Blog of the Year 2011

No, that doesn't mean that we've won an award for our blog, in fact quite the opposite. We've been so poor at posting blog entries that almost an entire year has passed since the last one! Shame on us!

So, to make amends, this post is a round up of a few of the highlights of 2011, in no particular order!

November...

A tasting of Catalan wines

We were delighted to welcome the charming Christine Campadieu of Collioure winery Domaine Le Tour Vieille and the dashing Tom Ashworth of top wine merchant Yapp Brothers of Mere in Wiltshire...

Extract from Yapp Brothers blog "David and Katie Young’s welcoming ‘restaurant with rooms’ is a must for any greedy wine lover who fancies a break in some wonderful countryside. A great deal of love and attention has gone into putting together a terrific wine list, which has been regularly commended, most recently Imbibe’s Small Restaurant Wine List of the Year 2011. In fact, the Youngs’ visit to Domaine Le Tour Vieille last year was the catalyst for this event. To kick off the evening, Christine provided guests with an entertaining introduction to the wines of Roussillon and conducted an hour long tutored tasting covering eight wines from the estate. We then enjoyed white Collioure with an inspired Catalan dish of salt & pepper squid with anchovy aioli, before washing down Rothiemurchus Estate roe deer with red Collioure Pinède 2008. The local Blarliath cheese course accompanied red Puig Oriole 2008 before the finale of a wonderful chocolate brownie with heavenly Banyuls Réserva."

Winemaker Christine Campadieu outside The Cross

September...

AA Awards

The annual round of hospitality awards takes place in late summer. In 2011 the AA event took place at the London Hilton on Park Lane, a glitzy affair hosted by newsreader Sophie Raworth.

We were delighted that The Cross was once again awarded with three rosettes for culinary excellence 

"Outstanding restaurants that achieve standards that demand recognition well beyond their local area. The cooking is underpinned by the selection and sympathetic treatment of the highest quality ingredients. Timing, seasoning and the judgment of flavour combinations will consistently be excellent. These virtues tend to be supported by other elements, such as intuitive service and a well-chosen wine list. Around 10% of the restaurants/hotels within the AA Restaurant Guide have Three Rosettes and above"

And for the overall quality of The Cross we were awarded Highly Commended

"AA inspectors determine a quality score as a percentage to cover all aspects of a guest accommodation, including service. The score is then represented as a one- to five-Star rating. Yellow Stars indicate that an establishment is acknowledged by the AA for providing Highly Commended accommodation"

 And that to add to our VisitScotland accolade of four Gold stars

"The Gold award recognises serviced accommodation businesses which consistently achieve the highest levels of excellence within their VisitScotland star grading. Businesses achieving the award will excel in the areas of customer care and hospitality and show evidence of a real commitment to staff development and training"

May...

Featured in the Scottish Field

"On a sunny spring day, there can be few more heavenly places to
while away an hour or two than on the terrace at The Cross. Overlooking
the river Gynack as it burbles alongside this former tweed
mill in the shadows of the Cairngorm mountains, it’s hard to believe that
you are in the middle of Kingussie and just a mile or so from the A9.
Outside, the trees form a canopy which lets dappled light stream
through; inside the wooden-beamed 20-cover restaurant, the AA’s former
chief hotel inspector and chef-patron David Young operates with the sort
of blithe assurance you’d expect from a veteran chef with 35 years under
his belt, not to mention a whole draw of awards for his three-rosette
family-run restaurant with rooms.
Many of those awards have come for the quality of their renowned
wine list, but yet more have come for their food, which Young describes
as ‘classic French-inspired cuisine centred around the use of the best and
freshest ingredients I can find. The use of that finest Scottish produce,

whose provenance is painstakingly chronicled for diners, is at the heart of

everything that Young does. This is immediately apparent from a menu which reads

as follows: an appetiser of local line-caught mackerel with rhubarb salsa; followed
by pressed organic Highland chicken and young grouse terrine with
fig chutney; a main course of baked fillet of wild Scrabster brill with
Glenfeshie chanterelle veloute, samphire, and Yukon gold potato puree;
and finishing off with hot chocolate fondant and chilli ice cream.
It is the sort of classy Auld Alliance cuisine which has made this little
Kingussie restaurant such a hit for so many years"

P.S. Richard Bath, the editor of Scottish Field, also reviewed The Cross anonymously for Scotland on Sunday The Cross is a hidden gem

September...

Imbibe Louis Roederer UK Small Restaurant Wine List of the Year 2011!!

Quite a mouthful...but after being shortlisted the year before we were extremely pleased to have won the award at the second time of trying. This is what they said.

"A fair few of the wine lists sent in for the Wine List of the Year competition are real labours of love – but it’s hard to think of any that have combined imagination, quirkiness, information and sheer joie de vivre in such large quantities as David Young’s list from The Cross at Kingussie in Inverness. Shortlisted last year, it went one better this year, with our judges chuckling happily at what they found. There are very few wines here above £50 (‘we’re clear about what our customers are prepared to spend,’ says Young) but this list has scoured the world in search of value and interest at the more affordable end of the wine list. And, let’s face it, wherever you are, this is where the vast majority of customers do their choosing!

‘There’s a lot of enthusiasm here, somebody has obviously put a lot of love into it’ Peter McCombie MW (on The Cross at Kingussie)

Using a laudable 14 suppliers, the large selection of 190 wines, plus 35 halves, 40+ dessert wines and a majestic selection of whisky would be impressive at a 100-cover white tablecloth eatery. It’s all the more remarkable at a place that seats only 24 people.
Yet it was more than the sheer choice of wines on offer that saw The Cross take an award this year. It was the attempts to engage with the customer: exuberant tasting notes, boxed-out musings on organic versus biodynamic, the witty use of symbols (an ambulance for wines with high alcohol, bagpipes for wines with a ‘Scottish connection’) that won over the judges. ‘There’s a lot of enthusiasm here,’ said McCombie. ‘Somebody has obviously put a lot of love into it.’
Certainly, if more wine lists showed this much enthusiasm, wit and energy, the on-trade would be a better place.
‘There’s a lot of wine here for an eight-bedroomed restaurant that seats 24 people,’ said Anderson. ‘And I loved the bagpipes!’"

