The Weekly Wine

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!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

I’ll start with Admin this week: many apologies but we’ll be opening later on Monday 16 & Tuesday 17^th September as we have four supplier tastings, two on each day and we really need attend them – we should be back by 4pm though, in time for the post work rush!

…

This week, I’ve got nothing to report.  The streets have been quiet, often damp and, on occasion, bitterly cold.  Since the big boss went on holiday last week the shop has also been eerily quiet, however it has been exceptionally well swept, tidied, faced up and is looking amazing, should he ask.

On Tuesday, I journeyed up to Camden to taste an awful lot of wine, the majority of which I will not be buying, and caught up with acquaintances from around the country.  The mood was typically ‘shopkeeper’ – pragmatic with a heavy lean towards pessimism with the most oft used phrase being ‘it’s not great but we’ll be fine’. 

Fine.

Jamie from Cornwall related that the combination of a stupidly short summer, holiday home deliveries from supermarkets resulting in less shopping locally and general inflation meant that his season was not great but he’ll be fine.  Colleagues from the Midlands, hardened campaigners all of them, reckoned that European holidays had definitely replaced the staycation and that they were more likely to bump into their customers on a Balearic beach than in their shop.  Whilst it wasn’t necessarily the rosiest of news, at least it wasn’t just Wimbledon Park that filled with tumbleweed…

And then we read the news.  You possibly read the report too – it was on the BBC after all – which told us that, so far in 2024, 38 shops are closing each week.  PWC back this research and have a long history of retail analysis, so we pay attention.  Obviously the shops closing headline is what grabs you but the type of store is worth noting – an average of 18 chemists, 16 pubs and 9 banks each week, all of whom provide a very important service that I think is not necessarily replicated in the arrival of a new Costa or Greggs.

We’ve got two empty sites here on Arthur Road right now, both of whom have closed this year.  Meanwhile, in the village, the LK Bennett site is still empty (5 years now? More?) but otherwise, most sites are filled – mainly bars and restaurants but also a butcher (used to be 3) and 4 wine shops (used to be 1).  Not sure what point I’m trying to make here, suffice to say I’m very happy to be down here rather than up there, with my chemist next door.

And we’ll be fine.

In the wine world, it looks like my colleague might have been using the company credit card even more than usual.  Footage captured by @rudyschmudy shows a group of men (because it will always be men) making sangria using Petrus from the 2006 and 2011 vintages.  Now, 2006 was a good vintage in Bordeaux, whilst 2011 was a bit of a stinker – with the 2006 retailing at over £2000 per bottle and the 2011 north of £1500 – and both costing substantially more in a club in the South of France, I imagine.  The argument was that they had booked a premium table with a minimum spend of 100,000 euros and he was bored of buying Ace of Spades – it’s all on TikTok and it makes for quite enlightening viewing.

Outside the world of wine and indeed the actual world, billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman has become the first non-professional astronaut to walk in space – we’re not sure how much he paid but he could probably have paid for at least 2,000 of my business partner’s premium tables…

“Back home we have a lot of work to do, but from here Earth sure looks like a perfect world” were Jared’s first words and we’ll have to trust him on how it all looks from up there, perhaps it’s billionaire speak for it’s not great for you but I’ll be fine.

Back in wine, a quick warning about France.  The 2024 vintage is predicted to be the smallest since 1957, 18% smaller than 2023 and 11% lower than the 5 year average.  In simple terms, as you can probably guess, it’s to do with the ‘great’ weather we’ve all been having this year.  In a nutshell, using data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food (Agreste):

Alsace – mildew and flowering disrupted by cool, wet weather – 13% decline

Aude & Pyrénées-Orientales – drought – 4% lower

Bordeaux – coulure, millerandage, mildew and hailstorms – 10% down

Burgundy & Beaujolais – mildew and hail – 25% lower

Champagne – spring frosts, coulure, hail, mildew and scalding – 16% lower

Charentes – low number of bunches and poor flowering due to wet conditions – 35% down

Jura – severe frost and mildew – production to fall by 71%

Languedoc-Roussillon, mildew, significant summer rainfall – reduced production

Loire Valley – mildew and coulure – 30% lower

Savoie – spring frost, summer mildew – 5% lower

South-East (Rhône etc), millerandage, late frost in the spring – down 12%

South-West France – coulure, millerandage, mildew, frost, hail – reduced production

*Coulure is a condition in grape bunches where many flowers fail to develop into grapes, whilst Millerandage results in a high proportion of seedless, often smaller/different size grapes of different ripeness in a bunch.

So, perhaps we might need to find our vinous fun elsewhere for a bit – how about we start with Germany and New Zealand on the tasting table this weekend:

Deep Roots Riesling Trocken 2023 – £14.99 – A group of young vine growers in Rheinhessen all got together with the idea of sharing their marketing costs but in the end decided to make just the one wine to showcase their talents.  Almost a mini co-operative, if you will.  Winemaking duties are spearheaded by the talented Stefan Winter, and this is a cracker – citrus and orchard fruit notes on the nose, minerals join them on the palate

Petit Clos Pinot Noir 2021 – £21.99 – Nestled under the southern foothills of Marlborough’s Wairau Valley, Clos Henri is the wine estate, organically run by the famous Sancerre wine growing family of Henri Bourgeois.  Petit Clos is made from the younger vines on the estate, giving aromas of red fruit dominated by cherry and plum notes.  Juicy red berries flood the palate supported by very fine and supple tannins while retaining freshness all the way to the long finish.

