The Weekly Wine

Fellow Wine Lovers,

As news breaks that Andrea Jenkyns has left the Conservative Party to join the Reform Party, one Tory grandee suggests that they thought she already had. Andrea herself said she was leaving ‘a sinking ship’ and that she thought the Reform Party ‘could save the country’. Save the country from what is not clear. Save the country from the effects of 14 years of the last government? Save the country from 5 years of this government? Save the country from an invasion of jelly fish? The list of threats could be endless but I’m not sure that Nigel Farage and his mates are the answer to any of them.

One of the threats could be Artificial Intelligence. We heard this week of a start-up publisher, Spines, that plans to publish eight thousand books next year by AI. They claim not to be the vanity project purveyor that most of the established industry seems to think they are. I’m not entirely sure how that benefits anyone in a world awash with unsold Boris Johnson books. They have persuaded somebody though, having received $16m of funding.

We also heard the story of a research analyst who was caught out by not speaking with one voice in a paper they produced. Using AI to write your opinion piece is not so smart when it cuts and pastes direct comments from your competition it would seem!

Where is he going with all this AI nonsense I hear you cry? Well, fellow wine lovers, during the course of our week we do the odd bit of research to see what is going on out in the world around us. This week we found ourselves reading an article in The Daily Express entitled:  ‘We tried the best Champagne and sparkling wine with a £12 bottle near perfect’. The iffy headline aside, the reporter seems to be a real person who has worked for several publications. However, we suspect AI may have been used for some of the content…

Remy Martin VSOP Cognac Fine Champagne – The Champagne has been described as “lovely” on Asda’s website and upon review can see why thanks to its sweet vanilla and honey notes it is easy to drink. Overall score: 7/10.

We know our readers wouldn’t fall into this trap, knowing that Fine Champagne refers to a blend of the two best regions of Cognac, Petite Champagne and Grande Champagne. Perhaps the word Cognac may provide a clue as to the presence of bubbles or not.

Indeed a quick look at the reviews on Asda’s website would have revealed this gem: “There was no Fizz and no pop so can’t see where the Champagne reference has come from. You pour it into your glass and it has a dark cognac colour and tastes of cognac but that is all. I have tasted better cognac so will keep to what I know next time. Don’t be fooled by the fine champagne cognac as you will be disappointed like me.”

So what do we think: a journalist who didn’t taste all the sparkling wines, or a story written by AI? We think that, despite our wives comments, there are writers out there less researched and worse at proofreading than us who actually get paid to do it!

In completely unrelated news, Shadow Home Minister Chris Philp has suggested we use robots for tasks such as picking fruit and vegetables “rather than simply importing a lot of low-wage migrant labour”. He went on to use Australia as an example of where the technology is deployed. I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison to be honest. There are farms in Australia about the size of Dorset. Dorset has 2241 farms, though most farm livestock rather than fruit.

Whilst on the subject of Australia, do spare a thought for all those parents telling their teenagers they can no longer have social media, following the government’s decision to ban it for the under 16’s. Who will help Granny set her phone?

Tasting This Weekend

We’re heading to France this weekend. Sporting the white sweater will be Domaine Guerrin Pouilly Fuissé Vieilles Vignes 2022, Burgundy (£30). Guerrin are located between the Roc de Vergisson and Roc de Solutré and noted for their exceptional sites within Pouilly-Fuissé. This is from three separate plots all on limestone soils with vines over 50 years old. I could tell you how delicious it is with its stone fruit character, satiny mouthfeel and crisp finish, but I think it’s better you come and taste for yourself.

Representing red wine, and trying not to spill itself down the white sweater, will be Château Les Ormes Sorbet 2014, Medoc (£39). In 1862 Chateau Les Ormes Sorbet became one of the first Bordeaux estates to bottle and sell their own wine. It is still owned by the same family, managed by Helene Boivert, Vincent Boivert, and Francois Boivert. The estate is about 10km north of St Estèphe and is a traditionally styled left bank claret. I could wax lyrically about how delicious we found it when we tasted it at Vintners Hall but why not come and taste it yourself?

Lastly, we have taken the liberty of attaching this year’s Christmas selections for your perusal.  Every year we design some cases to help you get through December – we have our usual monthly £100 case, we have a mixed Claret case for £140, we have two Christmas Day survival cases for £150 each (one with a bottle of Port and the other with a bottle of Rioja for those who don’t like the fortified stuff) and a really rather fabulous, push-the-boat-out case for £250!  Have a look and place your orders.

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Hard to dispute this but I think we might be hitting winter.  Certainly the ski resorts would agree with me as they prepare to start their seasons, with photos from Tignes showing heavy dustings, whilst our friends in Oslo woke up to -7°c and sunshine this morning.

Still the good news is that it’s stopped raining.  Until tomorrow.  And Sunday.

