The Weekly Wine

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Us again, another week gone, not so many weeks to go, just 5 at the last count.

And it certainly feels like life is gearing up for a big December.  We’re getting daily enquiries as to whether we loan glasses (we do by the way, if you buy wine from us) and these enquiries usually also contain the words ‘party’, ‘first time for almost 2 years’ and ‘two Christmases rolled into one’.  So, from our research, it would seem you are all planning on having a drink or two.  Last time it was even close to this it was 1999 and the booze trade (myself included) was peddling a sort of apocalyptic end of the year – Y2K was on everyone’s lips, global meltdown had been forecast and a sort of communal masochism had taken over.  We all knew it was bad for us but we were enjoying it too much and everyone quickly bought into the frisson that whilst the world probably wasn’t going to end at one minute past midnight it would be a shame to have not done as much as we could possibly do to go out with a bang, should we need to…

But we didn’t need to, we woke up on January 1^st 2000 physically intact but with just the faintest whiff of a hangover and realised that it was all going to be alright.  Fast forward to now and there is a similar sort of Carpe Diem mood in the air – people are organising get-together’s on Monday nights, historically the Day of the Gym but for now the Day of Gin and everyone is getting on board because you never know when it might all be taken away from us again.

With this in mind, should you have a space in your calendar, we thought we might just do a one of Sparkling Wine & Champagne Tasting on Thursday 2^nd December.  We’ve lined up 4 sparklers and 4 Champagnes, we’ll round up some light nibbles and lay up a table for 12 lucky souls – just like the old days!  It’ll start at 7.30pm, it costs £30 per person and we work purely on the basis of first come, first served.

Check your diary straight away…

Elsewhere sleaze and racism sadly seem to be flourishing – sometimes we have to remind ourselves that there are still good people in this world, not all MP’s are corrupt and not all cricketers are bigoted bullies.  Speaking of which, cricket that is, David Warner somehow steered Australia to victory last weekend against New Zealand in the T20 which should never have been possible after his walk in the semi-finals.  Some people get what they deserve, some people don’t always deserve what they get.  Elsewhere in sport, England risk being brought back down to earth this weekend as they face South Africa in the rugby – my question is, what crime  has Adam Radwan committed to be completely dropped – genuinely, if someone can tell me I’d love to know.

Now back to Wimbledon Park – next week we have the prospect of the first orgy of over indulgence of the season as Black Friday rolls around once more.  Suffice to say, for some it won’t necessarily be the first indulgence overload as American Thanksgiving is of course next Thursday.  I emphasise American Thanksgiving, just to appease Francis and Adam who will be keen to remind me that Canada has already had their Thanksgiving in October  and then will rebuke me for failing to mention this in an email… bullet dodged.

Anyway, this never used to be a big sales opportunity for us, for obvious reasons, but as time has gone on and we have seen what I suppose you would call greater globalisation, it is now a thing.  So with this in mind we thought we might open a couple of wines from the good old US of A this weekend to whet your appetites.

Wines with a bit of body are the best with Thanksgiving offerings and on the white side, Vina Robles Viognier 2018 – £19.99, fits the bill perfectly. 

Civil engineer Hans Nef, from Zurich, discovered Paso Robles in the mid-1990s and quickly became enamoured with the emergent wine country.  Here, where the Pacific coastline unfolds into rugged ranch-lands and cowboy ambiance (and who doesn’t love a story with cowboy ambience?), a new generation of California winemakers was turning Paso Robles into one of the world’s most dynamic winegrowing regions.  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.

For reds we have usually gone with Zinfandel, that being the grape that one associates most with the US, however this year we thought we would spread our wings. The Crusher Pinot Noir 2018 – £16.99 fits the bill perfectly, hailing from the Napa in California – a fabulously fruit forward style of wine, soft on the palate sumptuous cranberry and cherry fruit, a touch of oaky spice and a pleasingly long finish.  Last time we had this, the Americans crushed Europe in the Ryder Cup, thankfully we’re not competing against them this weekend!  

Yee haa!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

So, how do you manage to keep it up?

Keep what up? I said

Manage to write an email every Friday that I can read over my lunch and glean some random titbit of trivial information that I didn’t know before and that I can repeat in the pub later on, whilst pretending I’ve known it for ages

And so the conversation continued last weekend, whilst chatting with a couple of customers in an off-site location that may or may not have been selling Guinness.  I suspect that the only reason they were even talking to me was because I had just said ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ but nonetheless, they feigned suitable levels of admiration and even laughed at a joke or two whilst I was buying the beers.  It was such a shame that they suddenly realised that they were meant to be washing their hair/watching paint dry/grass grow/get the last train to the coast at exactly the same time that the bar shut and my card went back in my wallet but tant pis.

Anyhow, I bathed in their kind words whilst reflecting inwardly ‘you know what, they’re right, how do we do it every week?’  I mean, I do know that one of us just gets his kids or his Dad to write it and I know that someone gets their wife to check the grammar and punctuation but where does the inspiration come from? 

