The Weekly Wine

Fellow Wine Lovers,

This week a judge in Spain decided that the 211 bags of blood & plasma seized in the Operation Puerto doping case should be destroyed. Whilst we appreciate that doping was not illegal in Spain when the bags were seized, we are amazed that the Spanish court feels unable to co-operate with either WADA or even the Spanish anti-doping agency. Surely this alone must rule Madrid out of hosting the 2020 Olympics? Is an all German Champions League Final connected, we wonder?

Elsewhere a 16.5 m high Rubber Duck floated into Hong Kong yesterday…

Cheese & Wine Tasting

Following the success of last week’s event we thought we’d follow on with another one. We choose four cheeses, put six wines alongside them and discuss the merits (or otherwise) of the choice. Our next evening is Thursday 23^rd May here at the shop 8pm start. £15 buys your place at the table and you can call us on 020 8944 5224 to book.

Oh look at us!

The sharp eyed amongst you may have noticed we got a brief mention in last Saturday’s Victoria Moore column in The Daily Telegraph…

“Brezza Barbera d’Alba Santa Rosalia 2010 Piemonte, Italy (13.5%, Park Vintners, SW19, £19.29)

One of the Brezza wines as raved about in my column this week. These reds are as gentle as chiffon, and the tannin that gives them bones and structures feels as if it has been hand-stitched with a tiny, fine-pointed needle. The barbera would light up any evening. I might nibble at some prosciutto or have a simple risotto Milanese to keep hunger pangs away.”

Bank Holiday Weekend

We have checked several weather pages on the interweb and all of them seem to agree there will be a circular orangey thing in the sky. This can mean only one thing…

Cycling season is amongst us.

The Giro d’Italia starts Saturday with Sir Bradley battling to be the first Brit to win the “Maglia Rosa”. He’s up against it though with 2012 winner Ryder Hesjedal and local hero Vincenzo Nibali both keen to wear pink too.

With all this in mind we shall have on the tasting table…

Cuvée Jean-Paul Rosé – £7.29 a deliciously elegant pink form the Gascony region of France.

Brezza Barbera d’Alba Santa Rosalia 2010 – £19.29 is Italian, elegant and apparently well regarded in press circles.

We shall be closed on Bank Holiday Monday.

Finally, it is with a heavy heart that we report news that The Spice Girls musical will be closing in June, clearly not “Viva Forever”. You have but a few weeks left to ‘Spice Up Your Life’.

Allez Allez

Wayne & Alex

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Happy days are here again, the sun is shining, the rosé is in the fridge, as is the Cidre Breton and thus we’re altogether more jolly this week.  Many things have made us smile over the week, here is a quick snapshot:

• The fittest man in football made his debut for Guernsey FC in their 4-2 defeat by local heroes, Colliers Wood.  Welcome back Matt Le Tissier, what was your nickname again?
• Luis Suarez gets banned.  He should also get muzzled and vets with tranquiliser darts should be on hand whenever he is out in public.  Animal.
• The trainer for Godolphin claims he thought his use of steroids with 15 of his horses was fine because they were in the off-season.   Oh, and this is the same stable that decided not to renew Frankie Dettori’s contract for 2013, due to his recreational drug use.  Seems, perhaps, that the basic rules on drugs in horseracing need to be made a bit clearer.
• Germany show Spain how to score goals.  Twice, in two nights.  Mourinho’s face…
• Chris Gayle scores 100 off 30 balls.
• We avoid triple dip.
• After a year of Merton Council stupidity they have re-instated the 20 minutes free parking on Arthur Road – press the green button, get the free ticket, buy a steak from the butcher, come and see us for wine, get back in the car, job’s a good’un.
• The London Marathon went off hitch-free, made us all very excited, so we’re signing up to run it next year, who’s with us?!

Time & Leisure

It’s not easy winning anything.  It takes hard work, good support, a dollop of luck and a touch of being, perhaps, just that little bit better than the others.