But it’s not all gloomy news, some of it is trivial.  This week I learnt that 205 million people follow Elon Musk on his now retitled Twitter platform.  @elonmusk or Muskland (capital city Muskow, population 1) would be the 6^th biggest country in the world, sliding between Brazil and Bangladesh.  Whilst that sounds like quite a large population of Muskish, it is in fact only 2.5% of the world population so, happily, 97.5% of us aren’t really listening to him.

Whilst we’re still playing silly games, President Trump, before he was banned from Twitter, could have filled Turkey and Mauritius; Boris Johnson would populate Panama; Keir Starmer could almost fill Latvia whilst Joe Biden could inspire Morocco.  Rachel Reeves’ empire, however, would include Greenland, Faeroe Islands, Saint Kitts & Nevis, American Samoa plus the Northern Mariana Islands… lots of jokes to be made from all this silliness, we’ll leave them up to you!

Slow news day in Wimbledon Park, you can probably tell.

So, as we had time on our hands, we thought we’d have a look at our branding.  For over 10 years we’ve had a fairly solid message: the name Park Vintners is a simple yet effective description of what we are and where we do it; the logo (alright, you didn’t know we had a logo, I’ll tell marketing) is the corkscrew with the vine-leaf handle that doubles up as the ‘I’ in Vintners; our ‘motto’ – Wines with Personality is, again, simple yet effective.

So we thought we’d get rid of it all and re-brand ourselves as paRvin.

Parvin, from Persian mythology, is the name for the Pleiades constellation (also known as Seven Sisters), associated with the moon goddess, symbolizing beauty, radiance, and fertility – an obvious naming choice then for a wine shop in Wimbledon, or even Haringey. 

We’ve scrapped our motto and replaced it with a depiction of the star cluster which has 7 stars on it, as you’d expect.  To accentuate it, we’ve given it a periwinkle hued background and stuck a Union Jack in the corner (to confirm our provenance)… people may think it looks like the Australian flag but it’s obviously very different because the aussie flag has six stars, not seven…

We’ve also dropped the corkscrew logo because we’re now in a screwcap world and we want to push forward with our reinvention as we predict that 85 per cent of our customers in future will be new fans of our brand – younger affluent drivers looking for electric motors wine drinkers.

Basically everything you thought you knew about us, you now don’t – sound good?

Elsewhere, we hear that 800 people have been working on a radical redesign and re-branding at the car manufacturer currently known as Jaguar.  This seems to mainly have involved erasing the past and destroying a story that has been almost 100 years in the making and actively looking to alienate your current customers – who would do such a madcap re-brand?  Probably the same company that announced earlier this month that there will be no new cars available for purchase in the UK market until some point in 2026!

On reflection, perhaps best we don’t follow the Jaguar example…

In the world of quality booze, the trade magazines have little news to offer except for one morsel relating to Christmas drinking and which spirits will be most in demand – whisky leads the way as ever but the talking heads are also predicting a sharp rise in Rum, Tequila and Mezcal sales – invariably they get their predictions completely wrong, we’ll see if they stay true to form!

Here at the bottom of the hill, we’re starting to get a few more wines in for the festive season and we are also on the verge of completing our Christmas Cases which we’ll tell you more about next week, once November is pretty much done.

With this in mind, we’ll continue opening more seasonally focused wines over the coming weeks – this week I think we’ll go to Italy.

Poggio al Tesoro ‘Solosole’ Vermentino Toscana 2022 – £27.99 – This comes from the famous Bolgheri estate owned by the Allegrini family, next door to Ornellaia.  Most famous for their reds, we’ve always really enjoyed this white.  It’s crisp, fresh, with citrus and herb notes, a lovely texture and a great finish – a fabulous all-rounder, which at this time of year is exactly what we’re looking for!

Crociani Vino Nobile di Montepulciano 2021 – £24.99 – this is a perennial favourite of ours and indeed many of you and we just received the new vintage this week so thought we would get a bottle open! Made using local varieties, 80% Sangiovese, 10% Canaiolo and 10% Mammolo it has a distinct mineral and subtle oak influence from 24 months in Slavonian oak and a further two months in bottle.  A delicate and intense nose, with a bouquet of pronounced notes of redcurrants and violets and a palate full of red fruit flavours of redcurrant, red cherries and spicy notes give us a very well-structured drop, with fine grained tannins and a long mouth filling finish.

That’s almost it from us but just three quick recommendations before we go:

• The Christ the King Christmas Fair is this Saturday from 11am until 3pm – you can pop in there on the way to us…
• The England Rugby team is playing against Japan on Sunday – which sadly clashes with the Palermo vs Sampdoria football match in the Italian Serie B – I’ll let you decide which to watch!
• Take a brolly!

Ciao Ciao!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Happy halfway-through-November day!  A mere 46 days until 2025 with Christmas en-route but who’s counting….

Well, actually, we are and that’s what we are paid for.  Before then we have Beaujolais Nouveau Day, Thanksgiving, Wayne’s birthday, the shop’s birthday and Alex’s birthday – all of which deserve mention but are mere celebratory morsels on the way to the big festive banquet.

So now you know, six Saturdays between us and Santa.