17^th December 2010 was the day we typed Fellow Wine Lovers for the first time.  Since then it has been a published weekly, which, without doing any proper maths, equates to more than 560 missives, three of which even were written by Team Alex.

In a behind the scenes exposé we can today reveal the following: we do not spend the whole week scouring the newspapers for suitable material; we do take it in turns to write the email but not necessarily alternate weeks; if it’s full of made up stuff it’s probably written by Alex and if it has detail and facts then Wayne has his hand on the tiller but sometimes Alex likes to impersonate Wayne which makes guessing this week’s writer more difficult; we have only ever been told off twice by our readers, once for a joke that sailed to close to shore for some people and the other time when someone felt our sport reporting was not to their taste.  We do try to keep it interesting and realise that a regular email just talking about wines we have in the shop could just seem like a damn repetitive shopping list and thus an instant switch off.  So we talk about other stuff and try not to repeat ourselves.

17th December 2010 was the day we typed Fellow Wine Lovers for the first time.  Since then it has been a published weekly, which, without doing any proper maths, equates to more than 560 missives, three of which even were written by Team Alex.

And we try really hard to be funny, with limited success, as demonstrated above.

Some week’s we are gifted things to write about – the Trump years, whilst being wrong in so many ways, certainly gave us plenty of fodder for Friday.  Boris has also been a regular guest on these pages which is totally undeserved of course, as is much of his CV.

And some weeks there is nothing to talk about so we end up channelling Phil Space of Private Eye fame and, before we know it, we have reached the bottom of the page and we can start talking about wines we will have on tasting this weekend.

Having re-read our first email from 2010, we now know that we tasted the Te Mara Pinot Gris 2009 from New Zealand and an organic wine, Tenuta San Jacopo Poggio ai Grilli Chianti 2006, from Italy.  And so, with a nod towards our first email, we will be opening:

Wairau River Pinot Gris 2019 – £15.99 – these chaps have some of the earliest plantings of Pinot Gris in Marlborough and this wine really captures the essence of the regions clean and pure climate.  Succulent ripe pear on the nose, with melon, apple and apricot flavours, nice mouth weight and an exotic lingering finish, this would sit very nicely alongside the Boxing Day ham as we’re moving towards that time of year.

Principe Corsini Le Corti Chianti Classico 2018 – £19.99 -A classic style, with a youthful and fruity intensity.  Ruby-red in colour with pleasing floral notes of violet and iris, fresh ripe cherries and a mild spicy nuance which is then complemented by well-balanced acidity, medium tannins and a long persistent finish.  And you know what, it’s organic too, how’s that for closing the circle!

And that, my friends, is how we manage to keep it up – we’ll leave you to it now but do please drop in over the weekend and share a glass whilst giving us your guesses as to who wrote all this twaddle!

Cheers,

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Where to start this week, so much has happened since we last spoke. We’ll start out with something that has taken months of planning and a large amount of logistics juggling just to get it off the ground. Wednesday, in Aguascalientes, Mexico, Alex Dowsett succeeded in bringing a lot of attention and fundraising to Little Bleeders and The Haemophilia Society as he attempted to set a new cycling record for The Hour. Sadly, he was unable to best Victor Campenaerts’ record of 55.089km but we’d like to say here that to fail you have to have tried in the first place. Chapeau Alex 54.555 kilometres is a hell of a long way in an hour.

In Glasgow, COP26 has been taking place. The idea being that holding it immediately after the G20 summit in Rome would somehow supercharge the agreements to save the planet from climate change at this, the last chance saloon. We may have expressed a slight degree  of scepticism couple of weeks ago, but we have changed our position to full blown cynicism now. How can hundreds of people flying first to Rome, then to Glasgow on private jets (over 400 of them) count as taking climate change seriously?  We said above that to fail you have to have tried in the first place, rest assured that COP26 will be branded a huge success. 

Boris, our Scarecrow Soprano, had to dash away from COP26 due to time constraints. Luckily a private jet was on hand to get him to the Garrick Club in time for the prawn cocktail starter. Meanwhile, in parliament outrage erupted across the building as the Conservative Party forced through an amendment to dismantle the anti-sleaze system after one of theirs was busted. Unusually, we find ourselves agreeing with Keir Starmer who called the move “corruption that goes to the very top”.

In unrelated news, it turns out that a recent Marbella holiday for the Johnson family was funded by the Goldsmith family.

In other unrelated news, Owen Paterson has resigned as Conservative MP for North Shropshire, can’t think why.

It seems to us that the government has done more U-turns than an Uber on Arthur Road. What a mess.

In wine news, it seems we weren’t the only people to receive late night visits. In Cáceres, a town in South West Spain a restaurant had 45 bottles of wine stolen in the early hours of Wednesday morning including an 1806 bottle of Chateau d’ Yquem worth about £250 000. Can’t imagine that’s going to be an easy fence!

