October 2011

Vacherin Mont d’Or, Real Garlic and Hampers!

After a few wonderful days of sunshine last week autumn has most definitely arrived and with it has come some autumn treats!

First of all we are glad to have the amazing Vacherin Mont d’Or back in stock. As many of you will know this is a rich cow’s milk cheese from the Jura mountains with a full creamy flavour. It is sold in individual 500g cheeses that are matured in a wooden spruce boxes and available for £6.95 each. One traditional way of eating them is to cut a clove of garlic into four pieces and push each piece into the cheese - splash a little white wine over the top, cover in tin foil and then place in the oven for 20 minutes at 175 degrees. Voila - instant Fondue! We buy our Vacherin from the best producer and it really is gorgeous!

Our friend Arnaud has returned to our shores with his usual fabulous selection of Garlic, Onions and Shallots from Brittany and Toulouse. We have dealt with Arnaud for many years now and his produce is always exceptional and in very high demand. If you’re stuck for a gift for a Foodie friend they make unique and unusual presents.

We are currently finalising our Hamper list for this year’s festive season. With so many new products we are having great fun re-inventing some of our classics whilst adding some new models to the line up. The list will be available soon and will also be available to view online.

We also make hampers to order - if you have a requirement for gifts for your office, company or friends and family simply give us a call and we can put something together just for you. Remember also that we can deliver them all over the UK. We can cater for all tastes and budgets.

Remember to join our Facebook page if you want to get regular updates on new products and offers: www.facebook.com/henrifinefoodandwine/

We look forward to seeing you soon.

Simon, Mike and everyone at Henri

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September 2011 

Well the festival has come and gone and Edinburgh returns to normal after another great month...

The new shop in Stockbridge is going fantastically well so far. We have finally managed to fill it with produce and it is looking really full and starting to take on its own atmosphere. We also have quite a few new suppliers down there which we just don’t have the space for in Morningside. If you have not been please come in and see us and have some lunch or a coffee or a glass of wine – remember that we are open until 8pm Monday to Friday.

Our trade customers have not been standing still either with Jean-Michel Gauffre opening another of his tremendously successful “La Garrigue” restaurants in Leith. This is his third restaurant in the city offering more of a casual bistro style experience suited to families. A lovely little Café and Boulangerie has also opened in Bruntsfield called “La Barantine”. Run by the charming Celine Aplincourt it is a vibrant place offering fresh baking and coffee as well as some of our fabulous meats and cheeses!

A new service we are able to offer is SAME DAY DELIVERY in central Edinburgh if you place your order by 2pm. We have teamed up with Pronto Pedal Power ( www.prontopedalpower.co.uk ) which is a new delivery service using specially adapted bikes! They will deliver to your door for a fee of £5 for same day delivery. Remember though that next day delivery is still free for orders of £30 or more! We are using Pronto for our restaurant deliveries as well, meaning that our van is off the road a lot of the time which can only be a good thing.

Our website has really taken off in the last few months with orders being delivered nationwide to expectant customers. We will be adding more to the site in the next few months including our ever popular hamper selections for Christmas.

Don’t forget we also have a Facebook page if you want to get regular updates on new products and offers: www.facebook.com/henrifinefoodandwine

We look forward to seeing you soon.

Simon, Mike and everyone at Henri

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August 2011

Here we are at the start of August and the inevitable rain is here again!  At Henri however there has been plenty going on the keep us on our toes. Most importantly we have opened our new shop at 48 Raeburn Place (0131 332 8963) in Stockbridge!! We felt it was important to have a presence on the north side of the city and Stockbridge, with its focus on independent shops and village atmosphere, fitted the bill. It is a much bigger shop than we have in Morningside which allows us a larger stage (so to speak) on which to display our products. At the front of the shop we have a 20 cover cafe with an extensive menu. Why not pop in for one of our delicious cheese and charcuterie platters or even a glass of wine and a nibble in the evenings.  We are so often limited in Morningside for space but the new shop allows us much more flexibility and the opportunity to give our customers a wider choice of menu. Please come and see us!

As ever we are committed to sourcing and buying as much produce as possible directly from France and our first shipment from La Belle Iloise in Brittany arrived last week. La Belle Iloise are fabulous producers of preserved fish and soups and their products are second to none. For our first order we have some of the finest tinned Tuna, Mackerel and Sardines as well as delicious little tins of Lobster mousse. We were rather impressed when we first contacted them as we had to send a photo of the shop and various information to prove we were suitable retailers of their products. Anyone with that kind of attention to detail must care about what they are selling! N’est pas?

