麻豆约拍

Food writer and restaurateur Simon Wright explores the social history of Welsh food and drink, revealing the undiscovered riches of our culinary culture and inspiring others to try it. Taking a single theme in each programme, he journeys from the past to the present, examining how the Welsh have produced, cooked, eaten and related to food and drink and surveys the most interesting developments in the current culinary scene.

This week his focus is wine. He begins with the remarkable story of the Castell Coch vineyard which was created by the third Marquis of Bute in the 1870s. With the help of historian Phil Carradice, Simon discovers how the vineyards of Castell Coch, and later Sully, produced the only commercially grown wine in the whole of Britain for nearly 40 years.

Wine writer Neil Cammies brings Simon up to date with an overview of the current Welsh wine scene and sends him to Ancre Hill, the award-winning vineyard in Monmouth which specialises in biodynamic wine. Here Simon meets Ancre Hill's Richard Morris, who explains the science behind making wine in this way.

Simon also demonstrates the art of wine-tasting and travels to the Loire Valley to see what the French connoisseurs make of Welsh wine.