Last Saturday, Eileen Ash celebrated her birthday with a glass of red wine. It is red wine she credits, along with yoga, for her long life. In her 110 years on this planet she played cricket for England in the 1930’s and 40’s as well as working as a spy for MI6 during and after the Second World War. Perhaps Jos Buttler  should be the next James Bond?

As we keep hearing stories of wine shortages in the press we thought the tasting table could be a place of discovery this week. We’ll open the voting on the white corner with Domaine Lyrarakis Assyrtiko (£14.99) a crisp dry white that you may well have heard us describe as a Cretan take on Chablis.

In the red socks and hailing from the Loire Valley Antoine de la Farge L’Enfant Rebelle Pinot Noir (£16.99) because it is a truly delicious Pinot Noir from the Menetou Salon area of the Loire, and also it has a shooting star on the label which seems somehow appropriate for a week that contains both Diwali and Guy Fawkes night.

Lastly, with you lot being able to go to the pub we’ve been selling a bit less beer. As a result, we have some that needs drinking over the next couple of weeks. If you think you can drink 5 cans in that space of time we can do them for £10.

Whilst stocks last….

Slybeast Lager (normally £2.80) 5 cans for £10

Belleville Steam Lager (normally £2.50) 5 cans for £10

Belleville Thames Surf (normally £2.70) 5 cans for £10

We’ll even let you mix and match if you like.

With that we’ll fizzle off like a damp sparkler!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

The good news this week is that all our windows are still intact, the less good news is that the insurance company have gone very quiet since we sent in our claim.  Elsewhere, it would seem that most of you have gone well, elsewhere for the half term week.  Parking on the grid has been a joy and the recently increased flow of customers fresh from the tube of an evening has diminished to a weak trickle, temporarily we hope.  Of course, you might not have all gone elsewhere, you might all have Covid and if this is the case I must apologise for my insensitivity, do please get well soon.

Certainly Kier Starmer didn’t time his positive lateral flow test very well, 10 minutes before PMQ’s and with the budget to follow.  However there are murmurs that Ed Milliband asked some tougher questions and Rachel Reeves certainly showed no fear of sticking her knife in – “at least the bankers on short-haul flights sipping champagne will be cheering this budget today!” 

So anyway, just to clarify, wine is not going to get cheaper.  Champagne and Cava could get a small price cut but I imagine any decrease in duty at this end will be more than made up for by ‘difficult vintages’ in France, particularly.  Oh, and before you ask, none of this will take place before February 2023…  

In simple terms, everything stays the same for the next 15 months, at which point Champagne etc fall into line with other sub-15% wines and attract the same duty, as they always should have done.  Everything else goes up except for spirits that seemingly are unchanged.  Oh, and beer and cider, when we go to the pub, might be a few pennies cheaper too, providing it comes from a Firkin or something larger.  Certainly the likes of Heineken and other behemoths will benefit but what size barrels do the craft brewers usually use we ask ourselves?

Still, at least with COP26 around the corner, Rishi addressed many environmental issues.  The most surprising to us was his proposed 50% tax cut on short-haul flights within the UK from April 2023.  Why?  Flying has to be the highest carbon form of transport but is sadly often cheaper than taking the train, which would be far greener.  Two weeks ago, Manchester United took a 10 minute flight to Leicester on a Friday for a Saturday match, because there were traffic issues on the M6.  This new 50% tax cut will in no way discourage this from happening again or encourage them to wait until the traffic dies down.  Just as a context – a domestic flight produces 133g of carbon dioxide per passenger per kilometre, a coach produces just 27g….

But it’s not all bad news as we discover that we are not at war with France.  Unsurprisingly, the fishing rights situation looks like it is nowhere near any sort of post-Brexit resolution but it was heartening to hear that French Maritime Minister, Annick Girardin, has confirmed that, “It’s not war, it’s a fight” – so no need to panic buy fish fingers just yet.

For those of you ‘blessed’ with children, this weekend is one that you face with both excitement and dread.  The exciting news is that, at 2am on Sunday morning, British Summertime finishes and the clocks go back an hour leading to perhaps an extra hour in bed, fingers crossed.  However, you might need that extra hour to cope with the onslaught of Halloween – I wish you luck.

We will not be celebrating All Hallows Eve, however to avoid having to wear the party pooper tiara for the third year running, Alex has come up with a couple of wines to taste this weekend that nod towards the ghoulish…

Von Buhl Bone Dry Riesling 2020, Pfalz, Germany – £16.99

Since Mathieu Kaufman joined Von Buhl from Bollinger in 2013 the estate has undergone some fairly seismic changes.  The vineyards have been managed biodynamically; the winery has been improved with the purchase of 2400 litre oval fermentation vessels and the winemaking too with more lees contact, and the use of wild yeasts giving us slower fermentation.  The result has been an improvement in wine quality year on year, with drier wines than in the past.  This is a wonder, the dryness you experience in Austrian or Clare Valley Rieslings but maintaining the texture that makes the more traditional styles so moreish.  There’s a lovely seam of minerality too.  An old, historic estate suddenly sailing back into the limelight, with bone dry, modern wines plus it has a skull on the label so is seasonally appropriate!

