The Weekly Wine

Fellow Wine Lovers,

We’re interrupting your Thursday as tomorrow is Good Friday, or Holy Friday if you prefer. It is certainly a Bank Holiday and many of you may well be away from your emails. Those of you, that is, who haven’t already upped sticks and been away for a few days. It’s been a quiet week; traffic has been light, service in the coffee shop brisk and wait-less.

Out and about in the world, we all now own a tiny bit of a blast furnace or two in Sheffield plus enough coal to keep it going. I learnt something this week and will share it with you. The main product of a blast furnace is carbon dioxide, it seems steel is almost a by-product. Every day’s a school day!

Across the pond the Tango Tariffmeister continues to make the US a safer friendlier place to visit. You can now get much cheaper flights than this time last, though Canada has warned its university teachers against travelling there. On the subject of universities, in a valiant attempt to ensure he is the smartest in the room, Tango Tariffmeister has threatened Harvard University with the removal of its tax exempt status after they had the temerity to decline his instructions to punish its students for exercising their rights to free speech.

He’s not having a great week to be fair. Having spent all that time filling the Supreme Court with judges that he thought would do his bidding; they only gave a unanimous ruling against him over the illegal deportation of a citizen to El Salvador. Ever since I saw that news I have been wondering if his ignoring this makes the US a rogue state, a lawless country or if it’s just another slice off of decency?

Did you catch any of Paris Roubaix? Mathieu van der Poel won the men’s race for the 3^rd year in a row, amazing consistency and quite the ride. In the women’s race Pauline Ferrand-Prévot stormed to victory, returning to road racing for her first season since 2018. Her comment about her plan that it was “just a training race for the Tour de France” must have sent ripples of concern through the peloton! I suspect she may well have moved up the bookies list now. This week we have De Brabantse Pijl on Friday and the Amstel Gold race on Sunday.

Opening Hours

Tonight till 7pm

Good Friday 12-5pm

Saturday 12-5pm

Closed on Bank Holiday Monday

Back to normal on Tuesday

If you need a local delivery I can do this evening after 7pm or tomorrow between 5-6pm. Usual six bottle minimum.

Tasting This Weekend

This week we’ll start off in Galicia. There’s a lot of chatter about this region lately and it’s thrilled us for a long while. We’ll open Follas Novas Albariño 2023(£17.99) which comes from Val do Salnés, one of the five distinct sub-regions of Rías Baixas and is the oldest, coolest and wettest part, whilst also being the birth place of Albariño sometime before the 12th century.  The vines for this wine are between 20 and 40 years old and vinified in a state of the art winery completed in 2005.  Fabulously clean and crisp with citrus and floral notes on the nose, tangy stone fruit on the palate and a lovely mineral laden finish.

On the basis that we may be looking for a match with lamb, we’re going to pull the cork on Château Ka ‘Fleur de Ka’ 2008 (£36.99) Château Ka is an extraordinary story of determination and resolve.  Akram Kassatly built his winery in the Bekaa Valley in 1973. Shortly after the first wines were made, Lebanon was engulfed by war.  The winery was forced to close and Akram moved into other businesses.  Finally in 2005 he announced that he was going to try again. Today, Château Ka is the only winery in Lebanon to produce wine entirely from their own vineyards located at 1000m above sea level at the Eastern end of the Bekaa valley.  The owner, Akram, actually trained to become a winemaker in Burgundy in the 1960’s but here he doesn’t try and emulate those wines and in fact the blend is 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot and 8% Syrah. So, a wine with definite influences of Bordeaux, made by a Lebanese winemaker trained in Burgundy – what’s not to like!?

I’m off to read a dystopian novel before it’s moved to the non-fiction section. Happy Easter!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

We find ourselves in a quandary this week. We were about to announce 55.2% tariffs against the landlord, Merton Council and our energy company. We pay them all money every single month and not one of them has ever purchased a bottle of wine in here. Then we saw that Trump had announced: “This is a GREAT time to move your COMPANY into the United States of America, like Apple, and so many others, in record numbers, are doing. ZERO TARIFFS, and almost immediate Electrical/Energy hook ups and approvals. No Environmental Delays. DON’T WAIT, DO IT NOW!”

