Drink of the week: Cawston Press Apple and Rhubarb Juice

I’m continually on the lookout for soft drinks that are not too sweet as I know there’s a big demand for them. This isn’t perfect - it’s still a fruit juice so quite high in sugar - but it is genuinely refreshing.

It’s made by Cawston Vale, a British firm which uses pressed fruit rather than concentrate. The rhubarb gives it a lovely fresh tartness (rhubarb haters needn’t worry - there’s only 10% so it still tastes mainly of apple) which would make it delicious partner for a cheese or chicken salad or even with grilled oily fish like mackerel. It would also make a refreshing breakfast juice

If you don’t want to put a carton on the table just decant it into a jug with some ice, and a few slices of apple, cucumber and lemon - maybe even a sprig of mint.

You can buy it for around £2 a litre in Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose while Morrisons mysteriously charges £2.17

* On the plus side it contains 38g of Vitamin C which is a third of your recommended daily intake.

Clos Michet 2009, Domaine de la Taille aux Loups, Montlouis

This week has been all about dipping into bottles in the cellar in our house in France. Well, not strictly the cellar - more like the cupboard under the stairs. It’s not ideal wine storage - it’s a bit too warm in the Languedoc - but it stays cooler than the rest of the house.

We’ve had a few under performing bottles, overlooked and kept too long, but the outstanding wine of the week has been this one: Jacky Blot’s 2009 Clos Michet from Montlouis, a sumptuous chenin blanc that one could easily mistake for a top white burgundy.

Although not certified organic (so far as I can make out*) Blot avoids the use of chemical fertilisers and is meticulously careful in his grape selection, discarding bunches if they’re in any way damaged. (We saw him do this one year.)

2009 was, of course, a hot year so this is riper than you’d expect but not blowsy at all. We drank it mainly on its own as an aperitif and the remainder with a chard and ham gratin with a creamy sauce with which it went quite perfectly.

It’s a great reminder of the virtues of hanging on to Chenin, especially from the Loire - and good to find that you can buy the 2012 vintage in the UK from Laithwaite’s albeit at a rather pricier figure (£21) than we paid for ours. Worth it though particularly as the 2013 harvest was badly affected by hail.

* there's an interesting piece on his approach to winemaking on his website if you read French. (The Google translation is pretty incomprehensible.)