You may have seen in the press that Martin Wishart has opened a new restaurant, The Honours, on North Castle Street. We have been very fortunate to supply his restaurant on The Shore with a large percentage of his cheese board for some years now and are honoured to be the sole supplier to their cheese board at The Honours. Martin has always strived to source the best produce for his customers and we are extremely proud to be associated with him.

We had an amazing three days at this year’s Taste of Edinburgh festival at the beginning of July. The weather played a big part to the success of the weekend and it was a fantastic platform to launch the new shop. The wines and cheeses we showed on tasting were well received and encouraged plenty sales of them too. The Denois fizz seemed to put a particularly large smile on people’s faces when offered! 

We look forward to seeing you soon.

Simon, Mike and everyone at Henri's

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May 2011 
 
Hello everyone, and welcome to our May newsletter. This month there is a wine theme...
 
DOMAINE VELLA FRONTERA DINNER, La Garrigue Tuesday 7 June
 
Don’t miss this dinner. The ( British! ) owners and winemakers of Domaine Vella Frontera in Maury – www.vellafrontera.com - will be coming over to present their wines with a menu specially devised by Jean-Michel and his team at La Garrigue. I am sure Corin will share lots of tales about arriving and working in deepest south-west France! Tickets are £55.00 and include a 5 course dinner and all wines. This is excellent value for what should be a great evening. Please phone La Garrigue on 0131 557 3032 to book – hopefully we shall see a lot of you there!
 
LES HAUTS DE SMITH 2005 – amazing value claret
 
Those of you who buy wine from the shop will know that Bordeaux is not the strongest area of our range. However the opportunity came up for me to buy a parcel of this excellent wine at a fair price so I snapped it up! Les Hauts de Smith is the second wine of the grand cru classé Smith Haut-Lafitte in Pessac Léognan, and the 2005 has received many plaudits. Wooden cases of 6 are available for £150 – the perfect gift or a little something to stash underneath the stairs for a couple of years. Drinking well now, it will continue to develop and improve over the next 5 years or more.
 
OUT AND ABOUT...
 
There is no end to what we will do for you in the line of duty...I am off to London next week for two days of wine tasting. One day at the London Wine Trade Fair and one day at the Natural Wine Fair. As many of you know I am interested in wines which are made in as natural and as sustainable a way as possible – wines made with the minimum of additives ( you would be very surprised at what is allowed to be put in wine ) and with the greatest of respect for where they come from. These are wines produced by people with real passion and I am aiming to overhaul our wine list this year, with many new wines arriving. Watch this space! We shall also be popping over to Paris in June for 24 hours to visit our cheese suppliers at the market and look for new sources of charcuterie. Unfortunately for me I am too busy to go but my French business partner Yvonne will have to go instead, poor thing!
 
We look forward to seeing you soon.
 
Simon, Mike and everyone at Henri’s

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April 2011

Finally winter seems to be drawing to a close and the first signs of spring are upon us and with it are some new arrivals here at Henri’s. We have just received the new vintage of Grenache from Domaine Vella Frontera. We import these delicious wines directly from the estate and they are made by Corin and Jayne Fairchild right down on the border with Catalonia. Their Grenache is full of ripe prunes, cherries and violet whilst the heavier Syrah is laden with ripe plums and spices. We still have some stock of the 2008 Syrah which is fabulous! They are also producing a white and rosé now which we shall receive by the summer. Corin and Jayne will also be hosting a dinner on Tuesday 7 June at La Garrigue on Jeffrey Street where they will be showcasing their incredible wines along with dishes from the south of France cooked by award winning chef Jean-Michel Gauffre. Book now to avoid disappointment! Also new in is the 2009 Château Pégairolles rouge from the Languedoc. David Reverbel from Pégairolles will be coming in the autumn for another wine dinner, so do watch out for that too.

Our new range of pâtés and cassoulets from Duperier proved to be a big seller over Christmas and we have just received another pallet to top up our stocks. Duperier supply some of France’s finest Michelin star restaurants with their Foie Gras as well as Raymond Blanc and Michel Roux here in the UK. Their Pâté Maison is made with deliciously succulent pork with a nugget of Foie Gras in its centre.
 