The only thing harder than winning a trophy once, is retaining it the following season.  Never happens.  Just imagine if Sir Alex Ferguson, Roger Federer, or Lance Armstrong even, had managed to capitalise on their early promise, consider how amazing it would be if they had kept on coming back and winning year on year!

Keener to be associated with the first two names on the list (rather than the disgraced habitual drug cheat), we come to you with our begging bowls in hand/hearts on sleeves/destiny in your hands.

PLEASE VOTE FOR US, AGAIN.

 http://www.timeandleisure.co.uk/food-and-drink-awards/2279-best-wine-retailer.html

Ideally, we would ask you to select Park Vintners.  I’ve just voted, Wayne has yet to do so but I have high hopes, and if as many of you as possible could put ‘x’ in the correct box we would be oh so very thankful!  Voting closes on 12^th July I believe so you will be receiving reminders…

Or you can text Time03703 to 81400 which is charged at 50p plus the one standard network rate text, whatever that means.

Looking down the list of different nominations in other categories I notice local seafood specialist The Fish Peddler in there, and I wipe away a tear.  I’m sure many of you have visited Roger in Southfields and bought a nice chunk of turbot and some brown shrimps for Friday supper, ordered your smoked salmon for Christmas, treated yourself to some scallops over the years… well I’m sorry to say that this will no longer be possible come the end of next week.  It would seem that battling daily the combined forces of the Tesco and Sainsbury’s stores within feet of his shop has finally taken its toll and Roger is hanging up his apron for good. 

He’s always been good to us, he was a local independent trying to make a few quid in a marketplace awash with big bullies, and we’ll miss him.  Good luck Roger, sorry to see you go.

Tasting

Just a quick recap, a few places left on our Wine School that starts next Wednesday 1^st May at 8pm,

• 2 hours a week, for 6 weeks, tasting wine…

And if you fancy a warm up, this weekend we’ll be cracking open the Cidre Breton £4.75/litre to give you all a glimpse of life beyond Magners.  We’ll also open the recently returned Fattoria Lavacchio Chianti Rufina Cedro 2008 £14.39, which is a lovely, rich yet elegant Chianti with cheery cherry fruits, a touch of spice, some fine tannins and hints of earthy minerals.  It was a big hit last summer and it should be again this.  Plus it’s organic.

So that’s us for this week – a missive that encompasses Matt Le Tissier, triple dip, cider and voting is a mighty rare beast and you saw it here first!

Alex & Wayne

Fellow Wine Lovers,

It’s been a distressingly sombre week, with very few laughter moments, so I feel a bit of whimsy is called for.

You’re born.  You grow up, you go to school, you become a teenager.  You rule the world for a few years because you now know everything.  Perhaps you then go to University, become a nurse, join the armed forces.

You go out for drinks.  You find suddenly that you’re going out for drinks more often with just one person.  Suddenly that person is stealing half your duvet in the middle of the night and resting their cold feet on the back of your legs.

Sod it – would you do me the great honour of…. etc .  You get married, you smoke cigars.  You give up cigars in order to be allowed back in to the marital bed.  You carry on going to work.

Children arrive.  You smoke cigars again.  This time you really do give them up when you see yourself in the mirror looking more Churchill than Tom Selleck.  You sell your flat, buy an estate car, start to seriously consider the merits of owning a shed.  And a lawnmower.  Before you know it you have all of the above, plus 6 fish, a dog, a hamster and more High School Musical DVDs than is safe.

Someone, your Mum usually, mentions schools.  What do you mean schools?  I only just left… twenty years ago.  Blimey.

And so it comes to pass.  It’s 8.30pm, kids are in bed, dinner’s in the oven, time for a cheeky glass of wine.  You’ve earned it, not just today but the whole of your life you have been earning this glass of wine.  Respect it, enjoy it, sniff it, swirl it, savour it, luxuriate in it – this is what it’s all been building towards. 

But what is it?

Erm, I think it’s a Sauvignon, but it might be a Chenin Blanc, I’m not sure, but I quite like it and the bloke in the wine shop rattled on about citrus and acidity and balance and mouthfeel and apples and floral blossom and good long finish and… aaaah, why don’t I know more????

