Fellow Wine Lovers,
Aaaaagh – the folly of writing the blog the evening before…. sometimes nefarious goings on in the darkest hours of the night can come along to make an absolute nonsense of what previously seemed half decent!
So, with time pressing hard, we have decided to plough ahead with what we wrote and be done with – the orginal email, written on Thursday, is below in normal font, our edits from today are in italics, let’s see how we get on…
Not wishing to get political but who saw that coming!
Blimey, that was more prescient than we intended.
Moving swiftly on, in spite of all the Champagne corks popping last night, it would seem that the Champagne houses, particularly the biggest beasts such as Nicolas Feuillatte, are struggling a little.
They are the third largest champagne brand in the world, and reportedly last year sold 10.4 million bottles the world over, a drop in sales of 4%, or 400,000 bottles, on the previous year. In money terms this was a loss of €13 million. Now, apparently, this drop in sales was “solely” due to the “marked decline” in UK volume sales of Champagne – no mincing words there and one has to wonder where these sales have gone. Talking to our chap from Thienot the other day, he too mentioned that the British market has become a harder nut to crack over the last few years, with sales growing very slowly and the bigger brands acting more aggressively.
Small growers haven’t reported similar declines, for example our favourite Moutard chaps produce somewhere in the region of 560,000 bottles per annum, perhaps it’s them who have taken the Feuillatte sales….
Happy with all of that – the facts haven’t changed since yesterday.
Or perhaps it’s Laura?
This Saturday is, according to our sources at Mumsnet (don’t ask…), WORLD GIN DAY. Now in its 9th year it is a global celebration of all things Gin on the second Saturday of June. I know, we’d never come across it before either, so thanks MN (see, we even have the lingo… what have we become).
Anyway, back to Saturday. World Gin Day, yattedy yattedy ya. A simple idea of getting people together all around the world with a legitimate excuse to drink some gin, whether it’s in a cocktail, G&T or neat. Nice.
This all seems good but I have a feeling the wheels are about to come off…
And now for the bit that makes us seem clever-clever when actually we’re not. Months ago we asked Laura from Little Bird, the gin of Peckham, to come in and do a tasting with us, and of course, you – what better way prepare for Saturday than to have some rehearsal gins on Friday evening. Clever-clever, if we’d had any inkling of the existence of World Gin Day before 5pm on Thursday…
Laura will be here from about 5.30pm for a couple of hours and is under strict instruction to parry any political comments or questions with the words ‘try some of my Gin, it’s delicious!’
Laura has, unfortunately ,had to duck out of tonight’s tasting, citing personal circumstances but promises to be here in two weeks time, Friday 23rd June – don’t worry, we’ll remind you! Apologies all round….
Oh, and to explain the slightly obtuse ‘Or perhaps it’s Laura?’ comment above: it would seem that whilst a glass of Champagne used to be the aperitif of choice in many restaurants, bars and hotels in the past, it is now more common for a cocktail or spirit based drink to be the choice before a meal, and Gin is leading this charge.
So, yes, it’s Laura.
Yep, that works still.
eto update
If you signed up to the eto newsletter beforehand you will already know that the chaps went live at midday on Tuesday. You may not know though that they fulfilled their funding needs within 32 hours! Astonishing. You can still sign up and join in the fun and the really great news is that the project will go ahead. Pob lwc!
Lots of sport this weekend, so be warned that Alex might be distractedly trying to coordinate Rugby/Cricket/Tennis watching whilst ensuring Wayne doesn’t get distracted by the Criterium du Dauphiné – who will win?!
So, Gin is over the yardarm at 5.30pm, Alex and I will be at the top of the queue… see you there!
Cheers,
Wayne & Alex
Still good news about eto and we can re-use this last gin bit in two weeks time.
However, this does leave us short on what to taste this weekend. We, of course, will have our usual range of gins open should you still want to rehearse in time for tomorrow.
On the wine side, as we missed the whole of English Wine Week in the fog of half term, we have decided to open New Hall Bacchus Reserve 2015 (£12.99) which comes from East Anglia, the posh name for Essex it would seem. Anyway we find the gentle elderflower notes really quite more-ish so don’t be backwards in coming forwards.
For the red, for no reason better qualified than we quite fancied it, we have Powers Merlot 2012 (£13.99) which has voyaged all the way from Columbia Valley, Washington and is a constant reminder of how polished Merlot can be!
Finally, all next week we will be tasting and talking about Sherry here in the shop, as part of the Sherry Wines Sherry Festival 2017 – come and grab a copita!
That’s it from us – we’ll be opening later on Tuesday just so you know, we’re in town for a tasting over lunchtime but we’ll be back by four.
Edit done. Press send.