Britain's newest culinary hotspot is perfect for a cosy festive getaway
“We want to start a new Christmas morning tradition – drinking Bloody Marys rather than Bucks Fizz,” says Nina Howden, co-founder with husband Joe of Silver Circle distillery, near Chepstow. “Cheers to that!” I say, before taking a tot of tangy tomato. Nina is holding a tasting session of black garlic vodka at Chesters wine merchants in Abergavenny. I sit at a table near the window, the town’s Christmas street lights strung across the street outside, and savour the flavour.
The Welsh border county of Monmouthshire is gaining a reputation as a foodie – and drinkie – centre of excellence. Add to that some superb hiking and biking – up the Brecon Beacons and along the exquisitely beautiful Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal, offering the chance to burn off those calories – and you have all the ingredients for a perfect short break.
I had arrived in Abergavenny, the county’s largest town, by train. The views as we approached looked promising, with the hill of Skirrid Fawr glowing in afternoon sunshine. I would ascend another of the ‘Abergavenny three peaks’, 596m-tall Sugarloaf, the next morning.
After checking in to the gloriously beamy and wonky 16th-century coaching inn, the Kings Arms, dinner at the nearby Angel Hotel of Penang-style vegetable curry was one of the best I’ve tasted since a trip to Malaysia many moons ago. A fine start.
My morning hike was similarly a portal to another world. Before long I’d left tarmac and town behind and was striding above the tree-line through bracken and bilberries on neatly nibbled grassy footpaths, approaching Sugarloaf’s conical peak. The view from the top – the Bristol Channel glinting in the distance to the south, the coppery flanks of the Black Mountains to the north – was worth the two-hour train trip from Birmingham alone.
After the hike, there was still enough daylight for a ride on an e-bike, hired from Drover Cycles. Off I zipped up towards The Blorenge, the third of Abergavenny’s peaks, and onto the canal towpath, thick with autumn leaves. No boats were on the move and there was hardly a soul around. A charm of goldfinches rose and swirled among the trees, like blown leaves returning to their branches. Sugarloaf was bathed in afternoon sun, glowing like burnished copper. I visited the base of Beacon Park Boats, the only holiday narrowboats I know with details such as a hot-tub on the bow or a decanter of single malt (Welsh Penderyn, of course.) For the first time ever the extremely comfortable boats – some with wood-burners – are available to cruise over Christmas and New Year.
I free-wheeled down a former railway line from Gilwern back to town, the winter’s cold beginning to bite. That evening, I ate at the Walnut Tree Inn, a short taxi ride away. Michelin-starred chef Shaun Hill specialises in fish and game. Neighbouring diners cooed over their starter of veal sweetbreads while I slurped a warming Kerala fish curry of sustainably caught gurnard.
The next day, after a pre-breakfast amble along meadows beside the River Usk, I headed further afield, through rolling sheep-grazed hills towards the Wye valley. It’s a glorious and hilly two-hour e-bike ride following Sustrans route 42 on quiet and picturesque country lanes all the way to Chepstow.
The Preservation Society hosts jam and chutney making lessons and one-to-one masterclasses in Chepstow or at a small unit on a farm three miles out of town. Founder Angharad Underwood has been making preserves of all sorts for 10 years, winning Great Taste awards for the likes of her candied jalapeños.
At home, I enjoy making windfall apple chutney to give as gifts so a couple of hours’ learning culinary tips from an expert and tasting tracklements seemed timely practice. And lo, I found myself in a steamy industrial kitchen, wearing a fetching hair-net and apron, paddling an oar through a simmering vat of redcurrant and apple Christmas chutney. Soaking the fruit beforehand (in this case, in beer) and equal weights of vinegar and sugar are two tips I learn. Angharad – “call me Rag” – tells me about fruit I’ve never heard of, such as chuckleberries (“like blackcurrants on speed, bigger and with more oomph”), and how on one of her workshops someone wanted to make bacon jam. (“The result was more like a pate really,” she says.) After several hours, the chutney still simmering, I load my rucksack with a variety of jars – figgy mustard, boozy mincemeat – and head off to my next stop.
Wye Valley Meadery began life three years ago when beekeeper Matt Newell and his brother Kit began making mead in Matt’s garage. “Mead is thought of as the drink of Vikings or monks,” says Kit in their new premises which opens at weekends as a bar and pizzeria. “We’re doing something different, giving mead a buzz.” One mead origin myth is that when monks washed beeswax – which they harvested to make candles – the honey-tainted dishwater fermented. Some of today’s monks – in one of the best-known monasteries – “cheat” and take a short-cut, making a ‘bathtub’ version with neat ethanol mixed with honey-water, says Kit. Meanwhile, these young blood brothers brew their amber nectar the traditional way, using honey from Matt’s 150 hives dotted around Monmouthshire, including some on the turrets of neighbouring 11th-century Caldicot Castle. Breaking with tradition, they’ve livened mead up with sparkling versions flavoured with fruits, or, my favourite (and a Great Taste award winner), hops.
Among the large stainless steel fermenters and a mash tun – for beer brewing – are demi-johns with liquid of various honey hues, the fermenting results of afternoon mead making workshops. “You can add traditional herbs such as meadowsweet or hawthorn and make it as strong or weak as you like,” says Kit. An afternoon’s mead-making costs £60 per person including 4.5 litres of mead to take home once it’s ready. Another great Christmas gift idea.
On my last morning, miraculously the sun shone again, so I rode the e-bike out to White Castle Vineyard, seven miles east of Abergavenny, through more rolling hills, for a £15 tour and tasting. This seven-acre vineyard with 7,000 vines made national headlines earlier this year when one of its red wines, its 2018 pinot noir, won a gold Decanter award, only the third red in British wine-making history to achieve such an accolade. “It’s really put us on the wine-making map,” says Robb Merchant, co-owner of the vineyard with wife Nicola. The day the news broke, their website crashed – and they sold out within 36 hours.
Robb takes me on a tour of the gently sloping site on which they’ve grown vines for 12 years. He explains how the climatic and geographic conditions – relatively dry, thanks to being in the rain shadow of the hills to the west, the sandy loamy soil and warm south-facing aspect – make this vineyard suitable for early ripening pinot noir grapes. Back at the ‘cellar door’ I sniff and slurp a sip of chilled Siegerrebe. It’s delicious – “dry, peachy and floral,” says Robb. I’m honoured to be among the first to taste the 2019 pinot noir, released that day. With flavours of vanilla, oak and blackberry, this light red is a treat. “Nine hundred of the 2,600 bottles have already been pre-ordered,” says Robb, pouring the next wine, his favourite red, Regent, and talking about plans for expansion.
In the shadow of a hill called Sugarloaf, it seems that life is sweet.
More information can be found at visitmonmouthshire.com, plus our guide to the best hotels in Monmouthshire.