Because you haven’t had time.  In your Mars life of work, rest and play, you have never actually had the chance to appreciate your drinks.  You can change a car tyre, juggle spreadsheets, juggle even, snowboard, cook a mean Paella and explain the nuances of being offside to a six year old, but you still haven’t got a Scooby what’s in your glass.

Time for us to offer some help.

Our offer

How do you fancy a couple of hours a week, for six weeks, out of the house, tasting wine?  We’ll provide spittoons (still in mint condition, but there just in case!) and some gentle education. 

The first week we’ll learn how to taste wine and you will get to practice with at least 8 different wines.

Weeks 2 and 3 we will continue our tasting practice with many different white wines and different grape varieties – let’s say about another 20 wines.

Week 4, Wayne will guide you magnificently through the wines of Bordeaux and their alter ego’s in other regions of the world.

Week 5, more red wines, from all over the world.

Week 6, bubbles, bubbles, bubbles.

In amongst all this we’ll try some Rosés, some sweet wines and examine common wine faults.  We’ll also discuss food and wine matching and cellaring.

You’ll try in the region of 60 wines, and if nothing else, by the end you should have a fairly good idea of what you do and don’t like, and you’ll have discovered a number of new grapes that you hadn’t previously dared to try.

Sound good?  The course starts on Wednesday 1^st May at 8pm, and wraps up on Wednesday 12^th June.  There is a week break (Wednesday 29^th May) for half term, or as we like to call it, a revision week.

It costs £150 per person and we provide everything you need.

To recap

• 2 hours a week, for 6 weeks, drinking wine
• That’s probably enough of a recap…

As they say on those marvellous TV adverts, our team are here and ready to take your call on 020 8944 5224.  Or you can email us – shop@parkvintners.co.uk – or pop in and see us, which is by far the best idea, because we’ll have wine open to taste tonight and tomorrow.

Wine open to taste

Wow, I’m slick.

Wayne’s off on his bike somewhere this weekend, so I’m in charge for once.  Pandemonium.

Whilst I would love to open every bottle in the shop when the guvnor’s not here, I’m under strict instructions and am limited to just the two bottles.  I’ve opted for two wines from the Australian estate De Bortoli The Accomplice Semillon-Sauvignon 2012 and The Accomplice Shiraz 2012 (both £8.49), which we believe are extremely good value, really approachable everyday quaffing wines. 

If you haven’t earned that glass of wine…

… but actually consider a cold beer to be a suitable lifetime achievement award then you may be interested to know that we have taken on two more beers from our new local superstar , Rocky Head Brewery.  Steve, who creates the magic down there on Kimber Road, has an extremely efficient sales patter – I’ve brewed a couple of new beers, how many would you like?! – and we then tell him how many, and he drops them round, no messin’.

The two NKOTB (if you know what that is without looking it up you should be feeling as ashamed as I feel for writing it) are:

Rocky Head AAPA, which stands for Anglo American Pale Ale, is described as a hoppy, fruity pale ale brewed with the finest English malts and yeast and huge amounts of aromatic American leaf hops.

Rocky Head Hop Ditch is their take on a Belgium sour.  Masses of tropical hop flavours a just a refreshing kiss of acidity.

Both come bottle conditioned in 500ml format, both are £4.00, and both arrived in the shop last Saturday.  So they really are new.

I’m here today and tomorrow, tasting wine, writing tasting notes, signing people up to the Wine School, so why not swing on by and see me and remember, if you’re running the marathon, all that pasta-based carb loading can only be enhanced by a nice glass of wine!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

A momentous week for many reasons, the cricket season started, the snow melted, the Masters started at Augusta (who incidentally allowed their first two female members, one of whom is Condoleezza Rice) and the Dubai Police department launched their best ever recruitment tool…a Lamborghini Aventador as your jam jar. I bet its rubbish over speed bumps though!

Wine School

Want to taste 60 wines and learn the difference between Malbec and Merlot? Some past students have even discovered they like such outlandish things as Chardonnay and Riesling. Term starts Wednesday 1^st May at 8pm sharp.  Come along, you’ll meet friendly people as well as friendly wines!