Finca Bacara ‘Time Waits For No One’ 2020, Jumilla, Spain – £13.99

We always enjoy a drop of Monastrell from this southern Spanish region where, in spite of its latitude, the wines are well managed largely due to the vineyards being at reasonable altitude.  A juicy and opulent red with attractive floral aromas, ripe fruit and balsamic notes in the background.  Balanced freshness on the palate lifts the vibrant fruit through to a smooth and persistent finish and then on to another glass.  Oh, and just like the Riesling, we have skulls on the label…

And with that we are gone, disappearing into the night like two wine weary will-o’-the-wisps….

Fellow Wine Lovers,

How’s your week been? We’ll confess to having had better ones if we’re honest. We received an alarm signal at about the midpoint of that biblical storm on Wednesday night and Alex was dead chuffed to test the waterproof nature of his jacket with a stroll in the rain just before midnight.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a false alarm, as some kind person had presented us with the gift of an old London house brick. It turns out that 24/7 glaziers are less 24/7 when the rain is falling and by the time someone had been and boarded up the damage the rain had actually stopped. A rather sleep deprived Alex set off for home pleased with his jacket’s performance but somehow a little disappointed with the performance of human kind.

Fortunately, little was stolen. When you’ve been in the game for 20 years you only ever put dummies in the window so that the other dummies can’t get away with much. So, leave nothing in your cars folks and if anyone is missing a brick…

If all of this wasn’t enough, I’ve just discovered that the history I understood to be true has been torn up. Imagine that, for decades I’ve been wrong, and not just me, possibly all of you too. Scientists writing in the journal ‘Nature’ have discovered that Christopher Columbus was not the first European to sail to America. Dating some wood at a Norse settlement in Newfoundland, it seems the Vikings arrived around 1021 AD, almost 500 years before that slacker Columbus!

Whilst we’re getting the bad news out of the way, some people will be devastated to hear the price of Marmite is on the rise. We’re surprised to discover it’s not covered by the energy price cap!

We’ve just had this year’s World Porridge Making Championship (yes really!). Normally, it takes place in Carrbridge, which is bona fide proper Highland Scotland but this year it was held virtually (Zoom Porridge?). Anyway, top spoils were taken by Dutch food blogger Miriam Groot for her oat arancini with mushrooms and white wine. I don’t know about you but I’m unconvinced that I would find the recipe in my book filed under porridge.   The top 10 included two Americans, two Australians, one cook from Germany, two from England and one from Scotland. They each won a hand-carved spurtle which is a 15th century Scottish wooden kitchen tool, used for stirring porridge. Looking at them, I’m not sure you could pick up arancini with them.

It’s got to that stage of the football season where managers decide to change their commute and Sam Allardyce updates his LinkedIn. Bruce is out at Newcastle United, Nigel Adkins is out at Charlton Athletic and Kevin Maher is in at Southend United. Mourinho could be under a spot of pressure too, it’s not often you see an Italian team taking such a drubbing; maybe they were unsettled being that far north?

Whilst writing this piece I have just discovered there is a computer game called Football Manager. Who on earth plays a game that fires you in October? Is Super Mario in charge at Naples? I have so many questions.

We’ve had a chat with HR and we’ve decided that we’re making Alex Employee of the Month for services to the late night economy of Arthur Road. With that done, should we taste some wine?

We thought we’d visit Portugal this week for some good everyday drinkers.

The white corner will be inhabited by Ai Galera Mistico 2018, Tejo – £9.49

Tejo, a region east of Lisbon, has been overlooked for too long but, as we’ve said before, Portugal is where the value is at and this blend of Fernão Pires and Verdelho is a fine demonstration.  Golden yellow in the glass, entirely unoaked and with a lovely soft, satisfying, juicy fruit character.  Wayne likes the thought of some grilled sardines; Alex thought some lemon sole, so we’re definitely looking seaward!

Whilst leaning on the bar in the red room will be Terra Boa 2018, Beiras – £9.49

This is from the granite based uplands by the Spanish border, grown between 500 and 700 metres altitude.  A blend of predominantly Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz, with a 10% splash of Cabernet Sauvignon, its bramble and plum aromas are very appealing. Generous and supple on the palate, with fresh red cherry and blackberry leaf characters, fine tannins and a touch of spice on the juicy finish.  Our food match – some slow cooked pork with a bit of spice rub and some couscous, wonderful!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

Boris, Boris, Boris – even when he’s on holiday he still manages to make bad headlines and bugger things up for people.

