Monks Delight Cider A taste for Christmas

Although best known for it’s strong, clear ciders, Biddenden vineyards also produces a spiced mulling cider – Monk’s Delight. This cider is spiced with a blend of cinnamon and honey, and is ideally served warmed, offering a lighter alternative to mulled wine. The cider is perfect as a hot toddy on a cold evening.

The cider is available direct from the vineyard shop, online at www.biddendenvineyards.com and from selected outlets across the South East.

You can call the vineyard direct on 01580 291726.

Spread lots of Christmas Cheer With gorgeous gifts from Arbonne

We all love to see the smile on our loved ones faces on Christmas day so why not let them unwrap Arbonne’s beautiful range of gift sets, designed exclusively to appeal to the whole family.  Providing everything you need to spread some joy this Christmas, from cosmetics to fragrance, skin care to home scents and stocking fillers to gift wrap, you’ll want it all! The full list of Arbonne product lines can be viewed at www.arbonneinternational.co.uk.

I want it all….

Mandarin Pomegranate Spa Set RRP: £98.00

This lightly floral, fruity fragrance allows you to immerse yourself in exotic Mandarin Pomegranate.  This luxurious set includes cleansing and hydrating Shower Gel (355ml), dreamy Bubble Bath (355ml), soft and silky Body Lotion (163 ml) and soothing Bath Salts (198g) in a beautifully designed keepsake chest.

Mandarin Pomegranate Hair Care RRP: £28.00

Indulge your hair with a luxurious scent that strengthens and cleanses using a sulfate cleansing system.  They condition the hair with beneficial soy proteins and amino acids as well as including grapefruit, orange peel and pomegranate extract.  The set includes Mandarin Pomegranate Shampoo (355ml) and Conditioner (355ml). 

Ginger Citrus Luxury Gift Set RRP: £57.00

A Christmas gift that indulges the body with Ginger Citrus! Everything you need to feel refreshed and luxurious through cleansing, polishing and moisturising the skin. The set includes Ginger Citrus zesty Body Wash (354 ml), gently exfoliating Sugar Scrub (453g) and luscious Body Butter (340g).

Ginger Citrus Hair Care RRP: £20.00

Complete your gift indulgence with Ginger Citrus Shampoo (236 ml) and Conditioner (236 ml).  This sulfate free cleansing system leaves hair soft, manageable and lightly fragrant and is safe for colour treated hair and includes grapefruit extract, ginger root extract and orange peel extract.

Nourishing Shea Butter Blends Hand Cream Duo RRP: £23.00

Come in from the cold this winter with Arbonne’s exclusive Shea Butter gift set, designed to add a softer touch to dry hands with cocoa seed butter, sweet almond oil and Vitamin A.  Your loved one will adore this hand cream trio gift set that comes complete with Original, romantic English Garden and Lavender scented Meadow Flower. 3 tubes, 60ml each.

Signature Scent Candles RRP: £37.00

Let the light and floral fragrance of Mandarin Pomegranate and the zesty scent of Ginger Citrus warm you on cold winter days.  The soy based candles feature a 100% cotton wick for a longer lasting burn.

Pampermint Body Care Set RRP: £20.00

Get ready for a festive, all-over tingle with new Pampermint Body Wash (236ml) and Body lotion (236ml) including apple fruit extract, grape seed oil and peppermint oil.

Pampermint Foot Care Gift Set RRP: £36.00

Let your feet sparkle and shine this Christmas with the joyful tingle of peppermint and oh so comfy festive socks. This festive set includes FootWork Foot Scrub (340g), SoleMate Foot Cream (255g) and Signature Socks in a beautifully designed gift box.

Vanilla Amber Gift Set RRP: £57.00

A gift to pamper your loved ones, the Vanilla Amber gift set from Arbonne will immerse the body in a blissful blend of warm vanilla and romantic amber with cleansing and nourishing Body Wash (340ml), smooth Body Lotion (340ml) and softening Sugar Scrub (453g) for top to toe indulgence this Christmas. 

Comet Cosmetics Collection RRP: £67.00

Become a vision of glamour this Christmas with the beautiful Comet Cosmetics Collection.  The stunning set includes a sparkling Comet  Clutch, Cosmic Kiss lipstick  and Starry, Starry night Eye Shadow Palette that comes complete with the festive colours; Nightscape, Solar, Stardust and Meteorite festive colours.  A beautiful lipstick finishes the set perfectly with wild mango butter and pomegranate extract.