Knowing his reputation for speaking the truth, we immediately looked into the cost of flights, a container for our stock and the cost of suitable premises. Then it hit us, those ZERO TARIFFS don’t apply to our stock, the walk from the tube might be a bit far for most of you and the Polo is an unsuitable delivery vehicle for crossing the Atlantic Ocean. So we’re staying put, watching from the side-lines, and wondering whether to laugh, cry or just have another glass of wine.

In the meantime, we all have a 90 day breather of only 10% tariffs unless you’re China. The news arrived a couple of hours after a tweet that stated “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!DJT” Apparently, it was Trump’s plan all along, and nothing to do with the Bond Market increasing the price of Government Debt. The stock markets all went back up again. If only the newly slimmed down Securities and Exchange Commission had some staff to look into insider trading I suspect there would be stories to tell on both sides of the house!

How have you been enjoying the sunshine? I had a spin on the bike early Tuesday morning and was a little surprised to see pockets of frost! Definitely should have had a warmer top on! The blossom is all rather stunning as well; let’s take those wins where we can get them, eh? I’ve spent half the week letting dozy bees out of the back window!

In the wine world there’s talk of bottles being made from aluminium on the great green frontier. Quick to chill, infinitely recyclable, low weight for shipping all seem to be in its favour. Quick to chill’s obvious flipside is quick to warm up once out of the fridge. Seems a good idea in principle but can you see Domaine Leroy popping their Meursault in an aluminium vessel? Is it a bottle or a bottle shaped can? What about the Appellation rules where they specify bottle shape? So many questions but, on the face of it, a relatively sound idea.

In proper sports this weekend sees the return of the ‘Hell of the North’. The route from Paris to Roubaix with all its terrifying cobbles is, as usual, providing the parcours. Will Tadej Pogačar be the first to enter the velodrome on his debut, will Neilson Powless snaffle it from a group of Visma riders, or will Wout van Aert get his name in the showers at last? Wout almost came off yesterday with a puncture on his recon, so let’s hope that’s got that out of the way! In the women’s race it seems Lotte Kopecky is the nailed on favourite, but Elisa Balsamo, who was second last year, is on some fine form winning midweek. That said, you can’t rule out Alison Jackson repeating her 2023 exploits! There’s a slight chance of some early morning rain, so it could be just a bit slippery on the cobbles.

Tasting This Weekend

We thought we’d go with Domaine d’Altugnac ‘Les Turitelles’ Chardonnay 2023 (£15.99) Childhood friends, Christian Collovray and Jean-Luc Terrier each grew up in a family of winemakers and shared a bond from a young age.  They became closer still, when they married sisters, Brigitte and Florence, also from a winemaking family.  They now boast two properties, Domaine des Deux Roches in Mâcon and Domaine Altugnac in Languedoc  which means you’ve got Burgundy winemakers bringing all their skill and experience to their property in Limoux – what’s not to like?!  Bursting with white floral aromatics and a touch of citrus on the palate, followed by a concentrated and lingering finish this is a complete joy, perfect any day of the week!

Côtes du Rhône Villages ‘Les Coteaux’ 2023, Rhône, France (£13.99). Common practice in the Côtes du Rhône is to bottle the best cuvées as a single named Village wine and the rest as basic Rhône Villages.  The philosophy here, on the other hand, is to start with the intention of making the very best Côtes du Rhône Villages possible.  They source wine from the vineyards of named villages and enrich them with a small proportion of barrel-aged wine from Sablet, Séguret and Cairanne.  The results are fabulous, as you can taste here, with well-balanced brambly fruit and soft tannin that is bang on the money.

EASTER OPENING HOURS

Thursday 17^th April – Noon – 7PM

Good Friday 18^th April – Noon – 5PM

Saturday 19^th April – Noon – 5PM

Easter Sunday 20^th April – CLOSED

Easter Monday 21^st April – CLOSED

Tuesday 22^nd April – As you were – Noon – 7pm!