November...

Champagne, Champagne, Champagne

"I've tried, but it's always in vain,

Not to drink so much champagne

But when I'm in trouble

I do need that bubble

- and it happens again and again..."

from "Lickerish Limericks" by Cyril Ray

Late Autumn saw us take a short trip to Champagne - an opportunity to find out more about the area, to taste and to develop new relationships that we might take forward to the 2012 wine list. With us were our daughter Mairianne and our great friend Helen, neither of whom are scared of a Bouzy evening!

But not before we whizzed past our old stomping ground in Hampshire to spend an evening with Gerard and Nina Basset at Hotel TerraVina in the New Forest. Gerard was co-founder of the Hotel du Vin group, is now (officially) the world's greatest sommelier, and has been awarded an OBE. Nina worked with me (David) at the AA for a number of years where she was an outstanding hotel and restaurant inspector. It was great to see them and a real treat to enjoy their very comfortable and chic hotel, fine hospitality, classy food and - of course -  fantastic wine. If you go, as you must, don't leave without a tour of Gerard's cellar! Catch up with what's going on at TerraVina by reading Nina's Blog.

Then on to Champagne where, courtesy of Enotria Wine, we enjoyed an excellent and extremely informative tasting at Champagne Henriot (thank you to Beatrice Brossier).

Some photos:

 

Places to eat:

Brasserie du Boulingrin Reims

Restaurant La Vigneraie Reims

And to stay and eat (simple country inn):

La Touraine Champenoise Tour sur Marne

Best meal of the week, though, was when we stopped in Folkestone once through the tunnel...Mark Sargeant's excellent fish restaurant Rocksalt...worth a short detour (also has a handful of bedrooms).

The Cross at Kingussie Restaurant with Rooms www.thecross.co.uk

THE CROSS AT KINGUSSIE RECEIVES THE AA WINE AWARD FOR SCOTLAND

Photo caption (l - r): Natasha Kaplinsky, host of the AA Hospitality Awards; David Young, owner; Trevor Hughes, sponsor; Katie Young, owner.

The Cross at Kingussie received nationwide recognition recently when it received the Wine Award for Scotland at the AA Hospitality Awards 2009 - 2010. The AA, celebrating the best in hospitality for over 100 years, held the glamorous black-tie ceremony, hosted by Natasha Kaplinsky, at the London Hilton on Park Lane.

David Young, owner of The Cross at Kingussie, received the award in front of a high profile audience of 800 members of the hospitality industry, including world-renowned ‘celebrity’ chefs, prominent hoteliers, hospitality gurus and key industry media. David said: “Most restaurants, especially hotel restaurants, offer wine lists that are a poor second to the food and we’re delighted that The Cross has been recognised as somewhere where the quality of the cooking can be matched with a great bottle of wine at a reasonable price”.

He added, “We work hard at putting together a unique wine list every year. The selections reflect our own tastes and many appear on our list only after we have visited the vineyard ourselves. We hope that the list offers diners the opportunity of trying something new and interesting. Our wines by the glass change regularly, we have, I think, one of the best lists of half bottles and of pudding wines in the UK, and we don’t overlook whisky drinkers either with a range of over 40 premium malts”.

“Of course, none of this would be possible without first class growers, wineries and suppliers who understand and support what we seek to achieve at The Cross and they, too, must take credit for the part they have played in our success”.

The Cross, a converted tweed mill with 8 en-suite bedrooms, is located in the lovely Highland village of Kingussie within the stunning Cairngorm National Park, surrounded by mountains, rivers and lochs. Situated in four acres of riverside grounds - with an abundance of native trees, flowers and wildlife – The Cross combines quality with simplicity and good food with a warm welcome.

AA Hotel Services Group Area Manager Giovanna Grossi said of the award “We selected The Cross at Kingussie for the Wine Award for Scotland because David and Katie’s passion for wines is clearly reflected in the carefully selected value for money list that can be justifiably enthused about and is regularly updated to feature new vintages and interesting additions.”

The Cross has also been awarded three AA Rosettes for the quality of the cooking and is now one of only twenty five restaurants in Scotland to achieve this standard. According to the 2010 edition of the AA’s Restaurant Guide “the food is both fabulous and unfussy in keeping with its surroundings”.

The AA Hospitality Awards recognise and reward the excellent services provided by the UK’s very best establishments and launches the 2010 AA guides to UK hotels and restaurants.

This year, guests at the awards ceremony were treated to a sensational three course gourmet meal prepared by three of the industry’s most highly esteemed chefs - Eric Chavot, Chris Galvin and Gary Rhodes - in conjunction with the Hilton Park Lane kitchen team. The guests also enjoyed a special performance by Britain’s Got Talent winners Diversity.

The Cross was named Scottish Restaurant with Rooms of the Year 2009 in February and is once again featured as one of Scotland’s top thirty restaurants in the 2010 edition of the Good Food Guide.

Autumn and Winter Offers at The Cross:

Three-night dinner inclusive midweek breaks from £255 per person
Two-night dinner inclusive romantic breaks from £195 per person (including a bottle of champagne)
Three-night inclusive highland hogmanay package from £490 per person

For more information about the AA Awards go to http://www.aahospitalityawards.com/
For more information about The Cross at Kingussie go to http://www.thecross.co.uk/.