Since the mid 80’s, Alex’s family have called Benahavís, in the south of Spain, their second home.  Many summers went by in the happy embrace of Minh’s bar, or before that Don’s Bar on the corner, where a Bloody Mary with a Fino sherry top was just the ticket.  The ‘teca, with its mirror ceiling-ed dancefloor was a great late night haunt, a good place to work off the enormous Solomillo Adobado dished up at Las Cañas in the village square and a perfect place to practice Spanish with the locals.  In August, the Feria to mark the Saint’s day was filled with bull-running, dodgems and supersized Vodka y Naranjas.  We knew that Sir Jimmy and Adnan had properties up in the hills and occasionally we would see family members in the village, or Kashoggi’s yacht in the port but this was fine because everything was very low key.  There was wall to wall sunshine, mountains to be biked, rapids to be ridden and golf to be played – a blissful oasis.

But now Boris has come a-visiting so there goes the neighbourhood – thanks mate.

But also, why was he on holiday and not here unloading containers at Felixstowe?  Oh, of course, conference season.  The season runs from 23^rd September until 18^th October and since the Tory Conference was from 3^rd – 6^th October that gives anyone with a well-documented tendency to roam the perfect opportunity to nip off for a bit of sunshine whilst the rest of us try and keep the economy going.  As a side note, when I mentioned to Wayne that Parliament is only open for about 158 working days this year, or roughly 13 working days a month, he immediately decided to run in the next election as part of his easing into retirement strategy!

Elsewhere in the news, what do we have?  Large dollops of doom and gloom but also a media that refuses to learn any lessons.  Fresh from sending half the country into an unnecessary spin over petrol shortages they are now putting the panics on the punters with scare stories about Christmas shortages and empty shelves.  Everyone brace yourselves, this rollercoaster ride is far from over.

Even sport hasn’t offered us the succour we often get and the violence at the football and a not terribly good result just about put the icing on the cake.

So let’s not dwell on such things, let’s think about drinking wine this weekend instead.  Having been to the classic regions of Bordeaux and the Loire last week we thought we’d hop over the border into Cataluña now and taste a brace of wines from the Mas Blanch I Jové winery in Costers del Segre which is just west of Priorat.

We liked these wines from the start, particularly their strapline ‘Wines that Inspire’.  They practice ecological mountain viticulture and produce wine with grapes all sourced from their 17 hectare property.  Most (99%) of the energy they use is solar, the vineyard has been certified as organic since 2015 and they have a great arrangement with artists and sculptors in the vineyard too – they have more than a dozen works of art scattered over the property which look awesome.  Having only tasted their wines when Sara was over in the UK, this is one winery that both of us are itching to visit!

Mas Blanch I Jove Troballa 2019/20 – £17.99 – a great wine, 100% Garnacha Blanca with wild fermentation, aged for four months in concrete eggs.  Rich and fruity with a lovely mouthfeel that would be splendid with a rare tuna steak.  The wine is suitable for vegans too, so perhaps a lightly spiced vegetable and coconut curry.

Mas Blanche I Jove Sao Abrivat 2017 – £17,99 – This red is a blend of 40% Tempranillo, 35% Grenache and 25% Cabernet Sauvignon matured in a mixture of French and American oak barrels for around 12 months.  The wine is soft with a lovely dark red fruit character and a melange of vanilla, cinnamon and black pepper spice notes before the long balanced finish.  A regular visitor to both our dining tables….

Another brief epistle this week but I’m sure when there is more happy news to report on they will get longer – in the meantime have a bon weekend and pop by to taste some wine with us if you get a chance!

¡Saludos!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

So, this week we had the Tory Party Conference in Manchester. Along the way we were encouraged to Build Back Better, Build Back Butter and Build Back Batter but certainly not any talk of Build Back Barber…

The crowning glory of course was the leader’s speech which carried all the gravitas and detail that we’ve come to expect. The Independent appears to have found eight false claims ranging from being the number one country for investment to claiming to build 48 new hospitals.  You may recall that NHS bosses were ordered to call rebuild projects as “New Hospitals” back in August.  Sky News went as far as suggesting that the speech was “economically illiterate”, a comment that we find difficult to argue with. All these shortages were definitely the Government’s idea apparently but definitely businesses fault.

Anyway, we’re all set to become a high wage economy. The government is very keen for businesses to pay their staff more, clearly they haven’t spoken to anyone at the Bank of England, I’m fairly sure they were warning against that sort of thing just a week or two ago.

Over at Justice, Dominic Raab has shown he is completely on top of his brief declaring that “Misogyny is absolutely wrong, whether it’s a man against a woman, or a woman against a man”. Glad we cleared that up!  Between us, we think he’s only there to make the others look smarter. Anyway, that’s enough shooting fish in barrels.