Lastly, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was 100 years old yesterday so we’ll leave you with: “I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Cheers!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

So, we looked at the map and eventually we found it.  Two Chimneys Winery is located on the appropriately named Two Chimneys Road, about 5km/10 minutes by car to the north west of Kingston, the capital of one of the oldest territories and most isolated communities in the world and the second oldest town in Australia, apparently.  Welcome to Norfolk Island, lucky benefactor of a 29% TRUMP TARIFF this week.  Having done our research it is hard to imagine why this tiny pacific island is being targeted by the USA government – there is no obvious Chinese influence here, which has been an issue in Laos and Cambodia; there is no aluminium smelting and there is no fentanyl production, even growing medicinal cannabis has been mothballed.  To be fair, they don’t actually have any ports or harbours here so the export of high end automobiles has had to be suspended for now.  They do have cattle and sharks though.  They also have the aforementioned winery that, by looking at their website, doesn’t seem to be producing any wine.

It feels to us that the POTUS doesn’t know anything about Norfolk Island and has got his facts wrong which surely, as the most powerful man in the world, shouldn’t be possible?  Discuss…

Away from the calamities across the pond, we’ve all had a bit of a hit in the pocket this week.  As we watched energy, water, council tax, broadband and mobile phone bills go up at home on Tuesday, we also saw NI and EPR go up at work.  NI you all know about but EPR, who he?  Extended Producer Responsibility, to give him his full title, is the strategy that requires producers to add estimated environmental costs into the original cost of a product – effectively to cover the costs of future waste management.  Paying for plastic bags is an easy example to cite whilst the car and tech industries are obviously heavily scrutinised.  Now the booze trade is being hit, in the bottles.  One of our suppliers sent us this explainer:

‘An EPR fee will apply on all orders placed from 1^st April 2025 in addition to your normal pricing.  This fee will vary by product dependent on the packaging used by the producer and the latest base-fees advised by Defra.  Glass is currently advised at £240/tonne and makes up most of the EPR charge.  The fee ex-VAT for a 75cl bottle of still wine will be between £0.09-£0.12 and £0.22-£0.25 for sparkling.’

We ordered wine from this supplier this week – we were charged EPR of £0.13 on the still wine we bought.  The Spirits Business pointed out on Wednesday that: After last week’s spring budget and the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) forecast, it was admitted the scheme won’t improve recycling, with Defra revealing that “the policy is unlikely to have a material impact on rates of recycling or packaging waste volumes in the next five years.”

So, to summarise, all wines went up by at least 10 pence this week, depending on the weight of the bottle, some of the heavier Italian and Argentine bottles probably went up by double this.  Meanwhile, our council tax that, amongst other things, pays for our rubbish and recycling to be taken away, also went up – double bubble!

It feels to us that Defra doesn’t know anything about anything and will not have confirmation of exact fees until the summer which surely, as the people in charge, shouldn’t be possible?  Discuss…

But let’s move away from all this and talk about the weather.  The Daily Mirror, which always seems a bit obsessed by gloomy meteorological reports, announced late on Wednesday – All the parts of the UK set for SNOW as the mercury plunges to just -8C whilst the BBC yesterday was happy to tell us – Parts of UK set to be hotter than the Algarve.

As we’ve said before, we really should be in the weather business, you can say what you want and you always get paid!  In this instance though, we’re going with the BBC and will be opening two wines this weekend that we think should be drunk outside, near to a hot griddle…

M & B Talmard Mâcon-Uchizy 2023 – £20.79.  Mallory and Benjamin produce just one cuvée of Mâcon each year from their 20 hectares just north of the Mâcon hills.  Richer and riper than many, it has a generous weight, subtle, almost tropical fruit with aromas of melon, ripe pear, lemon oil and almonds and rich, bready character on the palate from extended lees aging.  A long fresh, finish with hints of apple make this a good all-rounder particularly for those who want to eat steak but don’t like red wine!

For the red, we’ll venture to South Africa and open the Idun Syrah 2019 – £26.99.  A complex wine from 3 different vineyard sites in the Elgin Valley.  These parcels are situated 200 m above sea level caressed by the cooling sea breezes from the Atlantic a few kilometres away.  Due to COVID, the wine was matured for longer than usual (16 months) using 30% new French oak barrels.  A lovely savoury bouquet of black olive, spicy fruit and white pepper on the nose.  On the palate we have berry fruits joining in the fun finishing with fine ripe tannins giving us a very elegant drop perfect for those who want to eat steak and do like red wine!

With that, I think we’re done.  The last words this week will be from Jim Morrison:

“Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts”

Valete, Val Kilmer.