The Weekly Wine

Fellow Wine Lovers,

We thought we’d talk about Sir David Attenborough and his involvement in what Knight Frank described as “the largest block of land to come on the market in England in the last 30 years”. The Rothbury Estate, owned by the Percy family for the best part of 700 years, includes 1800 acres of woodland, a pub, red squirrels, a caravan site, 12 farms, skylarks, 23 residential properties and some fine fishing and shooting opportunities. The entire estate is 3,800 hectares, which we understand is about the size of modern Athens, and was put up for sale for £35 million. Our first thought was “Wow that’s cheap, only about half a flat overlooking Hyde Park”.

Anyway, what has this to do with Sir David Attenborough? Well, Sir David made an appeal on behalf of Northumberland Wildlife Trust and The Wildlife Trusts, who have a year to raise £30 million to buy the land with the aim of boosting wildlife and nature friendly farming. In essence, they’ll create a 40-mile (64km) “wild” corridor, from the coast to Kielder and the Scottish border. Sir David’s call to action caused 8,624 donations in the following 24 hours.

Rothbury Estate is the next door neighbour to our chums at Hepple Gin who, since 2020, started on a radical new direction with a plan called ‘managed wilding’. This looks at building the base of the food-chain, from water, soil carbon and fungal mycorrhiza to diverse vegetation and the insect population. Currently, the estate is host to some wonderful charismatic species: curlew, red grouse and lapwing rub shoulders with pedigree Longhorns, Exmoor Ponies and Highland cattle!

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so chapeau to Walter, Lucy and the Hepple Wilders! Chapeau also to Sir David Attenborough, a centurion who has just found a new role as an influencer, so cool for school!

Staying with property chat, we find we have another week and another housing crisis. This time it’s Rachel Reeves who may or may not have been naughty, poorly advised or the victim of a rubbish lettings agent. It seems she didn’t have a licence to let her family home out to rent; in truth, neither of us knew that you needed a licence, that you don’t need a licence with every local authority and why would the lettings agent not mention it when you offer them the property?

In politics, the Dutch have moved to the centre from the right, Trumpolina has been in Asia doing the YMCA dance, holding hands with the new Japanese PM, allowing the Koreans a nuclear sub and swapping soybeans/rare earth minerals with Xi Jinping.

In the Isle of Wight, a spider thought to be lost for 40 years has been found again. The white knuckled wolf spider was found at a remote nature reserve only accessible by boat in an area grazed by a flock of Hebridean sheep. The sheep are helping police with their enquiries over a few other disappearances but are so far tight lipped on both dodos and Glenn Miller.

Tasting This Weekend

Domaine de Vedilhan Viognier 2024 – £12.49.  This Languedoc estate, belonging to the Fayet family, is based in the village of Moussan, close to Narbonne. The property has a small brook running around the outskirts which provides natural irrigation to give much needed water. This gives the wines their freshness and appeal, keeping the vines cool in a very hot climate. A flirty Viognier: shimmering hay and peaches with a lush viscous texture give way to a sensual palate of roses, pineapples and mangoes. We think it will be awesome with that pumpkin soup followed by pumpkin risotto that we’ll all have going on after all that carving!

The red is a bit of an old favourite and very much of the season – Le Seigneur du Raveil Vacqueyras 2021/22 – £22.99.  Originally formed by 7 passionate winegrowers in 1956, today the Cave de Gigondas has increased to 78 members across 128 hectares in Gigondas whilst also taking in vineyards in Vacqueyras and Beaumes de Venise to bring the total to 260 hectares.  We loved this wine from the first mouthful – blackcurrant, black cherry, blackberry all make an appearance leading to some plum character on the finish with a dollop of spice to tidy it up.  Classic Rhône quality and poise.

That’s it for us, November tomorrow, winter draws on…

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Right, I think Wednesday night was probably the confirmation we all needed that summer is definitely over even if the sun is doing its best today.  We’ve had some wobbles over the last few weeks and shorts have been seen on Arthur Road as recently as last Friday but now it’s time to put some trousers and socks on because it’s definitely chilly.  And the change in the weather is perhaps timely, given that the farmers also agree with us and are putting the clocks back this Sunday morning.  2am becomes 1am, we get an ‘extra’ hour in bed, it’ll be dark by 4.30pm and instead of lighting the barbecue, we’ll be setting a fire, whilst drawing the curtains. 