Burgundy

The man from Faiveley swung by in his 2CV this week and dropped off some delicious kit. We have the perennial favourite Bourgogne Grand Ordinaire 2010 at £11.99 a glass full of freshness and tart red cherries; then, at the other end of the scale, some Mercurey 1er Cru ‘Clos du Roy’ 2009 at £24.99 which, like all the other 2009 red burgundies we’ve had, is just too delicious to make old bones!

Heatwave

I notice that in our email of this week in 2012 we were discussing drought, Manchester United being a rich club and Abu Qatada not being deported.

I can happily report that there is no drought.

We are expecting something of a heatwave this weekend but rest assured we have some rosé, some bubbly in the fridge and a delicious South African white for the keen gardeners amongst you.

Secateurs Chenin Blanc 2012 £12.29 is made by Adi Badenhorst, rich yet crisp with stonefruit flavours that’ll be just fab with that fish kebab you’re putting on the braai.

Soli Pinot Noir 2009 £11.29 is a wine many of you were astonished to find us stocking. “Bulgarian wine!” you said, “are you sure?” “Yes” we said, “it’s delicious, you’ll like it, just give it a try.” So try it you did, and suddenly it was all gone. Well Soli has returned, we still think it is astonishingly good value and as delicious as ever.

Don’t forget the matches to light the barby!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Some dates for your diary, past and future:

Sunday 31^st March – BST begins

Monday 1^st April – April Fool’s Day, all japes to be finished by midday (weather, take note)

Wednesday 10^th April – English Cricket Season starts (weather, as above)

Saturday 6^th April – Grand National, Colbert Station E/W

Monday 15^th April – schools go back, life returns to normal

Thursday 25^th April – Wine and Cheese Tasting, 8pm, 4 places left…

Wednesday 1^st May – 6 Week Wine Course commences, 8pm, spaces still available

Wednesday 4^th April 2012 – temp in London – 11c – fine

Monday 4^th April 2011 – temp in London – 12c – fine

Sunday 4^th April 2010 – temp in London –9c – chillier

Yesterday – 4c…

I think you all get the theme of this email.  It’s been snowing too much recently, it’s been too damn windy and frankly our small oil-fired radiator is having to work too hard.  If it wasn’t our own business we would take industrial action against our inhumane working conditions.  The Bordeaux we had on tasting last week became a study in tannins as the shop chilled down whilst the Eiswein was standing there in his shorts and flip-flops wandering what all the fuss was about.  Oh and I may well have started hallucinating…

In my list of dates above you may have noticed mention of the Wine School.  What with one thing and another we have failed to promote this as actively and incessantly as we usually do which is probably a relief in some ways but does mean that we have plenty of space left.

The 6 week adventure starts at 8pm on Wednesday 1^st May and continues on the 8^th, 15^th and 22^nd of the month.  We then take a week off for half term, and re-convene for the last two sessions that will take place on 5^th and 12^th June.

It’s a great experience, we limit the group to a maximum of 10, we taste about 60 wines over the duration of the course, we cover whites, reds, fizz, a bit of rose, a bit of sweet wine and some faulty wines.  We practice some blind tasting, we introduce you to the Noble Grape Varieties and a few less renowned, we feed you water biscuits and, if you’re lucky, breadsticks.

So for two hours each Wednesday you can escape the world and pretend that life is all about sensory pleasure and delicious wine.  All this for £150, who could ask for more?

Booking is easy – phone us (020 8944 5224), email us, pop by and sign up whilst tasting today’s tasting wines – all these methods work.  So join up today for a wine filled May! (sorry)

If you fancy a bit of a warm up prior to joining the course then for just £15 you can book a slot on our Cheese and Wine evening on Thursday 25^th April, 8pm.  Always popular, always well run, never chaotic – if you don’t believe me come and see for yourself!