We are very much looking forward to this year’s Taste of Edinburgh festival which is moving back to the Meadows after a gap of two years. It is running from the 1st - 3rd July and for the first time we shall have a stand. Some of Edinburgh’s top restaurants have already signed up with more to follow so we are guaranteed to be in good company!

Don’t forget that we have weekly deliveries of poultry from Gartmorn Farm in Alloa. They supplied us for the first time with their turkeys at Christmas this year and the feedback from our customers was very positive. During the rest of the year they supply us with whole chickens, chicken breasts and ducks as well as Guinea fowl. We order from them on a Monday and have them delivered on a Thursday. Please pop into the shop for a list or call us and we can send one out to you.

We look forward to seeing you soon.

Simon, Mike and everyone at Henri’s

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March 2010

News from Henri’s

First of all thank you to everyone who has been supporting us recently – we hope you are pleased with what we are doing and are always happy to receive suggestions for anything we could do or could do better! We had a successful Christmas period and no sooner was that over than we started planning for the year ahead...

Michael recently held a successful tasting evening with Rose Murray-Brown MW, chief wine critic for The Scotsman, at the Whisky Society on Queen Street. The theme of the event was charcuterie and wine although of course our cheeses also had a look in as well! One of the most popular matches of the night was our Jambon de Corse (peppered Corsican air-dried ham) with rosé. The new vintage of rosé from the Cave des Vignerons de Pegairolles will be arriving in April so look out for this and try it for yourself! Rose will be using our cheese and wine at more of her tasting events, more information on which can be found at www.rosemurraybrown.com.
 
Another event coming up is a Cheese Tasting with the New Town Cookery School on Queen Street on Wednesday 31st March. We shall be showing a selection of our cheeses and trying to match them with all sorts of drinks (for example have you ever tried a strong blue cheese with an Islay malt?). Hopefully we shall explode some cheese and wine myths by highlighting some new and perhaps unusual combinations.

The Spring of course heralds the arrival of new vintages of wine, and over the next few months we shall be receiving new and exclusive wines from France including new vintages from Les Vignerons de Pégairolles and new red wines (a Grenache and a Syrah) from Vella Frontera right down in the south western corner of France in Maury. These are fabulous and we are sure they will be a hit! We have also been appointed the agent for Scotland of Champagne Boizel. We are proud to be representing them both in the shop and in the restaurant trade – this is high quality Champagne with a big following in France which has not been represented here before. Why not pop in to the shop and treat yourself to a bottle?!

A forthcoming buying trip to France will also hopefully yield some new goodies (don’t say we don’t try!) and we also have new deliveries direct from the producers of olive oil from Olidoc, chutneys, jams and conserves from Epicurien and more fabulous chocolates and Babas au Rum from Savour Baba. The giftware from Orval Creations proved so popular that we have more of that arriving too. We shall continue to work hard this year to bring you products unavailable anywhere else and have several buying trips planned – do keep coming in to the shop to see what we have in stock!

Finally our website continues to grow in popularity and we are sending hampers, gift boxes, wine and cheese all over the UK. If you need to send a present to someone out of Edinburgh (or even in Edinburgh) why not try our efficient delivery service? Go on-line at www.henrisofedinburgh.co.uk or phone the shop on 447 8877.

We are also supplying more and more restaurants, including two of Edinburgh’s best Michelin-starred ones, and if you have not been to the shop you may have unwittingly eaten our cheese or tasted our wine on an evening out! We hope to see you in the shop soon or look after you on the web.

A bientôt!

Simon Lloyd

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June 2009

Our last buying trip found us in the south of France...

Our first stop was Nice. My French business partner Yvonne’s niece lives in Nice and she had prepared for us an extensive itinerary of visits to local producers, in particular olive oil producers. Our most memorable visit was to the Moulin de la Brague where we tasted their fine olive oils, olives and tapenades (the delicious olive spread which is wonderful on toast, brioche or even oatcakes). We have been looking for new olive oil for some time and this one might just be it!

The next day we left Nice at 7am for the 400km drive to our next appointment, another olive oil producer but this time in the Hérault, just north of Montpellier. Our friend Jean-Michel Gauffre who owns La Garrigue on Jeffrey Street, and is from the Hérault, had recommended we visit the Huilerie Coopérative of Clermont l’Hérault. They make great quality oil and are noted for their use of the “Lucques” variety of green olive. It has a crescent shape and the most wonderful, delicate taste - one of the finest olives you will ever eat. Hopefully we shall be importing some of these along with their excellent olive oils which we tasted. In addition they make soaps and shower gels from olive oil which should find their way to the shop.