Talking of shooting, it looks like Newcastle might be moving from the frying pan to the fire as finally that Saudi consortium buys out Mike Ashley. I’m sure he’ll spend his extra time looking at a pay rises and improved conditions for his employees at Sports Direct.

In other news, Facebook has a whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, who has been on Sixty Minutes, in front of a senate committee and coming soon to a parliament near you. The fact that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all had a six hour outage rather soon after Ms Haugen was on Sixty Minutes is a coincidence we’re sure. Mark Zuckerberg, as usual, said the claims were untrue. Somewhere there is a saying about smoke and fire, I believe.

Last week Alex teased you all about panic buying. This week, a headline in Bar Magazine stated: “WINE DRINKERS FACE EMPTY SHELVES AND HIGHER PRICES AS ‘PERFECT STORM’ HITS GLOBAL WINE SUPPLIES”. Now, we’re not entirely sure why they are shouting but with harvest yields down in Champagne (60%), New Zealand (20%), France (29% but suspect that includes champagne!) and Italy (9%) we’re starting to wonder if he may have had a point! Rest assured we won’t give ourselves inflation busting pay rises, despite what Worzel Gummidge may have said.

For those of you following the James Bond theme lately, Daniel Craig has a sparkly new star on the walk of fame and we’ve sold half of our Bond Bollinger 007!

Gary Barlow has launched an Organic Red and an Organic White, both from Spain. If you’d like to Take That then it only takes a minute to have a chat with Morrisons where our chum Clive has put them on the shelves.

On the tasting table this week we’re going to play fast and loose with the shortages in France. We’ll doff the white cravat with Domaine Lebrun Pouilly Fumé (£17.99), a crisp dry and rather classic Loire white that we’ve been selling since we wore those Oddbins polo shirts. Buttoning up the red waistcoat will be Château Saransot-Dupré 2016 (£23), a Listrac-Médoc that has been in the same family since 1875, was declared a Cru Bourgeois Supérieur in 1932 and in 2010 to be of “Classed Growth Quality” by Robert Parker no less. We’ll let you be the judge of that but frankly we think it’s a great value bottle of wine.

Enough piffle paffle from us, come and join us for a taster!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

We don’t want to worry you but, with Christmas less than 3 months away, we currently have less than 10,000 bottles of wine in the shop.  This, of course, should be more than sufficient stock and we have plenty more in the warehouse; as a consequence, the message we want to get across to you is that there is no need to get into a bit of a PANIC and come to the shop to BUY so much more WINE than you have storage space for right NOW.

Another chap who is telling us that there is absolutely no need to panic buy, whilst subtly implying that actually perhaps it might just be worth popping an extra bottle or two in your bag is quoted as saying: “Best advice to everyone in the supply chain – from producers to distributors to customers and to consumers – would be to plan ahead and, where possible, purchase early, as it is certainly far more likely than at any other time in memory that favourite brands and products will not be available in the run-up to Christmas.”  Oh and the man who said this?  Andrew Hawes – Mentzendorff (UK Agent for Bollinger)

Last week Wayne wrote: ‘A case brought by the owners of three separate estates in relation to the 2012 classification accuses Hubert de Boüard, owner of Château Angélus, and Philippe Castéja, owner of Château Trotte Vieille, of allegedly rigging entry to the classification system, and their rankings within it, in order to unfairly inflate the price of their wines.’  He also wrote a short piece about Bollinger and James Bond prior to the film release this week.  So, apparently there is a scene where Bond pops over to Q’s house for a spot of mid-week scran and grabs a large glass of red wine from the strategically placed centre screen bottle of Chateau Angélus – a very nice bit of extra promotional puff when times are tough for Hubert de Boüard!  More significantly for this writer, if a civil servant is drinking a £300 bottle of Claret on a school night, what does he drink at the weekend?  And who is paying for it?!

Sport took a tumble last week: both AFC Wimbledon and Tottenham lost to Arsenal and the Ryder Cup just proved that the European team wasn’t even close to the mob from the USA.  So we’ll move swiftly on from here.

On the home front, I have a bit of an unusual request.  Having children is great but there comes a point when, frankly, they need to leave home and do their own thing.  I have one of these in my house at the moment, studying for his A-levels, dreaming of going to University and breaking the parental shackles (although why any teenager would want to break the shackles of a parent who owns a wine shop beats me but, as the y say, horses for courses).

Anyway, this A-level student, let’s call him Joe, has to do some coursework for one of his subjects and part of this coursework involves a short survey to hopefully help him design a product.  The survey is quite simple and confidential – largely related to how you open your bottles of wine, how easy you find it and how you might improve your wine bottle opening experience.  If you can help with the survey and thus help with Joe’s A-level and then, as a direct consequence, help Joe escape the evil clutches of his parents, then the link is here:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/HJ2L726

The whole family thanks you!