It’s not all bad news though: roast potatoes, parsnips, sprouts, stuffing, gravy and fine roast meats now return to the throng; the slow cooker will dust itself down and turn grisly/gristly hunks of unloved cuts into succulent, melt in the mouth, show-stopping stews and whisky is considered medicinal once again, to be administered as and when required.

However, before we do all this, how about a glass of Champagne?  We just been reminded that, since 2009, the fourth Friday in October has been declared ‘Champagne Day’ and, whilst I realise a lot of you make every Friday a fizz Friday, this week it definitely needs to be the proper stuff!  Who reminded us you may ask?  We currently stock Champagnes from 8 different suppliers, so you could be forgiven for expecting it to be one of these Champagne houses that gave us the tip off.  However, you’d be wrong.  Not a single one of them has mentioned it to us, so we can only assume sales are so robust they feel no need of further promotion; in fact, a customer read about it in City AM on Tuesday and gave us the steer – we are eternally grateful for his attention to detail, the customer is always right!

If you need help choosing tonight’s tipple, here’s what we have in stock right now:

Bollinger La Grande Année 2014 – £135

Bollinger RD 2007 – £200

Bollinger Special Cuvée Brut NV – £60

Charles Heidsieck Brut Millésime 2012 – £115

Collet 1er Cru Brut Vintage 2016 – £58

De Saint Gall Orpale Blanc de Blancs 2008 – £125

Delavenne Père et Fils Grand Cru Brut Rose NV – £45

Jean Gimonnet ‘La Guette’ 2008 – £58

Lété-Vautrain 204 Brut NV MAGNUM – £66

Lété-Vautrain Echo Blanc de Noirs 2019 – £41

Lété-Vautrain Grand Millésime 2016 – £38

Lété-Vautrain Brut 204 NV – £33

Lété-Vautrain Brut 204 NV HALF – £18

Louis Roederer Cristal 2013 – £290

Louis Roederer Brut Vintage 2016 – £90

Louis Roederer Collection 245 Brut NV – £54

Pierre Moncuit Grand Cru Extra Brut Blanc de Blancs Millésime 2012 – £70

Tarlant Brut Nature NV MAGNUM – £120

Tarlant Brut Nature NV – £60

Something for everyone there, we think!

Talking of fancy drinks, it was wonderful to read yesterday that our local heroes, Thames Water, have been awarded a single star by the Environment Agency, chapeau!  One star means the company is poor performing and the scoring is based on, amongst other things, pollution incidents, compliance with permits and self-reporting.  Apparently, we’ll be getting £75 million back from them, taken off our bills, which we’ll promptly return to them to pay for the necessary system upgrades, so that’s alright then, they should be able to balance their books.

We should all raise a fancy drink to the England Women to mark their qualification for the Cricket World Cup semis – a masterclass in beating India on Sunday was followed by a brutal wake-up call against Australia on Wednesday which could prove to be timely as both these teams are also into the final stages.  European football was back on and in the Champions League this week all the English teams got results, none of them lost in fact.  4-0, 3-0, 0-2, 1-5, 0-0, 5-1 – anyone care to guess which of these swashbuckling results belongs to Spurs?!

And now to this weekend’s fancy drinks.  We have a new iteration of one of our ‘old’ whites and a brand new red – I know, we’ve gone bananas…

We’ve been selling wines from Cape Mentelle for a few years now, having been fans of the Western Australia winery for even longer.  We used to sell their Margaret River Chardonnay but they stopped making that and replaced it with Cape Mentelle Sixteen Hectares Chardonnay 2023 – £26.99.  A subtle name change, which was explained to us thus: Sixteen Hectares wines do have some oak maturation, with vineyard selection being key – for example, blending Chardonnay from Chapman Brook Vineyard for its white peach character with fruit from Crossroads Vineyard which has citrus notes that can fill out the mid-palate.  Ok, noted.  When we tasted it, it was a bit like greeting an old friend that you haven’t seen for a while and desperately hoping that you still get on – suffice to say the relationship just grew stronger.  Peach, melon, mandarin and honeysuckle on the nose with richer fruit on the palate, a hint of savoury nuttiness and zesty, crisp acidity – welcome back, old chum!

The red is a Pinot Nero from Venezia.  It’s been many moons since we had an Italian Pinot so this is a welcome new arrival.  La Cantina Pizzolato Pinot Nero 2024 – £14.99 – Settimo Pizzolato is the 5^th generation of his family to run this winery and over the last 20 years he has focused on sustainability and organic production.  This Pinot Nero has a nice open cherry nose whilst the palate has a slight spritz of freshness on the front, followed by juicy fruit that is a touch richer leading to a decently persistent finish.