Tasting this weekend

Wayne has been busy foraging around the Iberian Peninsula, but not in the bit that speaks Spanish but in the other bit that we have been trying to keep to ourselves.  Portugal has fantastic and beautifully approachable wines that suffer in the UK market purely because the grapes are hard to pronounce and for many years Mateus Rose was their most famous export.  Then Cliff Richard started making wine there, just outside Albufeira, which hardly enhanced its reputation, allegedly.

But now Wayne has been on the case and this weekend we will enjoy some of the fruits of his labours; I know little of these wines, so I’ll hand you over to our expert:

We’ll start off in the white corner with… Luis Pato Maria Gomes 2012, Bairrada, Portugal 12% – £11.19 Luis Pato is one of the wine trade’s treasures, outspoken, experimental and very talented. 2012 marked his 30^th vintage at the reins and he shows no signs of slowing down, having just made his first red wine from white grapes (don’t ask!). This wine is a fine example of his work, wonderfully fresh and aromatic in its grapey nose, then with a broad, smooth texture in the mouth with melony flavours and a beautifully pure finish.

Then we head off to the Alentejano region for a spot of red. This area is a hot bed of experimentation and they plant more well-known varieties as well as the unpronounceable ones. Our selection here is Ciconia, Alentejo, Portugal 13.5% £9.99 – which is a kind of stork that settles on the plains here. No stork in the wine though, it’s a blend of Touriga Nacional, Syrah and Aragonez. What does it taste like? Why not come in and try for yourself, we might even use your tasting note!

So that just about rounds it off for this week save for a few final observations.  We’ve just been reminded by one of you that Wales beat England in the Six Nations and why hadn’t we mentioned it in our email.  Now we have.

Apparently the Brits and Russians drink the most when flying – fairly sure David Boon might have something to say about that.  As would the chap who managed 4 quarter bottles of Champagne on the flight to Amsterdam.  As would Mike Tindall.  Oh hang about, the last two are English – point taken.

Jobs for the weekend: taste Portuguese wines, sign up for Wine Course, watch the Grand National.

Over and out.

Fellow Wine Lovers,

How…

• Much longer is this brilliant weather going to go on for?  I played golf last Sunday in the snow, the equivalent event last year was in shorts.
• On earth did we manage to draw the Test in New Zealand?
• Much longer are we going to bother having a national football team?
• Did Lewis Hamilton explain stopping in his old team’s pitstop to the people upstairs at Mercedes?
• Much good does David Milliband’s departure to New York do for the overall perception of the Labour party?
• Will they keep the pasties warm at Lower Sticker’s Annual Cornish Pasty competition (-6.7c today)?
• Much chocolate can two children eat on Sunday?  More than their mother?
• Many of you are still in the office?

Well now, it’s the longest free holiday of the year, ‘Evacuate London 2013’ is in full swing and we are on hand to fill your boots with fine wines to take the edge off the tailbacks and the tantrums that come as part of this exodus.  We will even have some wine open too, for the non-drivers.

For those of you not departing, here are our Easter opening hours:

Maundy Thursday       11am – 8pm

Good Friday                    11am – 3pm

Easter Saturday            10am – 8pm

Easter Sunday                CLOSED

Easter Monday               CLOSED

Tuesday                             Back to Normal, or as close as we ever manage…

So for those of you who are feeling thirsty, we will be opening the following:

Wairau River Pinot Gris 2010, Marlborough, New Zealand £14.99 – the nature of doing what we do often results in text messages from friends in various states of decay saying ‘do you sell so-and so?’, ‘this wine list is impenetrable, here’s a photo, tell me what to buy?’, ‘my mate works at this vineyard and reckons the wines are awesome’… This Pinot Gris falls into the last category.   I, in fact, have met the ‘mate’ in question, at an 18^th birthday party, in a pub, 20 odd years ago – not sure whether this is the best basis for buying the wine, but I digress.  We’ve all changed over the years and I now work in a small wine shop in Wimbledon, he is the Ops manager at a top Kiwi estate, and I now sell his wine.

And it is awesome.  A beautiful, ripe apple and blossom nose, a similar palate with a bit more weight and luscious fruit all capped off by an elegant, long finish.  As they say on the label ‘best savoured with spontaneity and deep belly laughs.’  Can’t remember the last time I read that on a French wine label.