Back to the here and now and we’re really hoping that at some point all of our favourite podcasts will stop harking on about the US election and start debating the real reasons for Gary Lineker leaving the BBC which I’m sure, much like the 9 player withdrawals from the England squad, has nothing to do with money.

But, I must confess, that I too cannot fully take my eyes off what is going on across the pond.  Yesterday we received an email from The Guardian, I think it was a round-robin missive rather than a personal note, telling us that they will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X/Twitter.  They went on: “we think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our content elsewhere.  This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”

Elon Musk is now in charge at the DOGE, the body tasked with firing staff and cutting costs across Federal departments.

Elon Musk is also in charge of the company SpaceX, which has billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts through launch services, NASA crew transport, Starlink internet service, and the Starshield government business.

I can see no sign of any possible conflict of interest here and certainly it seems to be nothing to do with money.

Elsewhere, not a lot of news for us.  The article in The Drinks Business called Top 15 Pinot Grigios of 2024 failed to capture our imagination; Drinks Retailing News tried to distract us with news of the launches of Kylie Minogue 0% Alcohol Sparkling Blanc alongside Nozeco Still Merlot and Nozeco Still Rosé but still we find ourselves able to resist their charms, whilst Harpers offered us the headline Hospitality confidence plummets amid rising costs and falling footfall which informed us that:

• 41% of industry leaders are optimistic about their business prospects for the next 12 months (down from 49% in August)
• Confidence levels now match October 2022 lows, when inflation was at a 40-year high.
• 20% are optimistic about the industry’s overall future over the next year (down from 36% in August)
• 46% expressed a bleak outlook for the coming year (up from 21% in August)

Go and have a pint whilst you take this all on board/whilst you still can.

Having said that we would suggest that you don’t go and have a pint on Saturday afternoon from around 5pm onwards (this advice is for England fans) as current rugby form predicts tears for us and laughter for the Springboks.

Instead, why not pop in and see us for a bit of wine and a chat?  We’ll have a couple of bottles open to whet the whistle, one new one and one old favourite:

Domaine Langlois Clos Saint-Florent Saumur 2021 – £28.99 – now, we first tasted this at about midday on Wednesday 28^th February and were told that this vintage was due to land in the UK the next week.  We tried to order it on 26^th March and then on 4^th September but it actually only landed on Tuesday this week!  Admittedly, it has come from the far Loire Valley about 500 miles away so it makes sense that it took so long… anyway, when we tasted it 8 months ago we revelled in the rich Chenin Blanc fruit, showing more orchard fruit character rather than tangy citrus and a really nice weight on the palate.  All the grapes come from the Clos Saint-Florent, which is a top Saumur plot with vines that are at least 35 years old.  Having enjoyed previous vintages, we know this to be a wine that is delicious now but will also be equally as fabulous in 5 years’ time, if not longer!

Juliénas-Chaintré Fleurie ‘Cuvée Sept’ 2022 – £16.99.  Fleurie is probably the best known Cru Beaujolais and is sometimes referred to as “The Queen of Beaujolais”, so well regarded are its smooth, supple reds.  The light food friendly wines seem to be gaining a new following amongst some of smarter sommeliers in town, one taste of this and you’ll understand why.  Silky and fresh, with dark berry fruit character and soft tannins and delicious lightly chilled – forget the Nouveau next week, this is what you really want in your glass!

Finally, owing to an important delivery out of town, we will be closing at 5.30pm on Monday 18^th November.  We realise that Monday is not our busiest night but just wanted to forewarn you all!

That’s it from us, have a lovely weekend and stay warm!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

“Wow!” said Alex, “I’m glad I don’t have to write the email this week” before tucking into a bag of kindly donated Haribo’s with his morning coffee.

We’ll start on this side of the pond. Kemi Badenoch turned out to be the most popular/least unpopular* candidate to lead the Conservative party. One wag wondered if this was one of those gifts that Labour should be declaring. Maybe/Maybe Not*. (*delete as appropriate)

We think we’ll be in for a bumpy ride as she fires one-liners across the despatch box at Kier Starmer. This week has been all action, so she’s had her first go. In our opinion she’ll need to get a bit better. Suggesting, as the fourth leader of her party in five years, that Kier Starmer will be a one term leader seems a little high on the hubris scale. Kier Starmer’s comment: “If she’s going to complain about scripted answers, it’s probably best not to read that from a script.” Nailed it for us!

Next on the agenda is Trumpolina becoming the 47^th President. Now, in 2016 we could forgive the result as the Americans didn’t know what their vote was getting them. Not this time, they know fully what they’re getting and still chose it! Oh how we love the wonders of democracy, eh? For the benefit of doubt the USA has a population of 330 million to choose from and electing the lying Orange Man Baby is still, apparently, the best option.

Look out folks, those tariffs won’t cut inflation. The economy grew more quickly under Biden’s administration than Trump’s and Elon Musk has plenty to do without being in charge of the White House sinks. We’re looking forward to enormous, lovely crowds at the inauguration. Beautiful crowds, the best anyone has seen.