Planetary Pout Lip Polish Trio RRP: £56.00

Your lips with be kissable this Christmas with the radiant lip polish trio in Venus, Mars and Saturn all ready to gift in a velvety plush pouch.

All Arbonne products are available through an excellent nationwide network of Arbonne Independent Consultants. Visit www.arbonneinternational.co.uk or call Customer Services on 0800 977 5721 to locate the nearest consultant and purchase products. 

(EDITOR: And in the experience of the That's Christmas team of testers, the products in the range not only look good, they smell good and do the job as described!) 

Make yours a Niederegger Christmas

When was the last time you had marzipan? Writes Phoebe.

Why was it so long ago? On asking these questions to many of my friends no one could give me a half way good answer. The truth is marzipan is not sold as often as chocolate and similar confectionery and whenever we do buy it we buy the wrong kind.

Bringing in Niederegger, luxury marzipan makers for over two hundred years. The difference in quality between a Niederegger product and some generic maker is instantly noticeable. This is partly due to the fact that Niederegger marzipan is officially classed as one hundred percent marzipan because it is made with a lot more almonds and a lot less sugar.

Niederegger is a company based on centuries of tradition and over the years the family that own and run it have developed a huge range of styles and flavours of their marzipan, often chocolate covered, sometimes flavoured with assorted fruits including sweet banana, ambrosial apricot, zesty clementine, candy strawberry, potatoes shaped sweets, marzipan flavoured cappuccino and many, many more.

Since Christmas is coming and, with everyone in our sector of the industry will be more than aware of this, Niederegger has included an entire traditional Christmas range on top of the plethora of already delicious chocolate covered treats it currently offers. The Niederegger Christmas range ‘Frohes Fest’ is massive and it will appeal to everyone’s tastes from the grand parents to the grand children.

For those that enjoy festively shaped treats there’s the newly designed Christmas selection: it includes star-, crescent moon-, boot-, Christmas tree- and snowman- shaped marzipans each covered with a range of dark, milk and white chocolates.

If you’re looking for a large range of flavours then the new “Marzipanerie in Christmas Sleeve” is perfect as it includes most of the different flavours Niederegger has to offer with its smaller confectionaries. The Traditionalist Christmas enthusiasts would be more than tempted to get both styles of advent calendar, one shaped (as always) in a flat box with mini windows, each filled with a Niederegger marzipan treat; or a very long rectangle, boxing a stack of the chocolate covered marzipans these especially provide luxuriously festive ornamentation for the house with their new Christmas designs of Father Christmas-Red colored boxes, sprinkled with gold stars, reindeer and old wooden ships and other such time-honored symbols tofill the house with Christmas joviality.

Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? Niederegger have a wide selection of white chocolate covered marzipans as well as icing sugar-sprinkled traditional German Christmas cakes, known as Stollen, including some with the Niederegger twist of marzipan fillings!

So try Niederegger chocolate covered marzipan sweets for Christmas this year and enjoy the two hundred year tradition of indulgence with family, Friends and festivities.

Jimmy’s Turkeys Crowned the UK’s Best

Traditionally-reared turkeys from Jimmy’s Farm have been voted the UK’s best in a blind tasting.

The free-range birds saw off competition from the industry’s finest to win ‘Best Christmas Premium Product’ at the Turkey of the Year awards 2012.

Judges, who unanimously voted for Jimmy’s turkeys, praised the birds’ stand-out texture and taste. One said: “It was so moreish I couldn’t stop eating it.”

Jimmy Doherty said: “I am so proud of this achievement. Our turkeys are a slow-growing breed and their feed is based on locally grown cereals and vegetable protein. There are no additives, drugs or growth promoters in their feed, as we believe it is much better to rear them the natural way.”

The shortlist included Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Free Range Woodland Norfolk Black Turkey and Copas Free Range Bronze Turkey.

Judges included Christine Parsons, food writer Chat magazine, Julia Glotz, fresh foods editor The Grocer, Sheila Eggleston, editor of Stockpot as well as two members of the public who won a place on the panel via the British Turkey website. 

Jimmy continued: “To make sure our turkeys are the very best, our birds are hand plucked and then hung in a chilled environment for at least 14 days to develop an even fuller flavour.”