Next it was a quick lunch before the short drive to our next appointment. This was with the jam and conserve producer Epicurien. We have just started selling some of their products so it was good to meet them face to face and discuss the possibility of using more. The owner started life with a delicatessen in Paris, but his homemade jams proved so popular that he returned to his native region and now does it full time with around 100 different varieties of jams and savoury conserves.

After a few mouthfuls of Bernard’s chocolate and orange spread (perfect for crepes!) we headed to the wine co-op in the beautiful village of Pégairolle-de-l’Escalette, the smallest co-op in the Hérault with only 58 members. The vineyards are on terraces on the surrounding hills and are all worked by hand. David Reverbel, the 36 year-old winemaker met us to show us around and give us a tasting of his wines. He is doing a great job. The wines have a real sense of place (what the French call “terroir”), and the reds and roses in particular were delicious. We left with several samples to bring home so we can decide which wines to import!
 
Having driven to Carcassonne for the night, first thing the next morning we left to go to Argelès-sur-Mer for our final appointment to see Stéphane Morin of Domaine Léonine and his partner Isabelle Frère of Le Scarabée. They both produce wines in as natural a way as possible, what the French call “vins nature”. This is real organic viticulture – no pesticides of any kind are used and there is no mechanisation in the vineyard. All work  is done by hand or with the help of “Filling” the horse! Depending on the wine, no sulphur dioxide or almost no sulphur dioxide is used and the wines have a wonderful purity to them. Unexpectedly we were invited to stay for lunch and feasted on oysters and fine pork from the surrounding Pyrenees, accompanied by some of their delicious wines. A one hour appointment quickly turned in to a 4 hour stay!

After 900 kilometres in two days this was a great end to our trip...the fruits of which will be in the shop soon.

Simon Lloyd

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February 2009

Our Latest Buying Trip!

One of the perks of my job is visiting France from time to time to see suppliers of food and wine and find new ones! A quick trip to Paris in the New Year found me and my French business partner Yvonne at Europe’s largest food market – Rungis on the outskirts of Paris. Three days of tasting cheese, charcuterie and other delicacies as well as meeting wine producers and enjoying the fruits of their labours is genuinely hard work – trust me!

The main food market used to be at Les Halles in the centre of Paris which many of you will know as a big shopping centre! However it outgrew this area and moved out to a windy industrial estate a long way from its original home. Just getting there involves a 6am start and a long journey! In its many buildings are companies big and small selling everything you can imagine and many things you probably can’t – wandering through the halls you are likely to see boxes full of pigs trotters, shelves of horse meat, wonderful rare breed chickens and regional specialities as well as artisanal cheese and charcuterie and exquisite fruit and vegetables, all of which we import (well, apart perhaps from the trotters and horse meat!).

We at Henri’s pride ourselves as being the primary French cheese supplier in Scotland and we spent a merry couple of hours with our cheese supplier Ludovic discussing new cheeses. He also supplies the top cheesemonger in Paris, and it is always reassuring to know that you are in good company! We have come back with lots of gems from small producers, many of which have never been seen in Britain before and normally only grace the tables of the best restaurants in France.

Next stop was our charcuterie and meat supplier, looking at new saucissons and hams as well as olive oils, jams and chutneys and much else besides. The butcher’s section has row upon row of quails, rabbits, chickens, guinea fowl, suckling pigs and so on. Standing there in the cold discussing all this with Hervé the butcher (which required my full concentration as it is all done in French!) was initially very pleasant,  but soon the cold took over and I wished I had been wearing my Scottish winter climbing kit instead of my best business suit! In a slightly warmer room we had a look at some new olive oils which will soon be making their way to Henri’s and all sorts of other goodies.

Finally, you have to eat somewhere and Yvonne and I found an excellent wine bar in Paris specialising in organic wines made in tiny quantities by dedicated growers. We made a few very useful contacts and spoke to a couple of wine producers who were keen to see their wines represented in the UK. Some of these wines may well also find their way to the shop later in the year to add to our increasing selection of French wines exclusive to us in Scotland.

We look forward to welcoming you to the shop soon! We are already planning our next trip to France...probably to the south west in a couple of months time...some of us have to do it!

Simon Lloyd