“Growing up in Ammanford, I remember being very aware and very curious about life on the other side of the mountain,” shares Cathryn Bell. “I knew that there was a whole world to experience and I left to go find that as soon as I could, returning 16 years later. Now, being back in Wales, it seems that a disproportionate number of guests that I’ve served come from or have a connection to Ammanford. It’s shown me that after being away for so long that I have roots, that I come from somewhere, that I’m part of a heritage that, as an ex-mining town, is built on community and resilience. I suppose I found that quite constraining growing up, but I benefit now from a more macro vision that comes with travelled adulthood.”
Bell’s homecoming came with a new posting, as the head sommelier at family-owned, award-winning Grove of Narberth, a charming luxury hotel tucked in the Pembrokeshire countryside. The rustic chic property has won multiple awards – most recently a much-celebrated Michelin Key – for offering guests an opportunity to fully immerse themselves in the wonder that is Wales. From local ingredients highlighted in its restaurants, to the warm service, to its unparalleled access to the coast and the rolling Preseli hills, Grove of Narberth offers a truly unique and idyllic retreat.
“Wales has the wonderful combination of having an inherent richness in its landscape, its culture, its produce, coupled with an openness to embrace and include,” says Bell. She talks about the Welsh word cwtch, which means hug or being embraced by something safe, warm, and inviting. Inclusive and inviting also embody the approach that Bell takes to wine pairing, and she’s passionate about sharing her knowledge in a way that makes guests feel comfortable and confident to speak their mind and discuss what they’re experiencing.
She also talks about her collaborative process with executive chef Douglas Balish and how his openness to new ideas has allowed her to flourish. “I very much like to unlock different dimensions if I can, I like to go off the beaten path, I want to create something delicious and exciting, and it’s not always an approach I can articulate into conventional terms, but Dougie just gets it,” she says. “He understands me when I talk about shapes, colours and sounds and the effect I’m trying to achieve. He was open-minded enough from day one to go through the process with me and translate it into his own understanding, by tasting the work as we went along. And now it means that our palettes and aspirations for what can be achieved out of a pairing are calibrated.”
Bell’s unconventional approach to pairing is influenced by a neurological condition she has called synaesthesia, where individuals experience a crossover of their senses. For Bell, this means tasting shapes and colours, something that some of her colleagues struggled to understand at first, but has resulted in some truly magical results. “Tasting food and drink can be such a visceral experience for me sometimes that it never occurred to me that other people weren’t experiencing the same thing! It helps hugely in what I do, because it means that I can ‘see’ or ‘hear’ what I want to do, or what potential there is in a pairing. It’s like hearing the notes in a musical chord and honing in on the note you want to make louder, or being able to use food to change the key of a wine, or seeing how a wine can overlay over the shapes and colours of a dish in my mind’s eye,” she explains.
Ina Yulo Stuve speaks to Bell about her unprecedented entrance into the wine world and why she’s currently obsessed with Spanish wines.
You discovered your passion for wine later in life. How did this come about and what inspired you to make that career pivot?
I fell into wine by accident, but it turned out to be a wonderful, fast-track reward loop of the career I had initially started, that of international development in East Africa, which essentially is about making people’s lives better. I discovered that wine not only makes people happy, but it makes me happy too, and that there’s a way to contribute that feels mutually rewarding.
In my endeavour to save the world, I gained a degree in International Development and Swahili. I ended up managing an eco-resort on the island of Zanzibar and I was translating the hospitality training, which involved food and wine. Clueless, I started doing my own research and learning and when I discovered that being a sommelier existed, it took me no time at all to jump ship and head to South Africa for my first wine studies.
You’ve worked in many different countries around the world. How do you believe these experiences have impacted your current approach?
I was very lucky that my career as a sommelier was nurtured and made in Ireland, a land whose people are the salt of the earth, the land of céad mile fáilte or ‘one hundred thousand welcomes#. It reinforced my stance that hospitality is about openness, genuine warmth, and inclusion and my role as a hospitality professional, as a sommelier, is to facilitate that as much as possible.
Wine is a huge, never ending subject, and it’s plagued by intimidation. The Irish showed me how to offer hospitality so genuinely and in a manner that was so warm and so human without compromising professionalism. My job is to use my knowledge and experience to open up and give the experience of wine with all the warmth and enthusiasm that it deserves. It’s there to be shared after all!
Many people find wine pairing intimidating. Do you have any tips for those who are curious to learn more about honing this skill?
