The wine has a deep color with plum, cassis, rubbed herbs, cigar box, and a soft lingering finish that keeps revealing subtle layers.  It is a Cabernet Sauvignon with classic flavors but still has the balance to complement the well stocked table.

Try Alexis Soyer’s best-known dish, lamb cutlets Reform, which has remained on London’s Reform Club's menu since the 1840s and has been taken up by later chefs from Auguste Escoffier to Prue Leith

These wines are dedicated to Alexis Soyer who was arguably the 19th century’s most famous chef. He was a man full of ideas, inventions and convictions which led him to be a great champion for the common man. When hearing of the plight of the Irish people during the “Great Famine”, he asked his employers for a leave of absence and went to work in Dublin constructing a soup kitchen that could feed 5000 people a day. Though he often cooked for the aristocracy, he wrote cookbooks for those less fortunate teaching them how to make nutritious food for small amounts of money.

“I made this wine as a tribute to Alexis Soyer who I admire as a Chef, Humanitarian and Inventor but more importantly a man who always seemed to help those less fortunate than himself”

Sincerely, Tim English, Private Reserve

2017 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon
This fruit is sourced from three vineyards in Napa Valley; one in Oakville, owned by the Pelissa family that is grown organically, one interesting new property in Chiles valley and the other from a valley floor vineyard in the Yountville AVA.  They were hand-picked between September 17 and October 20, 2017.  We inoculated the must immediately after crushing and open top fermented the juice in small tanks.  The wine was pumped over four times a day and then racked into center of France oak barrels, of which 25% were new and the balance were second and third use, for the malolactic fermentation.  The wine was made with zero micro-oxygenation. The wine was aged in the
barrels for 12-16 months depending on the lot.  It was bottled without fining or filtration. 1232 cases produced.

4 February 1810 – 5 August 1858) was a French chef, philanthropist, writer and
inventor who made his reputation in Victorian England.

Born in north-east France, Soyer trained as a chef in Paris, and quickly built a career that was brought to a halt by the July Revolution of 1830. Moving to England he worked in the kitchens of royalty, the aristocracy and the landed gentry until 1837. In the 1840s he went to Dublin when the Irish potato famine struck. He setup a soup kitchen that could feed 1,000 people in an hour.

During the Crimean War, reports reached London of the privations endured by British
soldiers, with disease rife and food inadequate. At the request of the British government Soyer travelled to the Crimea in 1855 and worked with the nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale to improve conditions for the troops. He ensured that in all parts of the army there were nominated cooks, useful recipes, and the means to cook food properly.

In particular, the portable Soyer stove which he invented and which remained in army use, with modifications, for more than a century. In the Crimea, Soyer became seriously ill; he never fully recovered his health. A little over a year after his return to London in 1857, he died of a stroke.