Fellow Wine Lovers,
Double celebration day today – the Founding Fathers declared independence 249 years ago whilst, a mere 248 years later, Keir and the Gang won the general election, neither event coming as much of a surprise.
So yes, a double celebration and a chance for us all to reflect on how well things are going on either side of the pond. Here, we can celebrate the announcement of a 10 year plan for the NHS which sounds a lot like a return to the cottage hospitals of old; meanwhile, those lucky enough to live in the Land of the Free can celebrate the big bad wolf’s big beautiful bill. This is the plan that, over 10 years, will add $3 trillion to the national deficit and cut $1 trillion from Medicaid – definitely need to be brave to call this place home.
Celebrating other achievements, Post Malone is 30 today, big beautiful Bill Withers would have been 87 and Greece’s victory over Portugal in the Euros is now old enough to buy a beer in America – all good dinner party conversation starters for Saturday evening, I think you’ll find.
Anyway, enough chat about them, let’s get back to talking about us. We had to use google this week to find an accurate definition for Gen Z, aka Zoomers. We both had a wishy-washy idea of what it meant but then discovered that we had differing wishy-washy ideas, hence the library visit. To remind you, Gen Z is the generation born between 1997 and 2012, so aged anywhere between 12 and 28, the youth of today, if you will. Anyway, we had been led to believe that Gen Z was ‘abandoning alcohol’ and that this would have a serious knock on effect for the future of the drinks industry. However, this week, up stepped the IWSR and Bevtrac consumer research. Apparently, they tell us, ‘Gen Z is confounding conventional wisdom by reviving participation rates and consumption occasions.’ I read the whole article so you didn’t have to and learnt that, in 15 key markets surveyed, 73% said they’d had a drink in the last 6 months, up from 66% in 2023. Plus, they’re drinking a broader variety of drinks, loving their spirits and going out a lot more than other generations, which is frankly as it should be and long may it continue; we just need more of them to get into wine and our future will be secure!
Not much else to report in the wine world though, so again, we move on. Normally at this time of the year, Wayne is driving the narrative in these emails – ranting about the increased traffic resulting from the annual tennis competition taking place in the park and then typing excitedly about the start of the Tour de France. He’s got the day off today, so it’s down to me to man the moans but happily he left me his notes. In 2023 he fumed:
Greetings from the biggest and busiest carpark in south-west London. If you can’t find a taxi near you it’s because they are all sitting on Arthur Road, shouting at each other and trying to squeeze through spaces made for a VW Polo and not for a Land Rover Defender, so, if you don’t mind, you’ll have to reverse… Welcome to Wimbledon fortnight, come and smell the fumes.
Whilst in 2018 he wrote, with bullet points:
- a notable increase in oversized SUV’s struggling to drive on their side of the road or through width restrictions or in fact anywhere that there are other vehicles
- perma-tanned, beautiful people wearing glistening tennis whites whilst schooning pints of Lanson in Hemmingway’s
- lots of eager emmets will soon be emerging blinkingly from the penumbra of Wimbledon Park tube station to discover that the All England is not bang outside or even that close and no, they haven’t bothered to put up any signposts to help
- the Pig & Whistle will become a drop-in centre for people camping in the park yearning electricity and cushioned seating
- the Co-op will run out of anything salad or strawberry related but will have a plenitude of swedes and turnips and other winter casserole ingredients
- we’ll all become tennis experts once more
And in 2017 he told us this:
You’ll have seen the Wimbledon branded cars driving around on their practice runs the last two weeks (I’m sure they used smaller cars in the past, maybe saving on hotel rooms?). This can of course mean only one thing: Wimbledon fortnight is upon us! The Co-op will have sold out of all useful lunch items for the next few weeks so Alex and I will be on the microwave stew or Uncle Ben’s rice packs.
So, in a nutshell, Wimbledon fortnight consistently rewards us with Co-Op food shortages, big cars and lost tourists – got to love the consistency!
Away from tennis, we’ve got the Women’s Euros just started, England playing on Saturday. We’ve got Lions rugby down under, England in Argentina, Scotland in NZ and Wales in Japan. We’ve got cricket going on in the Midlands and we’ve got cycling masochism in France, as mentioned above. We’ll need a minimum of 3 screens I think, just to be on the safe side!
With fingers crossed for nicer weather than is currently forecast, we thought we’d open a couple of Iberian easy drinkers this weekend. For the white, we have the dangerously drinkable Vilacetinho Vinho Verde 2024 – £10.99. Founded in 1790, these chaps are one of the oldest producers of Vinho Verde in Portugal. Avesso, Arinto, Azal and Loureiro are the grapes, grown on south facing granite slopes. The wine is crisp and dry with lively, zingy, zesty citrus notes and a light spritz. Perfect as an apéritif, with a picnic, or just as a sundowner on the Riviera and, at only 11% alcohol, you can happily reach for that second glass!
The red comes from eastern Spain Bodega Sierra Norte Ananto 2023 – £12.99. The 67 hectare Finca Fuenteseca estate lies in Utiel-Requena, a high, rugged plateau, nearly 1,000 metres above sea level, just inland from Valencia. The grapes used are 65% Bobal and 35% Tempranillo; Tempranillo you will know from Rioja, whilst Bobal is the local grape variety, representing 80% of red vines in the region. The nose has complex aromas of dark fruits whilst the palate offers us ripe plum and bramble fruit with a juicy acidity nicely balanced by ripe, soft tannins.
Wayne insists that we leave the last words to a headline we read in cyclinguptodate.com on Wednesday: “To win the Tour, I have to be able to beat him” – Jonas Vingegaard is not looking for shortcuts to win Tour de France over Tadej Pogacar.
You heard it here first!