‘Nez intense, arômes de fruits rouges, fine note boisée.  Bouche ronde et fruitée, finale persistente’  is in fact what it says on the next wine – Chateau La Rose du Pin 2009, Bordeaux, France £11.99 – bit of a treat for Wayne and I really this, 2009 Bordeaux, soft and approachable Merlot dominant blend, trust me, you won’t like it.

Speaking of things you won’t like, Hiedler Weissburgunder Eiswein 2007 , Kamptal, Austria £29.99 should probably be perched top of that list.  This doesn’t have a nose of tropical ripeness, the mouth is certainly not flooded with lush, beautifully rich, sweet fruits nor does it have any crisp clean acidity to finish it off.  Lousy, don’t bother.

Come and see us, taste some wine, discuss Easter eggs – it’s what we’re here for.

Happy holidays!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

So it turns out budget day is a lot like Red Nose Day only without the jokes, charity, or record breaking sums.

Scientists at Duke University in North Carolina have discovered “that for women, poor sleep is strongly associated with high levels of psychological distress, and greater feelings of hostility, depression and anger. In contrast, these feelings were not associated with the same degree of sleep disruption in men.” So gentlemen, that breakfast in bed on a Saturday morning could tactically be a good idea…just saying…

Poor old Alex is beside himself with the sad news that Girls Aloud are calling it a day after all these years.

Finally, on a slightly more obscure tack, news reaches us that Jedi Knights could soon be making Scotland ‘their intergalactic wedding hub’ . 

On the subject of weddings…

You’ve found a venue, started going to church intensively, invited a hundred fans, found a caterer who is not going to charge you more than Gordon does at Royal Hospital Road, agreed on a honeymoon that combines beach and culture (and a golf course?), got a wedding list at John Lewis, booked the fancy car, ordered button-holes, maybe even tried on a dress or two… but have you sorted out the drinks? 

And this is where we become your best chums ever.

A bit of email tennis confirming food choices, number of guests, pet hates etc and suddenly you are  standing in our shop living the adult version of ‘kiddie in a sweet shop’.  We pick out a couple of bottles of bubbly, two or three whites, a similar number of reds, and perhaps even a couple of sweet wines and you know what, let’s open them up and try them all!!   Genius, we should get married more often!?!

So if you are getting married, or you know someone who is, then come and talk to us and see if we can help.  Between us over the years, we have supplied the wine for dozens of weddings, so have a very clear idea of how the whole thing works – and you get a fab tasting to boot!

Tasting this weekend

This weekend we thought we’d start in the white corner with a wine from Germany. Riesling Trocken Reichsrat Von Buhl £14.99 is not one of your lederhosen wearing confected Liebfrau things that give us all the horrors. This is a grown up dry Riesling from Pfalz, where the Riesling has a little more weight, giving us a lively fleshiness to the palate.

In the red corner we’re going with Smoking Loon Cabernet Sauvignon £11.99 a classic Californian Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa. A medium-bodied with silky tannins and cinnamon tinged bramble fruit, but don’t take my word for it, taste it for yourself.

So there we have it, two wines for after the kids have been put to bed and the grown-ups can have a drink. Perfect for the “after eight thirty” club.

Nice weekend all,

Wayne & Alex

Fellow Wine Lovers,

 News

It’s been quite a week hasn’t it? Tough for Argentina, democratically losing the Falklands and your Archbishop in the same week has to be tough! On the bright side they gained a Pope so I guess that’s chalices of Malbec all round.

Sports

The cricket didn’t end as badly as feared and this week’s test has certainly got off to an interesting start. Arsenal demonstrated the perils of only showing up for the second half whilst Barcelona showed how to do it properly.

Horse Meet

Did anyone notice last week’s tip for the first race at Cheltenham (Champagne Fever) romped home at 5/1? We’re looking at Long Run in the Gold Cup if anybody is interested. Having written this last night we’ve now heard the Today show on Radio 4 tip it, so are a little less confident than we might have been. Go with your first instinct though!

