The Weekly Wine

Fellow Wine Lovers,

We’ll start the week with some birthdays. Dennis the Menace will feature on a special 50p coin issued by the Royal Mint this week, to celebrate achieving the ripe old age of 75. Weirdly, it’ll cost £15 to buy one, inflation off the charts or the oddness of coin collecting, you decide.

In Spring, National Treasure David Attenborough will be celebrating his 100^th birthday with a week of special programmes starting on the 8^th May. A new programme will show behind the scenes on ‘Life on Earth’, which was first broadcast in 1979 and has visited 40 countries.

Celebrating his 66^th birthday yesterday, the Andrew formerly known as Prince was arrested at his new home in Norfolk. Barely had his birthday crumpet popped up in the toaster than the heavy boots of Thames Valley Police were crunching up the path to his door. He has been arrested on suspicion of wrongdoing in public office, which we suspect is like getting Al Capone on tax evasion.  The King says “the law must take its course”.

We bet he’s sweating now.

Elsewhere, South Korea demonstrated that nobody is above the law by jailing their ex-president Yoon Suk-Yeol for life. He was found to have damaged their democracy by trying to impose martial law in December 2024.

In a place where an entire administration feels they are above the law, Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, called for the authors of a NY Federal Reserve paper to be “disciplined”. The paper pointed out that business and consumers are bearing the higher cost of tariffs. He even went as far as calling them an “embarrassment”. One wonders about looking in the mirror. In other Fed news, central bank policymakers warned that progress towards the central bank’s inflation target “might be slower and more uneven than generally expected”. We can’t think why.

Last week’s rugby didn’t all go according to plan; I certainly didn’t recognise that Scot’s team as the same people who played the week before. Looks like Van der Merwe will be back against Wales and that England may have had a chat with themselves. Possibly the game of the weekend will be on Sunday in Paris where France host Italy.

In the other shaped ball, Arsenal seem rather too happy to squander leading positions and rescue a single point from games they really should be winning. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen on Sunday.

In booze news, Brewdog seems to be in rather a lot of bother, up for sale and in danger of wiping out all its Equity for Punk Investors. I think possibly the founders and the toxic work culture have had more to do with their demise than the Chancellor’s tax rises.

On the wine front, we’ll be opening a couple of new Portuguesers this weekend. They hail from the Tejo region of Portugal. Located between Lisbon and Alentejo, it is Portugal’s fifth largest wine region.

Monte da Serra Branco 2024 (£12.49) is a blend of Arinto, Fernão Pires and Verdelho, whilst the Monte da Serra Tinto 2024 (£12.49) is a blend of Syrah, Castelão and Aragonez. When we tasted them we found them to be fruity, but not overly so and really rather good drinkers. Come and have a taste and let us know what you think.

Finally an admin note – next Friday – Friday 27th February, we will be closing early.  It’s our annual trip up the hill to help out at the KCS quiz night, so in order to get this all set up, we will be closing at 5PM – apologies in advance.

And with that, we’re off to find out if Pizza Express Woking does deliveries by drone!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Tasks for this weekend:

• Rugby – Ireland v Italy – 2.10pm Saturday 14^th
• Rugby – Scotland v England – 4.40pm Saturday 14^th
• Rugby – Wales v France – 3.10pm Sunday 15^th
• Priority – Valentines Day – all day Saturday 14^th
• Priority – Dinner and Gifts – any time after 7pm Saturday 14^th
• FA Cup/Winter Olympics – watch highlights once other tasks completed

One would add that, if you want your priorities to be successful and well received, one should perhaps postpone the Guinness/Peroni/Tennent’s Extra/Neck Oil adventure until later in the day.

So, yes, it’s St Valentine’s Day this weekend, which is the first time it has fallen on a Saturday for 11 years, I’m told.  By all accounts, on 14^th February 2015, Australia beat England by 111 runs in the opening round of the ICC Cricket World Cup (spoiler alert: Australia won the whole competition whilst England failed to progress to the knockout stages).   Meanwhile, a fragile ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia in the Donbas War had been agreed which was then quickly broken and still they are fighting… not enough has improved over the last decade, sadly.

In the 2015 Six Nations, on this date England beat Italy (47-17), Ireland beat France (18-11) whilst Scotland would lose to Wales (23-26) at Murrayfield on the Sunday.

And with that, you are all suitably equipped with a rich variety of candlelit dinner conversation starters – thank me later.

Should romance, and not rugby, be your thing, here’s some background, courtesy of www.history.co.uk/articles/the-pagan-roots-of-valentine-s-day

“many historians believe the day originated from the Roman pagan festival of fertility called Lupercalia…. a major festival on the Roman calendar commemorated every year on February 15.  It was held in honour of the gods Faunus and Lupercus, the gods of agriculture and fertility.  In a representation of fertility and because Lupercus was a god of shepherds, two male goats were sacrificed in the cave.  This was followed by the sacrifice of a dog to represent purification and because dogs often guard the flocks. Blood taken from the sacrificial knife was then smeared across the foreheads of two naked Luperci.  The knife was then wiped clean with a piece of milk-soaked wool. Historians have suggested this ritual is the reason why Valentine’s Day is associated with the colours red and white; red represents the blood from the sacrifice whilst white represents the milk on the wool that wipes the knife clean, signifying new life.”

Ok, perhaps not as romantic as one might hope, let’s read on:

“Feasting followed this ritual and after stomachs were full the Luperci cut strips from the sacrificed goats called ‘thongs’ and dipped them in the sacrificial blood.  The Luperci then ran naked through the streets of Rome and whipped any woman within striking distance. Many welcomed the lashings, often revealing bare skin for the thongs to strike. The Romans believed that the thongs would make childless women more fertile whilst blessing pregnant women with the gift of an easy birth.”

