Mother’s Day, Billecart Salmon Rose and beer marinated meat!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Two very important events to remember this weekend.

·         First up we have Mothering Sunday on well, Sunday.  Historically this has been celebrated by breakfast in bed (usually from a grumbling husband querying how this became his job when this mother clearly isn’t his mother – kids, get up!!) followed up by a big Sunday lunch out somewhere nice, bunches of flowers, hugs and kisses, an apocalyptic family row mid-afternoon, a cup of tea and then home.

According to Wayne’s close associates at Wiki there are other names for this day, names that seem strangely appropriate – Refreshment Sunday, Pudding Pie Sunday (apparently popular in Surrey), Mid-Lent Sunday (makes sense, but not a terribly imaginative naming), Simnel Sunday and Rose Sunday.  For me Refreshment Sunday has the most appeal, my son calling it Bothering Sunday made me laugh and hopefully my wife will like the perfume we’ve bought her… oh dammit, that’s that cat out of the bag!

·         The secret to a successful Mothering Sunday this year is in the timing.  No-one is going to thank you for turning up at the restaurant an hour late so do remember to put your clock forward an hour at 0100 hours on Sunday morning – you may lose an hour in bed but you can be re-juvenated by the knowledge that it is now summertime – get your shorts on, last one in the sea is a rotten egg!

Should you decide that perfume/chocolates/flowers are not enough for the other lady in your life and that a large glass of something is what she really deserves then we can heartily recommend any of our pink fizzes:

·         Billecart Salmon  Brut Rosé NV – £62.49

·         Ruinart Brut Rosé NV – £57.00

·         Moutard Prestige Brut Rosé NV – £29.99

·         Mayerling Crémant d’Alsace Brut Rosé NV – £14.99

·         Mimi Pink NV – £10.99

All fizz benefits from a ‘6 for 5’ discount – depends how many mothers you’re buying for I suppose!

Other things worth considering, going forward

I’m a Spurs fan, but in spite of that, for a long while I thought (and wagered) that Arsenal had a good chance of sneaking the Premiership title.  I was woefully wrong.

As summer approaches and we consider cooking outdoors, it appears that according to the Universidade do Porto and its findings published in the ACS’s Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry,  marinating your steaks in beer for a few hours can reduce levels of harmful carcinogens apparently found in meat cooked over the coals.  All beer is good, dark beer seems the most effective.  All this we read in the Drinks Business earlier this week, not the Daily Mail where, allegedly, it also appeared.

We beat Sri Lanka in the T20 with some fantastic power batting – just don’t get too used to it.

Wine School creaks back to life on Wednesday 23rd April at 8pm.  It’s an absolute blast, come along.  We’re just short of half full as I write, so do put your name down soon if you’re hoping to join in.  Further details attached, and if you want a better sales pitch than ‘it’s a blast’, talk to Wayne, he’s got all the patter.

Dates are from Wednesday 23rd April through to Wednesday 4th June – with a week off on Wednesday 28th May for half term.  £150 gets you a seat at the table, wine and crackers and more besides.

And now some wine

I think, since we’ve mentioned it more than once recently, we should open the Mimi Pink (£10.99) from New Zealand as a starter and then as we mentioned barbecue, move on to Hacienda del Plata ‘Zagal’ Malbec (£14.49) which is a fabulous drop we listed almost a year ago now.  It really reminds me of some of the wines I used to sell in the mid to late 90’s when Malbec was more about cherries, a dry well, structured palate with no artificial sweetness that sometimes winemakers use nowadays to disguise other shortcomings…  We like it, so are very happy to have it open all day!

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