WINE, TV &ME
Ever wondered how or why a wine ends up featuring on a popular BBC weekend television show? What better than to get the inside track from someone who’s been doing the recommending for nearly two decades…
Digital snowflakes fill the screen, the Saturday Kitchen theme tune fills the air and I am proudly wearing a Christmas shirt, waving at a camera on a crane with merry chefs and a festive celebrity. Almost every week, this BBC stalwart show, produced for the past 18 years by Cactus TV, is broadcast live to a UK audience on Saturday morning. With Matt Tebbutt at the helm, and me and former wine buyer Helen McGinn sharing drinks duties, it’s been a huge part of my life since 2006. While the Christmas show is sometimes a rare pre-record, without question live broadcasting is the most thrilling part of presenting wine on TV. With Matt’s skills as a chef, and the team backing us up in the gallery via earpiece, it’s not so much Dancing on Ice as Walking in the Air. But since it’s live on air, how much planning goes into it?
CAREFUL SELECTION
To answer that question, let me introduce you to Amanda Ross (pictured, p59), co-founder and CEO of Cactus TV, who produces the show every week and has transformed the way we think about wine on TV. ‘For Saturday Kitchen, casting is key,’ says Amanda. ‘For wine, we can totally trust that Olly and Helen will find the best things in the budget range for the viewers. In rehearsal, I ask them the questions people at home want answered.’
The context of drinks on the show counts for a huge amount and the food pairing is taken very seriously. Unless the recipe involved is as straightforward as steak, I cook it at home to make sure the pairing works and also to get inside the head of the viewer to anticipate and prepare for any questions that may arise. Whenever there’s a chance to champion a lesser-known grape variety or up-and-coming region, I’ll seize it in the name of both good value and to embolden our viewers’ exploration of wine.
As regular Decanter readers may know, I am deeply passionate about the wines of Greece and (with the exception of the pandemic years) have visited a different region every year across the mainland and islands for the past 30 years. Not long ago, when Rick Stein cooked Greek pasticcio live on Saturday Kitchen, I selected a Xinomavro by a favourite winemaker of mine, Apostolos Thymiopoulos, stocked by