That’s all from us, time for a glass of Moncuit Millésime 2012 I reckon…bottoms up!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

First up, Happy Birthday to Wyclef Jean, Anil Kumble and Eminem – three unlikely musketeers – joined by actors Mathhew Macfadyen and Felicity Jones around a cake holding 257 candles, deep breathes everybody, make a wish…

However, before we get too carried away with celebrating the birthdays of complete strangers let’s first tune up our tiny violins for the Fine Wine Market, specifically the En Primeur aspect of it.  We’ve been hearing the rumours for a while now but this was confirmed when we heard some of the findings of the inaugural 67 Pall Mall London Fine Wine Trends Report.  Trade rag, Drinks Retailing, reports that the “members were particularly disillusioned with the rising price of En Primeur wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy.  Members noted that they felt prices had been inflated to ‘the point where it no longer makes sense to buy wines on release,’ instead opting to purchase on the secondary market.”

Couldn’t agree more, ordinary punters have been being priced out of the market over the last few years and, as Adam Garforth MW pointed out: “Bordeaux only started being really successful after the 1982 vintage – and that’s only 40 years ago. Before that, they were working like dogs. But since then, they’ve become a bit lazy.”  A selling policy that relies on customers FOMO must have a limited shelf life – we ourselves have seen this with one of our suppliers that we buy top end Italian, Spanish and American kit from.  We have bought a number of wines from these characters ‘En Primeur’, with allocation restrictions, stipulations and complicated terms whilst also paying for these wines anywhere up to 24 months before we see them.  Imagine our delight when some of their wines turned up on the Christmas Offers list last week, for less than we paid for them 2 years ago!

Anyway, we’re not bitter and we move on.  We’ve all heard about people ‘diagnosing’ bone spurs to avoid going to war but it would seem they’re not the first to use a ‘note’ to their advantage.  Our very own former PM, Sir Winston, received a note from Otto C. Pickhardt, M.D. on January 26, 1932, to circumvent Prohibition rules:

This is to certify that the post-accident convalescence of the Hon. Winston S. Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at meal times. The quantity is naturally indefinite but the minimum requirements would be 250 cubic centimetres.

With power comes great irresponsibility, still.

Anyway, back to wine.  We suggested a few new listings last week and now I can let you know about a few more:

First up, a low-alcohol Riesling.  We’ve found the No & Lo sector a bit difficult to navigate and have tasted more than we’d have liked to try and find something that feels like it could almost be wine.  We’ve got a couple in stock already but two weeks ago we tasted Walt LØ Riesling 0.5% – £11.49 which was a bit of a revelation.  Riesling is a natural fit for a low alcohol wine, given they are often made at 8.5%, their fruit and acidity being constantly appealing.  Often however, they can be too, too sweet, which is why this one was a revelation – fresh, crisp, light and fruity but with some crisp apple character and a hint of peach in the background, not at all bad.

Next up, a new beer.  Herzoglich Bayerisches Brauhaus Tegernsee Tegernseer Hell – £3.60 is definitely easier to drink than it is to say!  A few customers suggested we try this and so we did – for me it falls somewhere between Augustiner and Paulaner in style and is certainly refreshing!

Klippenkop Pinotage 2023 – £15.49 comes from Robertson Valley where the grapes are sourced from 22 different families.  Ripe strawberry and juicy plum fruit character make it an easy-going style with plenty of appeal and a slightly richer finish – benchmark!

Two wines from Bordeaux next, one new and one a returner: Château Curton La Perriere 2020 – £18.29 which is 100% Merlot from 30 year old vines located about 15 kilometres from Saint-Émilion which gives us a wine with dark plum fruit with a touch of spice and nice silky tannins – perfect with a roast!  Château La Fleur de Bouard 2014 – £44.00 is the returning hero.  Owned by the same family as Chateau Angelus, this wine is always great value.  A blend of 80% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Franc and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon it is very much the modern style of claret, really voluptuous on the medium to full bodied palate with black cherry and berry fruits, toasted spice, mocha and a hint of graphite. The tannins are oh so silky and it has an impressive velvety finish.

Finally, something that has been on the shelf for a while but I don’t think we have mentioned – Marqués de Murrieta Reserva 2016 – £44.00 this comes from the southernmost part of Rioja Alta from a great vintage.  Dark cherry fruit character, some cedar notes and a touch of smoke.  Full bodied and complex on the palate with spice and dark fruits once more finishing with enough tannin to keep it tidy – all a bit of a treat in a glass!