Jokes

Red Nose Day all over your TV this evening so we’ll leave it to the experts.

 The Man Who Would Be King

A happy 80^th birthday to Michael Caine for yesterday, who once said “I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.”

 Cheese

Next cheese and wine evening is Thursday 25^th April at 8pm with still a few places left come along and join the fun.

Wine School

We finished this term on Wednesday evening with a stunning selection of champagne and sparkling. The next term starts Wednesday May 1st and costs £150. If you would like to broaden your mind and palate buy tasting 60+ wines then sign up.

Californian Wine

A few of you have been asking us about Californian wine lately so we’ve been looking into it a bit more. Wayne was lucky enough to meet Russ Weis, General Manager at Silverado vineyards this week.

Silverado are situated, funnily enough, on the Silverado Trail directly across the road from Shafer Vineyards. Silverado were one of the first farms to plant Cabernet Sauvignon in the Stags Leap District, which is now synonymous with great quality Cabernet Sauvignon. Having tasted a few vintages on Tuesday it’s easy to see why, rich and elegant at the same time, the wine is a real treat.

As we write we are waiting for our delivery of 2008 Silverado Cabernet Sauvignon – £36.99, hopefully by the time you read this the man with the van will have been.

Wines this weekend

It being St. Patricks Day and all we thought we’d taste Martin Codax Albarino – £12.99 which clearly isn’t Guinness but is from Galicia, a part of Spain that has very strong Gaelic connections. Staying with Spanish thing we’ll go with El Bon Homme – £10.99 which is from Valencia with less of a Gaelic connection. That said we think St Patrick was probably a good bloke.

Early Close

This Friday and next we’ll be conducting tastings away from the shop so will close early at 7.30 pm. Now we know most of you have been through by then and are already tucking in but thought wise to let you know.

If you’d like us to conduct a tasting at your house you’ve just got to ask!

That’s it from us we’re going for a Long Run!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Guess what – food is bad for you again.  Even more disappointing is the fact that it’s not lentils and celery that are the culprits but beloved bacon, sausages and ham.  Not quite sure where this leaves the Italians though.

Venison

But if we’re not going to eat bacon butties anymore how about we start working through our mountain of muntjac?  Apparently we need to halve the deer population if we are to avoid the ugly prospect of Bambi fighting with Fantastic Mr Fox over the contents of your dustbin and the best solution is to eat the blighters.  This year a whole new culinary adventure has begun for us all with venison burgers and horse bacon – next up Hot Dogs and Kit Kats?

Beetroot

Berlusconi gets jail time and probably won’t even spend a night behind bars, our preparation for this summer’s Ashes continues as expected, Man U and their beetroot-hued manager exit Europe, and Wayne informs me that Justin Bieber managed to alienate his entire cashflow earlier this week by turning up to his concert 2 hours late, at which point all of his fans had to go to bed.  If you want more detailed coverage of the concert, please email Wayne directly…

Last week we celebrated being Welsh and I think that anyone who tasted the Cambria Chardonnay on Saturday will acknowledge that this Welsh named wine from California knocks a lot of Burgundy straight into touch.

Roast Potatoes

Continuing with weekly celebrations, this Sunday sees the annual ‘cook Mum lunch and buy her flowers’ event – Mothering Sunday. 

Now, we can’t recommend one wine more than another to celebrate Mum being marvellous but historically something with bubbles in always puts a smile on the old girls boat race.  With this in mind we will be opening Mayerling Cremant D’Alsace Rose Brut NV £15.49 this weekend.  Pale salmon in colour with lovely fresh, bright strawberry and cream soda character on the nose and on the palate we have the same fruit balanced by a beautifully clean and fresh finish.  If you feed Mum enough of this she might not notice the burnt roasties and soggy broccoli!

Alongside the fizziness we will be opening some samples we have been sent and asking you to help us make buying decisions – we have four wines from Rioja, one from Argentina and two from South Africa.  To prove that this process works, those of you that savoured the Argentine samples 2 weeks ago will be pleased to see that four of the six wines we tasted are already happily ensconced on our shelves.  Perhaps it may not look like it, but we do listen to you and value the feedback.