Germany, not wanting to feel left out, has decided this is the perfect time to collapse its Government. This is all going so well, I’m starting to wonder if Miranda is pulling all the strings. Such fun!

All jokes aside, according to FT research, globally every governing party that has faced an election this year has lost vote share, the first time that has ever happened.

In other news, we found ourselves stroking our chins at a rather tongue-in-cheek remark that maybe Boris Johnson should be made Ambassador to Washington. If only he could be trusted to work in our, rather than his interests, that might not be quite so mad as it sounds…

Sports wise, it’s been better to be a European club supporter than a British one this week, with only Celtic, Liverpool and Manchester United managing wins.

In Saudi Arabia’s Al-Jawf region they experienced a new weather phenomenon, snow. No, you didn’t misread that. Saudi Arabia, on Saturday had snow in the desert for the first time in history. This year of perfectly normal weather just keeps on giving, doesn’t it?

Time for a glass of wine me thinks.

We’ll visit Spain to start off and pull the cork on a bottle of Valenciso Blanco 2023 (£24.99). One of our favourite Rioja producers, this is a blend of Viura and Garnacha Blanco and fermented and aged in Caucasian oak barriques. Soft and complex, this is delish!

Red wise, we’re taking an excursion to Bordeaux. We’ll pull a cork on Chateau Saransot-Dupré 2016, Listrac Médoc (£23). The estate has been owned by the Raymond family since 1756 and was declared the Best Cru Bourgeois Estate in 2017, the first Listrac estate to be awarded the honour.  It’s a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Carménère and is drinking really rather nicely just now.

That brings us to the end of this week’s missive. Play the long game, don’t give up and be nice to someone. It might not be great in elections but we all know that real life is so different!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

How are you all feeling today, a little bit over Haribo’d?  Judging by our sales yesterday, many of you were anticipating that, from about 4.30pm, you’d be wearing a warty nose and a pointy hat with a glass of wine in one hand and a bowl of Starmix in the other – the Halloween speedball if you will – ready to face the marauding, ravening hordes of over-stimulated ‘trick or treat’ monsters…

So what got finished first, the tasty Tuscan or the Tangfastics and was it a good wine/food pairing?  Perhaps more importantly, who else had always thought they were called Tangtastics… my kids are going to have to re-write their whole childhood!

We’re also in the midst of Diwali festival, the festival of light, a celebration of the victory of light over darkness and good over evil.  It’s a gloriously positive festival, full of hope and goodwill, plus a lot of lovely sweets – what’s not to like?!

And we need some positivity and hope right now, placed as we are, smack bang between the UK budget and the US election.  On Wednesday, the MP for Leeds West and Pudsey (no, not the bear), delivered her first Autumn Budget and, as we all know, there weren’t too many surprises in there.  There also wasn’t much good news for any of us, unless you happen to be one of the climate activists known as Esso, Shell or BP. 

Duty on fuel remains frozen, as it has been since 2011.  Actually, I lie.  In 2011 it was 57.95p per litre whilst the current duty is actually 52.95p per litre, thanks to the 5p duty cut implemented in 2022, when we were all paying £2 for a litre of diesel.

So, we got out our fag-packet, which nowadays is a very expensive notepad, and crunched some numbers.  According to a variety of sources, in the financial year 2023/24, UK consumption of petrol and diesel was more than 46 billion litres.  Imagine if somebody were to decide to remove the 5p duty cut on these fuels and return it to the levels we had in 2022 (and the previous 11 years), how much would we raise?  The cigarette packet calculator says £2.3 billion, which seems like a decent bit of revenue to us but then we didn’t do PPE at Oxford…

As a guide, current duty on wine is £3.56 per litre, before it all changes again in February 2025.

Meanwhile, across the pond, by this time next week we should have a good idea whether ‘garbage-gate’ was the October Surprise no-one expected.  Effectively, does America think it’s more offensive to call Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage’ or to say of Trump that ‘the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters’.

‘Joe Biden became mentally impaired.  Kamala, was born that way… She was born that way.  And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could’ve allowed this to happen to our country. Anybody would know this.’  Donald Trump – 29/09/24

We’ll see.

Wayne has been very excited this week by the announcement of the route for the 2025 Tour de France – his poor wife must be sick to death of him discussing the first Ventoux finish since 2016 (stage 16) or the weirdly short 11km individual time trial (stage 13) that surely must be a typo or quite hilly!  Elsewhere, in rugby, the Autumn Internationals start tomorrow with England versus New Zealand at 15:10 (tickets from £99 to £229) and then Scotland versus Fiji at 17:40 (tickets from £25 to £55) – who knows, we might have it on in the shop (tickets from £0 to £0).  Cricket – back to being a work in progress it would seem.

Anyway, enough silliness, time for some wine!

This weekend we’ll be opening a bin-end parcel we’ve picked up – we’ve only got 24 bottles but thought we’d share them out!   Domaine Charles Baur Pinot Gris 2020 – £18.99 – from Alsace, all their vineyards are organically cultivated and hand harvested, with several parcels located in the Grand Cru vineyards of Eichberg, Pfersigberg and Brand.  This is a delicious drop, well worth wrapping around your Vietnamese takeaway!