Hmmm, not sure about the naked whipping thing but I think the next bit might be closer to what we now recognise:

“Another custom during Lupercalia was the pairing of young Roman boys and girls.  At some point during the festival, the names of young girls were written on bits of paper and slipped into a jar.  Every young man would then pull out a girl’s name from the jar; the pair would then be coupled together for the duration of Lupercalia.  Many stayed together until the following year’s festival, some even fell in love and married.”

Bless.

In the real world, the mainstream media continues to publish many of the same stories as last week whilst in the wine world there is a definite news lull, perhaps they’ve all gone skiing?  One piece of news that did raise a smile was the release of the 2026 Michelin Guide Great Britain & Ireland which gave the restaurant Opening of the Year Award to Maria Bradford’s Shwen Shwen in Sevenoaks.  Now, we know a little bit about Sevenoaks and honestly never imagined that this soulless dormitory town would become home to ‘an unforgettable dining experience that brings the rich, vibrant flavours of Sierra Leone to Sevenoaks.’  Chapeau, Maria; Chapeau, Sevenoaks – most exciting thing to happen here since the storm of 1987!

So, what are you going to drink with your fancy food on Saturday night?  If it helps, we’ll be opening the following wines this weekend: Collequieto Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi 2024 – £13.99 and Valenciso Rioja Reserva 2019 – £29.00.

We chose the white because it comes from Italy, the home of Lupercalia.  Hailing from Abruzzo this comes from a family vineyard, with around 35 hectares between the Apennine Mountains and the Adriatic coast, who we think offer excellent value.  Verdicchio is one of Italy’s noble white varieties and this has delicate hawthorn aromas as well as apple and citrus.  The palate is a little richer with a lovely freshness, some minerality and a touch of nuttiness to the finish.

The red, from Rioja, is a wine we’ve been banging on about since Alex visited them in 2007, the winery having been established in 1998 as a collaboration between ex Bodegas Palacios’ Luis Valentin and Carmen Enciso.  They are fully quality focused with the Reserva being their flagship wine – they don’t make a Crianza or a Gran Reserva.  The wine offers us savoury aromas alongside lifted, perfumed notes of violet and blackberry leading to an elegant palate – tight and concentrated with spice, fine tannins, great complexity and purity.

Delicious.

That’ll be it from us, as a quick heads up, we’ll be opening a bit later on Tuesday 17^th, another tasting in town I’m afraid, but I imagine a number of you will be tucking into a Jambon Buerre on some forsaken French hill, so you won’t even notice!

Don’t ignore the task list at the top – if it helps, we have lots of cold Champagne!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

So we have all survived another splendid week with no news and nothing much to talk about. As we mosey on out of dry January it seems we’re having a rather wet February with four days out of five involving the wet weather gear, today still to be decided!

So it turns out that Peter Mandelson is a bit of a wrong ‘un then. Who could have known? There were no clues from his 1998 resignation for dodgy house funding, or from his 2001 resignation for talking to the Home Office about a British Passport for an Indian billionaire. Let alone champagne fuelled trips from Davos to Russian Ice Hockey games with aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska. If any of these previous indiscretions had been public knowledge we might have had to question the judgement of the Prime Minister and the governments vetting process. Could Mandelson be off to FIFA next?

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as “New START” and signed in 2010, expired at midnight on Wednesday. It was the last nuclear weapons control treaty between the US and Russia, but luckily both countries are led by very level headed gentleman so we’re absolutely sure there is nothing to worry about. Pope Leo sounded a little more nervous saying the situation “calls for doing everything possible to avert a new arms race”. Good point well-made perhaps.

On a more cheerful note we had the Grammy’s this week. As usual there was much discussion of the hits, or otherwise, as to the sartorial choices of those on the red carpet. What caught my eye though was the Lifetime Achievement Award, given posthumously to Fela Kuti almost 30 years after his death. He becomes the first African to win the award. Congratulations also to The Cure who won Best Alternative Music Album for “Songs Of A Lost World” and Best Alternative Performance for “Alone” their single from the album. Finally, kudos to the Dalai Lama who won with his audiobook: “Meditations: The Reflections of His Holiness the Dalai Lama”. Beijing was unimpressed, describing the award as “anti-China political manipulation”.

The Winter Olympics have started; time to reacquaint yourselves with curling, skeleton and speed skating. Also, it’ll be worth having a look out for ski mountaineering appearing for the first time. No I don’t know either, but will look out for it later in the month. Apparently its SkiMo to the cool kids and will be happening on the Stelvio! Elsewhere,  most of the chatter in ski jumping is about ‘enhancements’ that may or maybe not being used to increase the size of their suits.

The Six Nations started last night – which is unusual for a Thursday (apologies to Tommy Cooper fans). France certainly showed how much work Ireland has left to do with Les Bleus cruising to a convincing win in Paris.

On Saturday, a much more sensible day, Italy host Scotland for the early game at a weird 14.10, and England will host Wales at the funny old time of 16.40.

Cheese and Wine Tasting 12 February 7.30pm – £30 Just a couple of places left, you already know what’s in the work diary so what are you waiting for?

Cheese and Wine are known to be life enhancing….

Tasting this Weekend

We’ll give Martin and Anna Arndorfer’s Handcrafted Grüner Veltliner 2024 (£19.99) a spin around in the glass, it’s gently spiced pear and apple fruit character deserves a share. Made unfiltered and unsulphured from grapes that are farmed organically, this is a cracker.

A farm run by the same family since 1870 gives us our red: Alceñ0 Sierra de Enmedio Monastrell (£11.99) hailing from old vines frown in Jumilla Spain this is a medium bodied red, soft and elegant and just the ticket with those sausages you picked up at the farmers market!