W
L
WONDERFUL LANCASHIRE
BY THE CQ
This month we are taking a trip to the Ribble Valley and to the nearby
Forest, or Trough, of Bowland in Lancashire. It is a beautiful, stunning,
peaceful, romantic and tranquil part of the world. The Forest of Bowland
itself is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty; and it is on
our doorstep!
This summer the Oxton wine tasting group paid a visit (its actually an
annual pilgrimage) to the area. On the back of this annual pilgrimage
I want to try and entice you to visit a part of the country that is rich
in its food and wine heritage, and to introduce you to two of the many
wonderful establishments you will find when you do. This month we,
therefore, would like to introduce you to the fabulous wine shop that
is D Byrne and Co. in Clitheroe, to some of their wonderful wines and
to the unique, cosy and charming Parkers Arms in nearby Newton - in
- Bowland.
D BYRNE AND CO.
For those of you who don’t know about this great institution – it is a
gem! It is a family run, multi award wining, independent fine wine and
spirit merchants that has been in operation for over 130 years. Its old
Victorian shop window lures you in with an eclectic display of wares
from both the wine and the spirit world. Yet this hardly begins to tell
the story of the hidden treasures that await inside. On entering you will
find a square room lined from floor to ceiling (and the ceilings are very
high) with shelves stacked with an amazing array of bottles. But this is
only a taster. Through a tiny door in the corner of the room you enter
into a warren of underground cellars, full of the most amazin g selection
of wines you will find anywhere in the UK (and probably beyond).
I have been visiting this wonderful establishment for too many years to
count. You can find, rooting around in the cellars, just about everything
from the best wines in the world, costing hundreds of pounds, all the
way through to great wines for less than £10. Whatever you buy, and the
range is enormous, you will get value for money and a fabulous bottle of
wine (without exception).
42 wirrallife.com
As a child we, I guess, can all remember going to the local sweet shop
to buy our sweets (perhaps on a Friday after school)! Home you would
run with your little white paper bag. It is a bit like that in Byrne’s – but
swap your little white paper bags full of black jacks, fruit salads, wine
gums, bonbons, pear drops, sherbet fountains or liquorice torpedos for
cardboard boxes filled with an amazing array of different wines from
just about every corner of the planet. Get your box – and off you go! If
you can’t physically make it there yourself – order directly from them,
and they will deliver to the Wirral for you.
It is perhaps, therefore, unsurprising that this summer saw the usual
large collection of cardboard boxes, full of carefully selected wines,
emerging from below the streets of Clitheroe and finding their way back
to the Wirral; but not before a very long lunch! Several of the boxes
actually contained a selection of wines wrapped in newspaper. Theses
wines were handpicked and carefully selected by Byrnes themselves,
to be tasted blind over lunch at the Parkers Arms. They were given a
budget and were asked to supply, in advance, a selection of interesting
wines for the group to taste during the afternoon.
THE PARKERS ARMS