Given the topics we’ve discussed earlier on today, we thought a wine called Showdown Man with the Ax Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 – £12.99 might be appropriate.  Hailing from California, this rather stopped us in our tracks (we liked the label…. I know, even we fall for it!).  The grapes are mostly from Lodi and give us a wine with ripe cherry and cassis fruit, with a soft, juicy, yet long finish; this would be fab with almost any red meat but is equally comfortable on its own in front of the telly-box.

Finally, the Champagne & Sparkling Wine Tasting – £35 – taking place on Thursday 28^th November at 7.30pm sold out by the end of last Friday.  However, one of the bookings later discovered they had jumped the gun and had to cancel their booking so we have 3 spaces available, first come, first served.

That’s it from us, pinch/punch First of the Month and all that – we’re off for a couple of pints of draught now that it’s a whole penny cheaper – buy cheap, buy twice as they say!

Cheers!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

The King and the Prime Minister are off in Samoa attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. His Maj was down with the kids, sporting a rather retro but fetching white safari suit with matching sleeve decals’ and belt whilst he downed local peppery narcotic kava drinks. Meanwhile, Kier stood out in sea of colourful shirts wearing his trademark grey jacket and white shirt. Apparently saying sorry for slavery may or may not be on the agenda, depending on who you speak to.

Over in the US, the election date is getting closer, Bruce Springsteen is supporting Kamala, Trump is saying ever sillier things and the world watches on in some kind of rapt horror. It’ll all be over soon, then we’ll see the real crazy happen!

Closer to home, our own contest of crazy is entering its final week with all the same sensible ideas and self-examination that has made the choice so difficult. We’ll know whether it’ll be Bobby J or Kemi Bad who get to entertain us at the dispatch box for a year or two on November 2^nd. The budget is next week and ahead of that, Rachel Reeves, holder of the government purse strings, has announced replacing them with elastic to allow more wriggle room in the finances.

On a more cheerful note, today is International Champagne Day, it happens on the 4^th Friday of every October. We thought that gives us an ideal opportunity to talk to you about our range of champagne.  We’ve always tried to have a mix of grower champagnes where we find the quality price ratio is outstanding alongside our favourite of the better known producers.

Lete Vautrain Cote 204 37.5 cl HALVES (Vg)        £17.99            

Lete-Vautrain Brut 204 NV (Vg)                            £33.00 (3 bottles for £75)

Lete-Vautrain 204 Brut NV MAGNUM (Vg)           £66.00           

Lete Vautrain Grand Millesime 2015 (Vg)             £38.00           

Delavenne Grand Cru Brut Rose NV (Vg)             £45.00           

Joseph Perrier Cuvee Royale Brut NV (Vg)              £46.00           

Andre Robert Les Jardins du Mesnil NV Grand Cru £52.00           

Louis Roederer Collection 244 Brut NV (Vg)            £54.00           

Collet 1er Cru Brut Vintage 2014 (Vg)                    £58.00           

Bollinger Special Cuvee Brut NV                            £60.00 (3 bottles for £150)

Tarlant Brut Nature NV (Vg)                                     £60.00           

Jean Gimmonet Millesime 1er Cru 2004               £83.00           

Charles Heidsieck Brut Millesime 2012(Vg)*            £115.00          

De Saint Gall Orpale Blanc de Blancs 2012 *           £125.00          

Bollinger La Grande Annee 2014 *                         £130.00          

Bollinger RD 2007 *                                                 £200.00         

Louis Roederer Cristal 2013*                                   £290.00         

We can offer a buy six bottles pay for five bottles on all of those except for items marked with an asterisk. You can, of course, mix them too!

Which lead me nicely on to…

Champagne & Sparkling Wine Tasting – £35 – Thursday 28^th November at 7.30pm

As usual, we will have limited numbers for this event. You’ll certainly get to taste some of the above! That’s something to think about, it is fizz Friday after all!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Finally, some news this week that made us smile, as the bar we never knew we needed gets ready to open its doors…

• Sausage Roll with hot honey sauce
• Vegan Sausage Roll with harissa coconut yoghurt
• Cheese & Onion Bake with romesco sauce and almonds
• Steak Bake with peppercorn aioli
• Chicken Bake with katsu curry sauce and pickled cucumber
• Sausage, Bean & Cheese Melt with Bloody Mary ketchup

This is the menu, as of next Thursday until the end of the year, being offered to the good people of Newcastle who visit the famous Fenwick department store.  Yep, in a collab none of us would ever have imagined, Greggs, the health food specialists, have met with Fenwick Executive Head Chef Mark Reid to create these masterpieces to be served at their pop up champagne bar.

Yep, Greggs Champagne Bar.

In their words: “Inspired by 1920s Paris wine bars and paired with champagne from France and Italy (?) – now’s your chance to sip and snack your way through a boujee twist on our iconic menu…  After all, it’s widely known that a Sausage Roll is infinitely better with a glass of Perrier-Jouët.”