 

* Turkeys are available to order on line at www.jimmysfarm.com or call the farm office on 01473 604206

Grant Burge 10 Year Old Tawny Wine

Grant Burge 10 Year Old Tawny wine is, to my mind, one of the best wines to come out of Australia.

The Burge family is no stranger to the art and science of wine making. The Burge family has been making wines in the Barossa wine region of Australia since 1855. That is very nearly 160 years of wine making experience.

And that long history of experience in the crafting and production of fine wines is very well represented by the award-winning Grant Burge 10 Year Old Tawny Australian Liqueur wine.

It has a perfect tawny tone to it, and the aroma is redolent of rich fruits.

The taste is exquisite and the combination of the blend of Grenache, Mataro and Shiraz grapes (all grown in the rich and highly fertile Barosa Valley, of course!) is a perfect mixture between these grape types. It is a sweet wine, yet not cloyingly so.

It's a perfect wine to be drunk by itself, around a crackling Christmas fire, or with the desert stage of Christmas dinner or with mince pies on one of the dark afternoons in the Christmas and New Year Season.

You can also try it to accompany your main courses at the Christmas dinner party, too. It is an amazing companion to all types of cheese, but especially Stilton.

Judges, from What Food What Wine?, declared the Australian Grant Burge 10- Year-Old Tawny NV (£23.95) a ‘wow’ with Stilton.

 

They said: “Rich sweet fruit, figs and plums and raisins with a nutty note and a marmalade hint.  It is the perfect foil to the intense saltiness of the cheese, the rich lactose stretching across the palate and lifted by the sweet fruit.  Simply stunning.”

The judging panel, including Susie Barrie and Peter Richards from BBC 1’s Saturday Kitchen and Ewan Lacey from Channel 4’s Cookery School, spent two days blind tasting wine from around the world to come up with the best matches for smoked salmon, turkey, Christmas pudding and Stilton.

Order online at www.winesdirect.co.uk

 
It is imported into the UK by Hatch Mansfield of Ascot, Berkshire.

Beurer has perfect winter warmer gadgets for all the family

Beurer TL80 brightlight

As the nights draw in, and we swap our glass of wine in the garden for a hot chocolate on the sofa, our thoughts turn to how to keep warm and get through the colder months when colds, aches and pains are more common. Beurer has a wide selection of gadgets to help the family with cold feet, aching backs, fevers and the symptoms of S.A.D.

They've even got gadgets to solve bedtime squabbles over the perfect temperature of your electric underblanket, and a cape that heats up to keep you warm while watching Downton Abbey!

Beurer Daylight Lamp TL80 – £109.99

The Beurer Daylight Lamp TL80 is an essential item for those that suffer from S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Light therapy is believed to be effective in over 85% of cases, so the Beurer Daylight Lamp TL80 is a great solution for those suffering with symptoms during the colder months. Turn it on with one click to enjoy the light therapy.

The Beurer Daylight Lamp TL80 is available from Current Body. Further information is available from the Beurer website.

Beurer HK65 Aromatic Heating Pad - £59.99
When you want to target one part of your body with heat, the Aromatic Heating Pad goes above and beyond the requirement. It comes with two different inserts, a relaxation insert (including aniseed, thyme and peppermint), and a cold-relief insert (including lavender, lemon balm and melissa), making it the perfect gadget for dealing with colds, aches and pains. Those with sensitive skin will be glad to hear that it has a removable aloe vera cover too.

The Beurer HK65 Aromatic Heating Pad is available from Amazon. Further information is available from the Beurer website.

Monogram by Beurer Heated Throw HD90 - £69.99
Electric blankets for your bed have been around for a long time, but did you know you can get a throw that’s electrically heated? Perfect for curling up under on the sofa during a chilly evening, the Monogram Throw is the perfect solution for those that want to stay warm.

The heated throw also gas a detachable cord/controller, so you can remain wrapped up if you want to get up to make a cuppa!

The Monogram Throw is available from Amazon, Win Health and CNM Online.

Beurer FB20 Massage Footspa with Pedicure - £39.99
When you’re rushing around on your feet all day, the opportunity to put your feet up is a real luxury. Make the most of this time by treating your feet to a footspa. The Beurer Massage Footspa with Pedicure has removable massage roller attachments, a gentle vibrating massage and a bubble spa footbath to soothe your feet and legs, and relax you after a hard day.