We won’t be tasting any of these this weekend because we will be exploring the great value that can be found in South Africa, away from Burgundy and Bordeaux.

De Wetshof Estate ‘Lesca’ Chardonnay 2023, Robertson, South Africa – £20.99 the name De Wetshof has been synonymous with the production of fine wines in South Africa since the 1970’s. Named after Danie de Wet’s wife, this is a lightly wooded Chardonnay, exuding lively aromas of citrus, green apple and butterscotch on the nose.  With the elegance and intensity of great white Burgundy it has a complex, racy palate of lemon, peach and ripe apple flavours with nutty and mineral notes.  Pork stuffed with prunes was the winery recommendation and we won’t argue with that.

Meerlust Red 2021 – £20.99 is a classic Bordeaux style blend of 32% Merlot, 31% Cabernet Franc, 29% Cabernet Sauvignon and 8% Petit Verdot.  First released in 1985, which marked the first declassification of the Rubicon wine because the harvest quality that year did not meet the exacting quality standards for the flagship, nowadays the Red is in regular production and the quality remains tip-top.  Aromas of cassis and plums drag you into an immediately appealing, medium-bodied red with crushed black fruit, a touch of vanilla spice and soft silky tannins.  A great partner to a rack of lamb or other chunks of meat, of course…

And now we finish with one more birthday, which was actually yesterday, 16^th October.  Oscar Wilde would have been 171 years old and the British Library celebrated this by re-issuing his Readers Card which was revoked in June 1895 due to him having a criminal record – not before time, considering he died in November 1900!

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken – solid Wilde Wisdom!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

How did we get to Friday already?

We’ve had the Conservative Party Conference, it seemed very sparsely attended, and I even saw photos of an empty hotel bar on a Saturday night! Kemi made a surprisingly traditional party leaders speech and will be chuffed because it went well on social media. That said, there was little in the way of new ideas in it except, perhaps, the promise to abolish stamp duty on your main residence. Unfunded tax cuts seem to be recurring theme that is not being learned from. Other than that, everything is spiffing and she should keep her job until at least the May local elections. Michael Heseltine was on Newsnight the other night, he didn’t swerve the questions, answering succinctly and briefly, almost felt like he was reminding us what we’ve lost!

Over in France they are enjoying the revolving door for Prime Ministers that we had for a while in Downing Street. If anybody has a spare couple of days in the next week or two, just drop Macron a line, I gather the lunch is rather good!

Over in the US, there is little sign of improvement. The Tango Tariffmeister is still sending unwanted troops to cities whose citizens chose to democratically elect people with the wrong colour rosette. The latest story is that the National Guard is there to protect ICE. If ICE didn’t feel the need to keep zip tying children in the middle of the night, perhaps they wouldn’t need protection. As usual, the official communications have less truth than is told at an MP’s expense audit. A sad old state of affairs causing havoc and chaos everywhere you look.

I’m sure you’ve heard that “Every day is a School Day”. I had an absolute wowser of one this week. I learnt how they track the migration pattern of the Monarch butterfly! It seems you catch one in a net, pop it in a fridge for a few minutes, which works like an anaesthetic then they pop it in an envelope and weigh it (1.75g), then brush a few scales off its back and apply a tiny tracker with non-toxic glue. Then, with the tracker attached, the butterfly is released. The one I read about did a couple of circles then flew off and was tracked from Southern Ontario to Oklahoma!

Finally, thoughts turn to wine and not before time! This week we’ve started to see the arrival of some of the fruits of our tasting sessions:

Cap Classique Jacques Bruére Blanc de Blancs 2013 (£20.99) – we’ve been looking for a Cap Classique on and off for ages but hadn’t quite found what we were looking for. Now we have. This is crisp, dry and elegant with a decent amount of complexity as well as being different enough to our other non-champagne sparklers.

Gilles Remoriquet Bourgogne Pinot Noir 2023 (£23.99) – this is selected from a number of plots across Nuits Saint Georges and the Cote de Beaune. A wine with lovely pure cherry fruit, a touch of spice, and elegant and supple structure. Deliciously charming in the glass. We’ve also got some of his Nuits Saint Georges 2023 (£45).