Whatever next, a Twiglets and Prosecco booth at Harvey Nicks?!

Elsewhere the news is less jolly.  In two weeks, we’ll have had the budget.  We will know whether the ‘pro-business’ government is going to make us put up our prices before Christmas with an interim duty increase, before we get the next duty increase at the end of February 2025…. And in three weeks we’ll be getting an idea as to whether the USA will be welcoming its first female president or its first convicted felon.

It’s enough to make you turn to drink.

Sticking with duty for a moment, I mentioned this to a couple of customers last week and they suggested it needed broadcasting further afield.  In Europe, large wine producers like Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain have no tax levy on wine, whilst in France it is only 3 cents a bottle.  This would seem quite supportive of their local producers and, in the absence of tariffs within the EU, of producers in neighbouring countries too.

In the UK (not EU), we currently charge duty of £2.67 per bottle, £3.21 after VAT.

Now, in the shop, one of the stumbling blocks we regularly face when selling English wine is the perception that it can be seen to be comparatively quite expensive, particularly the sparkling wines that are getting all the press.  Often we find customers will see that the English Sparkler is the same price as the Real Champagne and opt for the french offering, the ‘real thing’ if you will.

Imagine if they removed duty from all wine made over here?  Suddenly the English Sparkler would be significantly cheaper than the French one and sales could soar – sounds pretty pro-business to me!

Elsewhere, I think we can finally call time on the cycling season, so Wayne can now go back to talking about music again.  Oh no, hang about, I’m wrong.  Apparently the wheels are still turning, they’ve just gone inside.  Fab.  In the cricket, following last week’s romp for the men in Multan, it seems that the Men’s Test team have forgotten how to play spin and the Women’s T20 team has lost the ability to catch, achieving some sort of record by managing to drop the same person 5 times!

And then we come to football.  I have to say I find it astonishing that we have hired a German coach for the national men’s team.  I mean, what have Germany ever achieved in international football?  Nothing.  Unless you include 4 World Cups and 3 European championships.  Plus, what on earth did Thomas achieve in his 18 months at Chelsea?  Nothing.  Unless you include the Champions League, the UEFA Super Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup. 

Of course, what clinched the job for Mr Tuchel was the fact that whilst at Chelsea he also got them to two FA Cup Finals and one League Cup final.  They managed to lose all three, two of them on penalties, which made him an absolute shoo-in!

Anyway, time for that drink that I suggested earlier.  Sadly I don’t have any sausage rolls so we won’t be opening any Champagne and clearly English fizz is to pricey so instead I’m going to venture across the pond, before they close the borders and open a couple of tasty Californians for a change.

De Loach Russian River Valley Chardonnay – £30.99 – De Loach was purchased by Jean-Claude Boisset in 2003, recognising similarities between the Russian River Valley and his native Burgundy.  The head winemaker, Brian Maloney has been involved with the winery since 2003 and has focused throughout on high quality, small-lot winemaking.  The wine has a nose of nectarine and ripe pear leading onto a citrus and baked apple palate with integrated hints of vanilla cream, spice and crème brûlée.  You definitely won’t like it.

The Crusher Pinot Noir – £18.99 – A perennially popular wine, this one, from Clarksburg just south of Sacramento and about 100 miles northeast of San Francisco.  The morning fogs and cool coastal winds from the bay help to keep the Pinot Noir in balance and as a result we get lovely open aromatics of cherry, rhubarb and wood spice that lead onto a soft easy going palate with those same fruit characters and a touch of vanilla cream from its 8 months in barrels.  I think a youngster like Wayne might call this ‘smashable’, I’m too old to know if that is true or not but I’ll certainly have a second glass if you’re offering!

That’s it from us, we’re off to have a Gin & Ginsters lunch – spicy chicken slice for me please!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

How has your week been? I feel I have been wearing waterproof jackets a bit more than I would like but at least we’ve not suffered from airborne alligators that we need to round up once the power comes back on.

Closer to home, we would have said that something the Conservative Party excels at is leadership contests. Until this week. Somehow, according to some commentators, they have managed to end up with the wrong two candidates as the final two candidates. Or as one wag put it “Only the Conservatives could lose an election that was only contested by the Conservatives.” Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch are duelling it out to become leader of the Conservative party and Mr Jenrick is very keen that everybody knows he wasn’t an accident pick by MPs, despite what you may have read. The One Nation Conservative group has said they are unable to endorse either candidate. Will this be the time when right thinking Tories finally split from right leaning ones?

On the other side of the pond, their leadership race is still neck and neck with both candidates criss-crossing the country trying to magic up votes. New polling also seems to suggest that the Democrat majority in the Senate might be disappearing. Only a month to go!

On the sport front, it looks likely that the Tour de France Critérium in Singapore on 9^th and 10^th November will be the last for Sir Mark Cavendish. Also retiring in November is the ‘King of Clay’, Rafa Nadal, who will hang up his wristbands after the Davis Cup in Malaga on 19^th -24^th November.

