ll be some superb spirits heavily discounted which you can peruse on the day.

Leon Reilly, Berrys’ Bin-End Shop