We’ll let you get on with your day now – if you’re taking Friday off to celebrate your birthday or an anniversary have a lovely day and try also to find time to celebrate that two years ago today we were at the end of the first week of Liz Truss as PM.

Raise a glass to the past!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

I’m back, you’re all back, the schools are back and Wayne is now about to sneak out the back on his hols, now that we’ve vacated the loungers

Did you have a good trip?  Certainly we did. 

Spain was hot, which is how we like it and expect it to be; Madrid was half empty, which is how we like it and certainly didn’t expect whilst the train from there to Malaga took just over two hours, which is how we would like our UK trains to be but have low expectations.  Devon was warm enough to need suncream, which is always a treat; the news that Jona Lewi had moored his £250 million super yacht in Dartmouth Harbour turned out to be an entertainingly misheard fallacy of misdirection as did the ridiculous proposition from across the Tamar that you should put jam on your scone first…

But now we’re back and the traditional September Indian Summer seems to have disappeared behind the thunder clouds.  I’m back wearing trousers and socks about a month earlier than usual, which feels weird and a tad disappointing particularly since I’m told Autumn doesn’t start until 22^nd September.

We’ve still got rosé in the fridge though, just in case.

It’s been a busy first week back though, balancing the viewing of the Tour of Britain with the Vuelta a España has been Wayne’s job, whilst I have been mainly staring into the computer screen’s dark eyes, looking at the EasyJet website crunching the numbers.  With the Paralympics also serving as a welcome distraction, it was heartening to see Tonbridge teenage swimming sensation Iona Winnifrith get silver in the Women’s 100m Breastroke SB7 yesterday whilst still only 13 years old – one of many great performances that have put GB second in the medal table.

Away from Arthur Road, generally sifting through the broadsheets we have little to comment upon – do we really think Liam’s voice can last for 17 concerts?  At the same time, do we think the truce between the heavily-browed brothers will last beyond Cardiff?  Or even get there?  Definitely maybe has to be the call.  The masterplan is that, at the moment, the boys are estimated to be in line for something like £400 million from the gigs and that’s before Netflix/Prime/Apple/Disney et al get into a bidding war for a fly-on-the-wall documentary.  Imagine if they then took the tour all around the world!

Previously, we have mentioned a certain English winery in this missive:

Fellow Wine Lovers 28/06/2024: What we might know is whether Chapel Down is for sale or not, as it seeks to raise even more funds for expansion.  Via Seedrs they raised almost £4 million in 2014, just short of £2 million in 2015 to build a brewery, raised £18.5 million by issuing new shares in 2017 and almost £7 million in 2021, once again through Seedrs.  In the meantime they opened Gin Works at Kings Cross, a bar and restaurant that opened in 2019 and closed in February 2020, before COVID could take the blame. 

What I don’t know is how much longer they can keep doing this.

Fellow Wine Lovers 26/07/2024: Further to our regular reports on the English wine scene, it seems that Chapel Down is not going to be sold to Treasury Wine Estates

thedrinksbusiness.com 05/09/2024: ‘Chapel Down blames off-trade ‘challenges’ for profit drop as CEO exits – according to its half-year results, the AIM-listed producer has seen its pre-tax profits reduce from £2.4m to just £40,000 in the six months to the end of June.  Its results saw EBITA fall by 58% to £1.3m from £3.2m in 2023 and net sales fall by 12%, mainly driven by a 36% drop in the off-trade, which it said was due to a lack of re-stocking and a difficult comparison base due to King Charles III coronation the previous year.’

Hmmm, still not convinced by their business model or future survival…

In other news, CEO Andrew Carter joined Chapel Down three years ago has now decided his future is better spent running famous Yorkshire brewer, Timothy Taylor.

Talking of beer, we also hear that footballer and pundit Chris Kamara has launched his own beer to raise money for Prostate Cancer and is unsurprisingly named Kammy’s Un-beer-lievable Lager.

No, we won’t be stocking it.

Things we do stock though include  Domaine Champalou Vouvray Sec 2022 – £24.99 – this Loire domaine was started by Catherine and Didier in 1983 and has gone on to become one of the most acclaimed producers in Vouvray.  This cuvée comes from 35 year old vines and is lovely and crisp, with apple fruit on the nose.  Somewhat rounder and richer on the palate leading to a lovely crisp dry finish.

We also stock Moulin des Chēnes 2021 – £19.99 – this is from Lirac, west of Chateauneuf-du-Pape and is a blend of 40% Cinsault, 40% Syrah, 11% Mourvèdre and 9% Grenache – quite a low proportion of Grenache for the southern Rhône we thought.  We always like the wines from here though, dark crimson in the glass with summer fruit and herb aromas on the nose that then continue onto the lovely juicy palate rounded out with velvety tannins.  Get your hands on this before Wayne does…

Both these wines will be on tasting this weekend, so come and have a crack at them yourselves!

One final note before I go – we’ll be opening later on Tuesday 10^th September as one of main suppliers is holding their Autumn tasting up in Camden and we really need to be there – should be back by 4pm though, in time for the post work rush!

Right, that’s me done, I’m off to find my lunch which I hope will not involve a tin of Heinz Spaghetti Carbonara – we’ll see what the Coop can do!