Wine

It’s the start of a new month which means that the March Wine Club cases have been selected and are ready to be delivered.  If you’re wondering what we’re talking about imagine a mixed case of 6 bottles costing you just £50 delivered to your front door by our smiling couriers.  Each month is a different selection, they come with tasting notes and food recommendations and seem to be extremely popular.  There is no tie in, if you would like it you pay for it and we deliver, if you don’t fancy it one month then we ignore the pay and deliver bit and wait until the next month. 

We also do a six bottle selection for £100 if you feel like something a little fancier.

Both selections are attached, drop us a line if you’re interested in signing up.

So that’ll be us for this week, we’ve got Champagne Fever in the 1.30 on Tuesday at Cheltenham for obvious reasons – any further tips gladly received!

Careful what you eat.

Fellow Wine Lovers,

I’ve never said this before but what a victorious week it’s been to be Welsh!

In the rugby, we (because we’re all Welsh today) thumped the Italians in their own backyard 26-9.

In football, the Swans crossed the border and trounced the extremely dangerous Bradford in the League Cup Final 5-0. 

Yesterday David Brailsford, honorary Welshman, fluent welsh speaker and the man behind all of Britain’s cycling success, became Sir Dave.

And today, we round it off by celebrating St. David’s Day, anniversary of his famous victory over the nine foot nutter, Goliath.  Okay not strictly true, but when you learn that St David (thank you Wiki) lived his life according to the following, you do start to wish that perhaps there was a little more stone-slinging about him:

The Monastic Rule of David prescribed that monks had to pull the plough themselves without draught animals, must drink only water and eat only bread with salt and herbs, and spend the evenings in prayer, reading and writing. No personal possessions were allowed: even to say “my book” was considered an offence. He lived a simple life and practised asceticism, teaching his followers to refrain from eating meat and drinking beer.

Beer is verboten, but clearly wine is fine in his eyes, so if you want to have something today to go with your leek and daffodil pie then might I suggest Cambria ‘Katherine’s Vineyard’ Chardonnay 2007 (£22.99) or Cambria ‘Julia’s Vineyard’ Pinot Noir 2009 (£24.99).  Both come from Santa Maria Valley which is in Santa Barbara, California, both are extremely fine examples of top notch wine production and, of course most importantly, both are called Cambria.

Georgian Wines

Moving away from the valleys, many thanks to all of your who put your palates to the test with the two Georgian wines last weekend – for those of you that didn’t make it down you really don’t know what you missed out on.   Really.  However, despite all the helpful feedback, I have decided that we won’t be listing either of the wines now, or at any time in the foreseeable future.  I know, disappointing….

This weekend

There’s an old, and frankly little used, wine trade adage that states ‘Whilst Wayne is away, Alex will always put a posh bottle on tasting’.  In honour of such a tradition, and indeed to honour the valley dwellers, I shall be opening the Cambria Chardonnay this weekend.  To complement it on the red side, I will open the Espiritu de Argentina Shiraz 2011 (£9.99) that hails from Mendoza, Argentina (another country with welsh influences).  Argentina is commonly associated with Malbec so I thought a Shiraz would make a nice change, and, if we ignore the fact that we had some Argentine samples open last weekend, we haven’t formally tasted anything from here for almost a year!

Birthday

As you are all no doubt aware, it is my daughter’s birthday today.  You must be aware because it seems that every conversation for the last week has revolved around this, every person she has seen has been reminded and heavily laden hints have been dropped regarding preferred gifts.  Being are resilient/bad father I have failed to provide her with

a)      A present

b)      A party

c)       Any excuse

The trouble is she doesn’t drink wine and I don’t sell birthday cards, but do rest assured she will get everything she deserves!

So if you happen to bump into a little girl with an ‘I am 7’ badge on in the Pig & Whistle tonight, do me a favour – buy her a pint or better still, a hamster!

That’s all from me, Iechyd da – as my mate Morgan would say, look forward to seeing you all for a drop of Cambria Chardy.

Alex (& away Wayne)