Wine pairing is very much an art and a science – alchemy, I suppose. My advice for anyone who is curious is to just get stuck in! Experiment, experience and learn. You learn just as much, if not more in fact, when things don’t work than when they do. I have found that courage and creativity get the most rewarding results when constructing pairings. Above all else, know that the result that you are striving for is the ‘wow’ effect. Do no harm, don’t upset the food, and don’t upset the wine, but don’t ever settle for ‘just fine’.
What made you decide to join the team at Grove of Narberth?
Grove of Narberth had been on my radar for years when I was working in Ireland, it very much shone as a beacon of the best of hospitality that was happening in Wales and it was in and out of my vision because it kept winning awards! It was obviously striving and progressing, evolving and championing the landscape around it. When I came back to Wales, I wanted to also contribute to that landscape, and I found very kindred spirits at the Grove.
If you had to suggest a one-day itinerary for guests staying at the hotel, where would you send them?
First, a full Welsh breakfast – put some Welsh cakes in your pocket for later, then join the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path, weather permitting! Take refuge or reward in a café or pub along the way, then head back to us and sink into a sofa by the fire and we’ll warm you up with a pot of tea, or something stronger, before you pay off all your hard work with our tasting menu in The Fernery.
The chef-sommelier relationship is incredibly important. What’s the secret sauce to how you and executive chef Douglas Balish collaborate on the menu?
Dougie and I both believe in the impact and significance of food and wine pairing and the impact the wine/drinks experience has on the dining experience. He’s just as curious and enthusiastic about it as I am! It means he gives me the space, time, and resources to bring this element, quite literally, to the table. He also has the patience and trust to let me do it in my own eclectic way.
What’s your favourite dish on the current menu and which wine are you pairing it with?
Our ‘Grove Vegetables’ dish has very much become a staple on the menu, and although it goes through seasonal iterations with regards to the specific vegetables, there are base components that are a constant and anchor the dish: A puree made from hafod cheese and a velouté made from charred turnip tops, roasted kale and seaweed that’s so dangerously delicious it’s addictive. It’s rich and moreish, it’s loaded in umami, unctuous and comforting and it’s the make or break for any wine pairing. We pair it with a later harvest Alsace-style Pinot Gris from New Zealand that is so ripe and luscious that it’s flirting with off-dry. Join the two together and the umami of the sauce strips the sweetness out of the wine and it answers instead with brightness and minerality whilst the velouté in turn lifts away into a savoury and satiating cloud. Utterly delicious!
If we walked into your home right now, which bottle would we catch you pouring?
Probably something Spanish as I just love what’s happening there at the moment. There is a wave of wine being made by winemakers who have become custodians of vineyards from their grandparents’ generation. These winemakers have nursed, guarded, and championed these vines, some of them for decades, making limited amounts of soulful, authentic, socially and environmentally sustainable wine that conveys their heritage, their culture, and indeed their struggles and achievements in bringing these wines to our glasses, and they are nothing short of a pleasure to drink!
You’re having friends over for dinner. What’s on the menu?
I wish my enthusiasm, interest, and understanding of food could be matched by my actual cooking skills, but alas, I’m like a penguin who wishes it could fly. With that in mind, the feeding in my house will be simple, but as delicious as I can make it! I usually like to start with chilled fino or manzanilla sherry, or a sparkling wine – either a brilliant Spanish sparkling wine or a Grower Champagne from a producer doing trojan work resuscitating Champagne’s ravaged soils through organic or biodynamic viticulture.
Any of those wines will be accompanied by a platter of cheeses, patés, and nibbles, including posh cheese straws and crisps. For mains, it will be something I can put in a pot and bang in the oven that needs little babysitting whilst we munch away and dispatch the bubbles and sherry. I recently discovered a slow-cooked ragu recipe involving bone marrow and a pile of onions, which I improvised by nestling some short ribs into the onion bed and it cooks in its own juices with a little tomato, white wine, chicken stock, and bay leaves for about three hours. When it’s done, you just serve it with the best pasta shape such as mezzi rigatoni, and lashings of parmesan shavings and a deep and brooding IGT maverick wine from Tuscany.
Factbox
Address: Grove, Molleston, Narberth SA67 8BX
Phone: 01834 860915
Website: grovenarberth.co.uk
Instagram: instagram.com/groveofnarberth
Photography courtesy of Grove of Narberth.
