Fellow Wine
Lovers,
Right, that’s
it, I’ve had enough, I’m leaving Europe, with or without you.
Apparently,
there was an online consultation that attracted an unprecedented 4.6 million
responses last year, of which 84 per cent were in favour of a new legislation. This then led to a vote amongst the EU
lawmakers, where the darling MEPs voted 410 to 192 in favour of ending it, with
51 abstentions, (not sure where the other 98 members were, I’d have thought
there would have been a three line whip for this), which means that, as of 2021,
it’ll no longer be with us.
Yep, Strasbourg
has stolen our summertime.
No more spring
forward, fall backwards; no more 7 months of summer because that’s what the
clocks tell us; no more cheeky extra hour in bed in late October; and frankly
the alarming potential for the sun to rise in London at 3.45am and 3am in John
O’Groats over solstice. For me it’s
purely a nostalgic thing, I’m not a farmer or a factory worker although a
longer evening is more beneficial to our trade than a lighter early
morning. I’m sure I would get over it
very quickly but, as one of my peers oft states, the EU just wants to
homogenise everything and neutralise individuality – we kept our pints and our
miles, let’s keep our changing clocks!
‘Right, that’s it, I’ve had enough, I’m
leaving Europe, with or without you!’,
thus spake my wife last night.
I don’t think
we’d had a row or anything and in fact I’m not sure she was addressing me
anyway as most of the vitriol seemed to be targeted at the Toshiba laptop in
front of her. It seems, and I’m giving
you the edited/sanitised highlights here, that the EU has proposed putting
speed limiters in all new cars from 2022.
Now, my wife, being of the country, has always had a close relationship
with cars – if you couldn’t drive you couldn’t go out – so the prospect of
Brussels meddling with her preferred form of transport certainly seemed to get
her goat. No more spinning along at
52mph on the A3, no more racing along at 73mph on the M3 – no more life in the
fast lane for Mrs Park Vintners…. And she was incensed, big brother was
mentioned and that crushing of independent spirit, all in the name of
homogenisation, was once more aired. I
did mention that it wasn’t until 2022; it would only be on new cars (not a
thing we usually get involved with); that the driver will be able to override
the restrictor by just putting their foot down but, by this stage, the rant was
in full sail.
And, with that,
my wife brexited – anyone going to join her?
Back on planet
wine, the eternally optimistic team at Majestic have finally let the mask slip
– things are not as peachy at the wine warehouse as carefully spun annual
figures would have had us believe.
Hot on the heels
of Oddbins facing a forced departure from the high street, Majestic announced
it was going to close a portion of its stores and rebrand as Naked, the online
side of the business. “A dramatic and
unexpected change in strategy” is how one analyst put it. The cynic amongst us might suggest a bit of
asset stripping by selling shop freeholds and then a sale of the retail
business to Mike Ashley perhaps – in the meantime Naked remains online, as it
was and always has been, but £70 million richer from when Majestic bought them
4 years ago and with their database too – clever. However, the cynic amongst us is on holiday,
so this is all probably nonsense….
Suffice to say,
we don’t have an online presence so you’ll have to keep on popping in to visit
us and, hopefully, we can make this chore less tedious at weekends by opening
some wines for you to taste?
A few weeks back
we mentioned new wines we had listed and old wines that had returned to the
fold and we have been opening examples each week. This week it is the turn of Domaine Treloar
and Bodegas Resalte de Peñafiel.
Domaine Treloar
has been on the books for a number of years now and we have no doubt bored you
before about Jonathan the Yorkshireman and the Rachel the Kiwi Lady responsible
for these superstar wines down in the deep south of France? Have we not?
Oh, okay then, here goes. Their
path into wine was rather unusual, after working in IT for 15 years; they were
living almost next door to the World Trade Center when it was destroyed in
2001.
Having
experienced that disaster at first hand, they decided to change direction,
heading to Rachel’s native home of New Zealand where Jonathan studied oenology
and viticulture at Lincoln University. He
graduated top of the class, and then worked as the Assistant Winemaker at
Neudorf Vineyards for 2 years. In 2006
they founded Domaine Treloar, where they do everything in both vineyard and
winery themselves.
In 2013 they
were chosen as the Coup de Coeur (Favourite) Roussillon producer by La Revue du
Vin de France, the country’s most influential wine magazine.
La Terre Promise 2016 (£18.49) is a delicious white blend of Grenache
Gris (50%), Macabeu (30%) and Carignan Blanc (20%). A rich weighty white that’ll be delicious
with some garlic and herb roasted chicken or Bouillabaisse if you have time, or
on its own if you don’t!
Since we lost
Emilio Moro from our shelves we have been kissing a lot of frogs in search of a
new prince – meet Lecco Crianza 2014 –
£19.29 – proper Ribera del Duero royalty.
Reading Wayne’s notes, he says:
Es un vino sensato, maduro y seguro de sí
mismo. Se elabora a partir de viñedos de una cierta edad, de media superan los
30 años momento en el cual ya la viña por si misma empieza a reducir su
producción de forma natural en pos de aumentar su calidad. Se seleccionan los
suelos que nos aporten mayor elegancia y potencia tanto aromáticamente como en
boca.
Estas viñas se vendimian en cajas de 15
kilos de forma manual y después de un estricto control analítico y de cata, así
elegimos el momento de mayor expresión de cada viñedo. La elaboración se lleva
a cabo por gravedad con el uso de los ovis y durante la cual se controla la
temperatura de fermentación y maceración para dirigir la extracción. En total
la maceración estará en torno a los 18 días.
El paso por barrica, gran parte de ellas
nuevas, de roble francés en 70% y el resto en americano durante al menos 14
meses termina por realzar y acomplejar las características aromáticas y
sensaciones en boca, guardando un buen equilibrio entre la expresión frutal de
la tempranillo y los tostados y aromas del roble.
I think he likes
it!? 14 months in oak, lovely and
rounded, tasty tannins and a long and lovely finish –as he said at the outset,
a self-assured wine!
Right, that’s it
from us… don’t forget to spring forward on Sunday morning whilst we’re still
allowed to and be prepared for lots of silly pranks on Monday – you’ll thank me
for reminding you!
¡Salud!
as Wayne would say….