Back in the shop, we are continuing to open bottles of wine on a Friday and Saturday and this seems to have been well received – a return to more normal times we feel.  This week we have decided to delve down under to New Zealand and Australia…

Mountford Liaison Riesling 2013, North Canterbury, New Zealand – £17.49 – the grapes were grown on the deep gravels of the Waipara Valley, hand selected and chilled over night before being whole bunch pressed.  That was ages ago though, this is a 2013 wine… we met the winemaker at Mountford a while back and he explained that they specialise in ageing wines in bottle before release, which is right up our street – we genuinely wish more would do that.  This has none of the petrol note you sometimes find with aged Riesling, there are just lovely fresh mango and apricot aromas mingled with dried fruit and honey.  To taste it’s off dry and soooo fresh with green apple fruit intensity, quince flavours and a citrus kick to balance, great length too – it’s almost mesmerising!

De Bortoli Heathcote Shiraz 2017, Victoria, Australia – £13.99 – we like the approach at De Bortoli, who always look for freshness and balance in their wines.  Heathcote is an up and coming region for Shiraz and the wines have an elegant, spicy quality, as opposed to the fruit soup you can sometimes end up with.  This has got spicy plum notes on the nose, whilst the palate is blackberry laden, with a touch of black pepper and spice and a nice dry finish.

So swing on by, taste some wine, perhaps do a survey to help the poor afflicted teenager and certainly admire the Bollinger 007 Limited Edition Millesime 2011 – we’ve all agreed it’s rather funky!

Until next time….

Fellow Wine Lovers,

So what’s going on then? We see that the EU is pushing for universal phone chargers for all mobile phones (USB-C since you ask). This strikes us as a genius idea on environmental concerns at the very minimum but possibly about 15 years too late to have a real impact. 

Yesterday, the Bank of England said that they expect inflation to hit 4% yet elected to keep interest rates unchanged at 0.1%. For this commentator, words and actions seem completely opposed but what do we know, we’re just till jockeys in a wine shop.

In Aberdeenshire, a wallaby has escaped from petting zoo Waulkmill Menagerie just a day after arriving. All he has really done is what so many of us do when we arrive somewhere new – pop out through a hole in the fence for a stretch of the legs. Eddie, because that’s his name, was last seen outside a pub in New Deer heading north to Turriff.

As we touched upon last week, the 43^rd Ryder Cup takes place this weekend at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin. From the form book it definitely looks like it’s for the USA to lose but upsets do happen, so we’ll cross our fingers. Let’s just hope nobody accidently plays a Slazenger 7 on the 18^th in error!

Derby County are in a bit of bother, administrators appointed, mandatory points deducted and now languishing at the bottom of the Championship on -2 points. Manager Wayne Rooney found out from a television report apparently. Sad old business all round it seems.

This week’s use of the Commons brain cell clearly wasn’t in either Kwasi Kwarteng’s or Rachel Maskell’s gift when they concurred that people in the north will be harder hit by rising fuel prices because it’s cold. They do say winter is coming, don’t they? Let’s hope we’re not embarking on a time of white walkers and dragons.

Whilst we’re on the subject of fiction did you see the news that Netflix has handed out a rather hefty golden ticket to Roald Dahl’s estate for the rights to his literary work. We’re hoping for a series or twenty of Tales of the Unexpected in the near future.

Now, if you can cast your mind’s back to 2015 there was a film that ended with the words “James Bond Will Be Back”. Well, after a rather lengthy delay the man on Her Majesty’s Secret Service is finally ready for us. He’s been delayed by a mission we can’t tell you about, we are unable to confirm who that chap watching the rugby was, or if he was spotted in Greece in July. What we can confirm is that the 25^th James Bond film, “No Time To Die”, will finally hit cinemas next week. Autograph hunters, get yourselves down to the Albert Hall on Tuesday, otherwise we’ll be booking tickets to see it next week.

Champagne Bollinger has long been Mr. Bond’s fizz of choice and we thought it might be nice to celebrate the film’s release with a glass or two of something eminently suitable…

Bollinger Special Cuvée Brut NV (£48 or six bottles for £230 whilst stocks last). We’ve long been fans of this wine, we love that it is mostly Grand and Premier Cru grapes, that 60% of the Cuvée is Pinot Noir giving us that lovely richness. Flavours of pear brioche, a very fine mousse with a lovely finish to suit any MI6 agent. We like it particularly as an aperitif, but the Chef de Cave is rather fond of it with his sushi!

We also have a tiny number of the really rare…

Bollinger 007 Limited Edition Millesime 2011 (£200) – Limited to 1 per customer

To mark the release of the 25th instalment of the James Bond series, Bollinger has created a limited edition wine dedicated to 007, with a 2011 vintage inspired by the world of Bond.

The jet-black 75cl bottle is adorned with the number “25”, formed from the titles of the previous films, which are similarly etched on the glass of the wooden box.