The Beurer FB20 Massage Footspa with Pedicure is available from Current Body. Further information is available from the Beurer website.

FW20 Footwarmer - £34.99
Want to warm up your feet at the end of a day running through the rain, cold or even the snow? Slip them into the Beurer Footwarmer, an electrically heated piece of footwear for keeping your toes cosy. The lining will slowly bring your feet back to life, with three temperature options. The lining is removable, so you can pop it in the wash when it needs a refresh.

The Footwarmer is available from Amazon. Further information is available from the Beurer website.

Beurer Heated Cape HD50 - £54.99
Following on in the theme of items to keep you cosy and warm, is the Beurer Heated Cape. Like the Monogram Throw, it’s a heated wrap you can wear. This time, you can detach the electric cord so you can wonder around after it’s heated. It’s a great gadget if you like to keep warm while keeping your arms free for reading your favourite winter blockbuster.

The Beurer Heated Cape is available from Current Body and Betterlife @ Lloyds. Further information is available from the Beurer website.

FT70 7 in 1 thermometer - £39.99
Taking a child’s temperature is tricky enough when they’re well, but when they’re ill it can be extremely difficult. The 7 in 1 thermometer gives you several different ways to take a temperature, including the ear and forehead, as well as discover the temperature of objects and liquids. It also has an optical high temperature alarm, time and date and 10 memory spaces, as well as a speaking function if you want a quick assessment.

The Beurer 7 in 1 thermometer is available from Amazon. Further information is available from the Beurer website.

MG290 Shiatsu seat cover - £269.99
When you’re in need of a massage, don’t put yourself on the waiting list at your local beauty salon. Enjoy a relaxing back massage from the comfort of your armchair! The soft velour Shiatsu seat cover can be placed over your chair, to turn it into your very own personal masseuse, and moulds to your body for the perfect customised fit. Then simply sit back, and enjoy the 5-in-1 massage types, so you can choose the method to suit you. The in-seat heating adds to the relaxing, muscle-soothing effect.

The MG290 is height adjustable and can be used on any seat with sufficient depth and a back rest by affixing the flexible holding straps to a chair for a secure and comfortable fit. When you’re done, you can easily hang it up in the wardrobe with the handy hanging hook provided. It’s the ultimate luxury gift for those that need a little pampering.

The Beurer Shiatsu Seat Cover is available from Amazon. Further information is available from the Beurer website.

Monogram Luxurious – From £89.99
The Monogram by Beurer Luxurious Comfort Heated Underblanket is the solution to all those squabbles over what heat to have the electric blanket on. The underblanket has four heat zones (two in the single versions), so you can choose what levels of heat are distributed in which areas of the blanket. Perfect if you prefer your feet to be hot, while your partner prefers to concentrate the heat on their upper half!

The Monogram Luxurious is available from CNM Online.

Get into Bath for the Christmas ice skating

If you go down to Royal Victoria Park in Bath this winter you’re in for a chill thrill! Because a magical new attraction opens in central Bath on the 23 November 2012. It’s time to put your skates on as the city gets its own real ice rink for the festive season.

Bath on Ice will be an exciting addition to the city’s Christmas attractions with opportunities for people of all ages to get into the festive spirit and take to the ice. The 500 sqm real ice skating rink adds a new dimension to this year’s celebrations.

Bath on Ice Director Simon Smith said “We’re absolutely delighted to offer people the chance to enjoy open-air skating on a real ice rink in the centre of Bath. Located right below the Royal Crescent, and with magical lighting adding to this unique experience, we hope we can create an event that Bath can be proud of. It is the perfect Christmas activity and will really get you in the mood for the festive season.”

Bath on Ice will provide top quality skates, an indoor skate changing area, indoor and outdoor viewing areas, ice stewards and push- along aids for children.

Festive ringside refreshments will also be available including hot chocolate and melted marsh mallows, roasted chestnuts and plenty of other heart-warming scrumptious treats.

The Rink will be open daily from 10am until 9pm starting Friday 23 November 2012 until Sunday 6 January 2013 with one-hour sessions costing from just £7 per person including skate hire. Gift vouchers are also available for purchase. Group rates are being offered with special discounts for Christmas parties , students and children. The rink is also available for exclusive use.
Readers offers are available on discounted rates for tickets during off peak sessions.
To book your session on the ice please visit www.bathonice.com