Chateau Grandis 2015 (£22.99) some of you may recall drinking plenty of the 2010 of this wine, we sold cases and cases of it and then didn’t like the next vintage. Well, we’re definitely back on board now, this is absolutely on point. It’s a small estate with all the farming done organically and by hand. The blend is 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc. My notes say “absolutely top value claret just like 2010 was” and gave it the double tick.

Christian Bellang Cuvée des Gouttes 2023 (£22.49) this isa cracking Chardonnay from one of our favourite Meursault producers for the price of a wine from the Mâconnais.

Highgate Chardonnay 2023 (£14.99) my tasting note says “nothing wrong with that at all, great value!” make of that what you will but I think I liked it.

Fernando de Castilla Yema 2024 (£21.50) made from 100% Palomino grown in a vineyard just south east of Jerez. This is a vino de pasto the name given to the unfortified still wines of this area. Cool fermented and aged on its lees for six months, this has apple and stone fruit character, some leesy complexity and a lovely minerality too. Fish pie anyone?

Which bring me nicely onto what we’ll taste this weekend…

We shall start off in the white shirt with the new Christian Bellang Cuvée des Gouttes 2023 (£22.49) mentioned above.

Making the red mark on that white shirt will be Croix de Marsan Bordeaux 2020 (£17.49) from the Entre Deux Mers region of Bordeaux, this is a Merlot dominant blend aged in barriques for six months.

Fellow Wine Lovers,

We’ll start by raising our hats to the Rugby World Champions, England’s Red Roses. They really took the game to Canada who appeared, on this occasion, to have little answer. In the interests of balance, congratulations to Magdeleine Vallieres who became Canada’s first women’s World Road Race Champion, just before the rugby final started. A bonus for this viewer was that the timing was perfect for changing channels – chapeau!

On the Ryder Cup front, the Europeans successfully defended their position, despite the best efforts of a rather raucous crowd that seems to get worse every visit. I guess if that bad behaviour starts at the top, then it’s difficult to get anybody to behave. Clearly, the perfect place to host next year’s FIFA World Cup… perhaps we should send some Millwall fans over?

Talking of the World Cup, the ticket prices fell into our lap this week. The Mexico opener is $370 a seat at the cheapest level, the Canadian opener is $355 and the US opener $560. To us it looks like the Canadian one is the value but let’s not forget the US price includes bed and breakfast at an ICE facility and possibly a flight to South America.

The US government is shut down, with neither side seeming to want to negotiate for the moment. That’ll leave nearly a million government employers locked out of work and going unpaid. It’s amazing that a mechanism designed to protect the taxpayer from the excesses of government has become so debased.

Here, the government has been shut because it’s conference season. The Lib Dems were swanning around in Bournemouth, with Ed Davey joining a marching band to kick it off. The Labour Party was living it up in Liverpool, mostly talking about Nigel Farage, whilst we look forward to The Conservative Party coming at you from Manchester next week. Rumours they have booked the room upstairs at the Circus Tavern are wide of the mark. Kemi Badenoch’s statement that Robert Kenrick’s ideas are just “my thoughts repackaged” sets it all up nicely. The Greens start theirs today in Bournemouth, luckily the disruptions in the train service to Bournemouth have been rescheduled.

There’s been a bit of a furore this week about the AI actor Tilly Norwood. Many pages have been written, powerful unions have made comment and many actors have suggested that agencies don’t add Tilly to their books. Perhaps we can just point out that Tilly is not actually an actor but just a computer program similar to the special effects in The Matrix or Lord of the Rings, there might be a little calm – it’s Hal 9000 you need to worry about!

To make difficult choices easier, we will visit USA and Georgia this week to open the following…

Vina Robles Viognier 2021 – £23.49 – this hails from Paso Robles in California, where the Pacific coastline unfolds into rugged ranch-lands and cowboy ambience (and who doesn’t love a story with cowboy ambience?).  This Viognier is planted in the highest part of the Huerhuero Vineyard, benefitting from the cooling afternoon pacific breeze.  Crisp and medium-bodied with peach and mandarin fruit with a long lively finish – really rather fabulous.

Bedoba Saperavi 2022 – £20.99 – Made from the indigenous grape variety, Saperavi, and partially vinified in traditional qvevri vessels, Bedoba means `Day of Luck’.  A small fraction of the fruit is fermented in whole bunches whilst a selection of the grapes are left to dry naturally on the vines until November, ensuring a fine balance between the savoury and spicy elements of the grape. 

Lastly, in a break from recent protocol, we will be here all day on Tuesday, as we should be!