On this day in 1956, Karachi hosted probably the slowest day in test cricket history with a match between Australia and Pakistan managing only 95 runs. Australia were all out for 80 and Pakistan finished the day at 15 for 2.

In more recent history, we think any team that has a first innings total of 556 in their first inning might reasonably expect to get at least a draw out of the match. Alas for Pakistan, they have just snatched Ireland’s record for the largest first innings score of a losing team. England now lead the series 1-0 having broken all sorts of records along the way. Chapeau to Joe Root and Harry Brook for their work with the bat, and Jack Leach for some fine bowling.

Meanwhile, England has had its second worst harvest on record. Wheat is down 21%, winter barley is down 26% and oilseed rape down about 32%. There was bad news too for grape growers. Their harvest is down anywhere between 25-70%, depending on location. All the rain we’ve had is not conducive to growing grapes, causing problems with flowering and mould and mildew.

Given how much of current affairs are, how shall we say, a little on the downside I thought I’d go and look for some good news. Starting with Uncle Google, I was cheered to find websites offering positive news, good news and uplifting news. Further investigation revealed that none of them seemed to have anything more recent than April which I will confess to finding a little disappointing.

In other news, a blue plaque was put up at a Tesco this week commemorating the iceberg lettuce that outlived Liz Truss’ stint as PM.

Whilst we were wondering what on earth we should put on tasting this week our chum Dave strolled in. Just the man we thought. “Dave, where should we choose this week’s open wines from?” “Italy!” he replied, and with that he gets yet another mention in our email!

Tasting This Weekend

We’ll start way down in Marsala, Sicily with Sensale Bio Orange Wine 2023 (£14.49). This is made from 100% organic Catarratto grapes fermented and aged on the skins in amphora.

On the other side of the coin we’ll be a bit further north for a sample of Tenute Marsiliana Birillo 2020 (£23.49). This is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot from the Principe Corsini family’s vineyards on the coast of Tuscany. Polished and delicious!

So, thanks to Dave for the inspiration and do come in for a taste.

Cheers!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Sometimes, we find ourselves wondering about the way the world works. Yesterday, the Bank of England Governor, Andrew Bailey, stated that if inflation behaves itself he will be more aggressive with interest rate cuts. This caused the pound to fall to its lowest level in 18 months, thus increasing the cost of imports which is surely inflationary?  In the same interview he voiced concerns about a worsening Middle East situation affecting the oil price.  I feel a strong urge to scratch my head.

In a gaffe worthy of the man himself, Laura Kuenssberg had to drop plans to interview Boris Johnson after she emailed him her briefing notes! Billed as his first major interview since leaving office, it was due to be broadcast yesterday evening at 7.30pm. I guess he’ll now just have to pay for any publicity for his new book himself!

Occasionally in these missives we like to talk about feats of human endeavour or tenacity. With that in mind, we’d like to commend Jimmy Carter for making it to a century! Neither of us remembers what he was like as a President, Alex was at junior school and Wayne doing his O-levels during his presidency but a hundred years is quite the innings. Happy Birthday.

Still on the subject of human endeavours, we’ll mention Lachlan Morton. Some of you may know him as a bicycle racer for EF Easypost. On September 5^th, whilst we were all sleeping, he set off from Port Macquarie in New South Wales for a spin around Australia. His plan is to break the record held by Dave Alley who took 37 days 20 hours and 45 minutes to complete the 14201 km lap in 2011. It looks like Lachlan is going to finish this weekend beating the previous record by about a week.

We found a bit of the wine news rather amusing this week. You may recall a while back we mentioned the alcohol free sparkling wine French Bloom. Co-founded by Constance Jablonski and Maggie Frerejean-Taittinger back in 2019, French Bloom this week sold part of itself to LVMH. You may recall they are the enormous luxury good conglomerate that own Moet & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Mercier, Ruinart and Krug but not Taittinger. What amused us is that the UK distributors are neither Taittinger nor LVMH but in fact Bollinger! It’s a funny old world.

We also noted in the latest report by the New Zealand Winegrowers that their wine exports have suffered a significant drop. Now, we’re slightly nervous of linking this 22% drop to our wives swapping the Sauvignon Blanc for Gin and Tonic or Vermouth as their aperitivo of choice but we all know that statistics don’t lie!

Last bit of wine news for this week is that wine is absolutely the colour for this season. We sent Alex scouring the fashion press for clues as to why it’s not called maroon, burgundy or plum this year but his searches drew a blank. Wine is definitely the thing for Autumn whether in your glass, colouring your frock or indeed that swish new suit your mate might have bought you.

In a show of solidarity for the New Zealand Winegrowers we’ll open Southern Dawn Sauvignon Blanc 2023 (£13.99) a classic Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc with grapefruit, melon and passionfruit character and a lovely zippy finish that’ll be just great with that Goan fish curry you have planned for the weekend.

