The Weekly Wine

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!