To offer our leather-armchaired support to young Lachlan, we’ll open the De Bortoli Heathcote Shiraz 2018 – £18.49.  We like the approach at De Bortoli, who always look for freshness and balance in their wines.  Heathcote, in Victoria, is an up and coming region for Shiraz and the wines have an elegant, spicy quality, as opposed to the fruit soup you can sometimes end up with.  This has got spicy plum notes on the nose, whilst the palate is blackberry laden, with a touch of black pepper and spice and a nice dry finish.  Sausages might be a nice idea.

Finally, the De Toren offer we hinted at last week…

As we mentioned last week our chum Seb has selected his favourite vintages for some mature drinking. If you’d like to order some for your own glass drop us a line, the prices below are per bottle and you can order a single if you’d like. We’re not sure they’re available in the UK otherwise.

De Toren are from Stellenbosch and their Fusion V is the left bank styled Bordeaux Blend with Cabernet Sauvignon dominance in the blend.

De Toren Fusion V 2013 – £102

De Toren Fusion V 2015 – £79

De Toren Fusion V 2017 – £62

Edition Z is the right bank styled wine with a Merlot dominance in the blend.

Edition Z 2013 – £52

Edition Z 2015 – £46

That’s it from us for this week, do pop in for a taste and we’ll raise a glass to Lachlan.

Fellow Wine Lovers,

What do you have to lose?

Thus spake President Trump, whilst on his campaign trail this week, trying to win over the famously democrat voting New Yorkers.  I have to say, it lacks the punch of MAGA and or the pugnacious overconfidence that Donny usually epitomises, it’s almost pitiful.

Of course, twitter (still trying to be known as X) was quick to respond to his question and I imagine that its owner was just one space bar short of a wittily supportive message before he realised for the second, or perhaps tenth time this week “that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text”.

What do you have to lose?

Thus spake Sue Gray, whilst renegotiating her salary under the new 2024/25 pay-band 4 for SPADS.  I mean, I don’t know for certain that she said that but you know, she could have done and if I say it enough it will begin to gain its own truth.  What I cannot fathom though is why, if she is so money focused, did she only ask for £170,000?  If she had re-purposed herself as a Senior Civil Servant then pay-band 3 could have offered her a ceiling of around £208,000

What do you have to lose?

Thus spake Lord Alli as he tapped his card in Primark, whilst out shopping with Lady Starmer before nipping off to Specsavers to collect Sir Keir’s prescription – again, I cannot say for sure that he said it but I cannot say for sure that he didn’t.  According to a bloke down the pub he also added ‘just don’t lose the election, it’s costing me a fortune’.

Suffice to say, both of our wives are wondering when that geezer who sells us Bollinger is going to open his wallet at the ME+EM counter…

What do you have to lose?

Not a question to ask a Spurs fan after last Sunday… thankfully Wayne and Keir both support Arsenal, so they’re both fine, although I don’t think Wayne gets free match tickets.

What do you have to lose?

A decently functioning liver it would seem.  A study by a behaviour and health research unit at the University of Cambridge took place in 13 English pubs over the period of a month.  The study showed that reducing the size of a glass of beer to two-thirds of a pint led to beer and cider sales dropping by nearly 9.7%, whilst there was an increase of 7.2% in wine sales.

All good, so far.  However, the researchers then tried to suggest that this could be a way of reducing alcohol consumption…

Whoa there, cowboy, have another look at your study!  Whilst there is a clear 2.5% difference between the beer drop and the wine increase, which could certainly be seen as a positive, what is being ignored is the switch to stronger drinks (wine v beer) plus, have you considered that for some people, spirits might have been the replacement for beer?

Goodness, who doesn’t love their research half-baked?

Staying with booze news, one of our producers, Cramele Recas, has just announced that it is pumping 11 million euros into business expansion to increase production to 50 million bottles per year, with a target turnover of €100m within the next three to five years – very ambitious.  For those of you that don’t recognise the winery, it is in Romania and was established in the 1980’s by Englishman Philip Cox and his wife Elvira who invested in 650 hectares of slightly unloved vineyards and a rusty, once state-owned winery.  To help with their turnover, we thought that this weekend we would open the two wines we buy from them:

Solara Orange – £14.99 – We seem to be bookending the summer with this wine, having also had it open in early May.  A natural minimal intervention wine, it is made by leaving the grape skins and seeds in contact with the pressed juice, creating a deep orange-hued finish.  The wine ferments naturally without the addition of yeasts, sulphur or anything else.  The nose exhibits quince, Poire William and a hint of vanilla whilst the complex and structured palate is elegant with discreet fruit flavours of stone fruits, backed up with a complexity and long, balanced finish, incredibly fresh.

Solevari Reserve Fetească Neagră 2021 – £12.99 – Fetească Neagră is the grape variety and gives us a brilliant spicy nose of black pepper, black berry, black currant and red cherry not dissimilar to a Pinot Noir. Medium bodied with rich, balanced tannin and acidity with a hint of coffee on the finish, we love it when we have proper local wine that we are unable to pronounce!

That’s it from us for now, more next week, you lucky, lucky people!