The 2011 vintage, an atypical year, inspired the Chef de Cave to produce a unique champagne, created entirely from Pinot Noir from the Grand Cru village of Aÿ, where Champagne Bollinger was first established in 1829. This is the first time that both the vintage and village have been used exclusively by Bollinger to make a dedicated wine. The excellent 2011 harvest in Aÿ, produced complex, powerful and harmonious Pinot Noirs, fully expressed in this characterful wine.

On wine news, we have spoken about the St Émilion Grand Cru Classé system in the past and how it gets reviewed every ten years, and then the estates that get downgraded because their wine isn’t up to snuff get the lawyers in and sue all involved. We may have suggested that if they spent less money on lawyers and more on improving their wine they wouldn’t find themselves in that situation.  So, with that in mind, a French court case caught our eye. A case brought by the owners of three separate estates in relation to the 2012 classification accuses Hubert de Boüard, owner of Château Angélus, and Philippe Castéja, owner of Château Trotte Vieille, of allegedly rigging entry to the classification system, and their rankings within it, in order to unfairly inflate the price of their wines. The prosecution described it as “someone passed the baccalaureate exam after writing the subjects himself.” If found guilty they could be facing a spell in the clink and a 500,000 euro fine.

With that bombshell, I think I need something in my glass. For white we’ll be opening Aromo Viognier 2020 (£9.99) –Maule is one of Chile’s traditional wine growing areas, just about 250km south of Santiago. There’s not a great deal of Viognier planted there but when you taste this you’ll wonder why. We really rate this wine and have been selling it for over 10 years now, one way or another as it is consistently great value, great quality with lovely peachy-apricot fruit characters and a nice crisp finish.  Ace with a creamy prawn pasta dish, or the local Ostiones a la Parmesana, clams in butter and parmesan!

Red wise we’re going with The Crusher Pinot Noir 2018 (£16.99). This hails from Napa in California and Oz Clark once famously said of it: “Bone Crusher, spine crusher, ball crusher – I don’t care which part of my body it crushes but these are just the kind of wines we want at our show.  The audience love them!” 

And with that we’re out!

Fellow Wine Lovers,

With a nod towards the 1992 headline ‘It’s The Sun wot won it’ we will take no responsibility whatsoever for Gavin Williamson’s rapid exit from the Cabinet this week – I’m fairly sure that Carrie doesn’t read our weekly missive and, to be honest, GW has been a dead man walking for too long so it really was time for him to go. 

Anyway, Boris has reshuffled his pack, partly because he needed to but also, more significantly, because he was told that this is what proper and serious Prime Minister’s do every now and then; and of course, as we all know, Boris is the embodiment of proper and serious.  The exciting news is that we get lively Liz Truss to look after our interests abroad; Dominic Raab, who previously did this job but was found asleep on his lounger as Afghanistan unravelled, has somehow become Deputy Prime Minister; Nadine Dorries, whose audition piece on I’m a Celebrity… Get me out of here! in 2012 got her suspended, clearly impressed someone as she is now Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport; and Michael Gove, Teflon clad and immune to irony it would seem after the emergence of some particular unpleasant speeches from his youth, is in charge of the levelling up agenda.

So there we have it, Boris’s dream team, proper and serious and leaders in their fields and definitely not just his mates and yay-sayers.

Away from the political arena, we see that Elton John has postponed his upcoming UK tour until 2023 due to the need to have an operation on his hip.  Very sensible, Reginald – if only Tom Petty had taken similar advice we would still have him in our midst.

In sport, we saw the return of Ronaldo to much fanfare and let’s be honest, he did what he is paid to do from game one.  However, he couldn’t stop them losing to Young Boys in Europe, which goes to show that despite appearances, one man does not make a team and anyone can win on their day.  Let’s hope this is true for the Europe players picked for the Ryder Cup.  John Rahm is world #1 but he next highest ranked European is Viktor Hovland at #13 – between these two sit 9 of the American team.  The lowest ranked American is Scottie Scheffler at #21 – 8 Europeans sit below him.  Let’s hope Europe have their day!

No real wine news to speak of.   We’re being encouraged to go to the pub and dine out still but we’ve also all read about the dearth of hospitality staff available.  Apparently, employers need to be more open-minded when it comes to employment contracts as staff want to be able to work more on their own terms.  Many of the predominantly younger potential employees want is greater flexibility, variety and control over their working hours; effectively they want the zero hours contracts just as Keir Starmer is calling for such things to no longer be allowed.  Obviously, in the long run this doesn’t work because when all your staff decide they don’t want to work on Friday nights what do you do then?  Sorry, we’re closed, doesn’t bode well for business survival….

Some scattered sunshine yesterday evening took you all off to the pub it would seem but hopefully tonight you’ll be keener to drink back at home.  With this in mind, I’ll have a couple of bottles open for you to taste – this week I’ve decided to go Italian, as is very often my wont:

Produttori del Gavi ‘Gavi Mille 951’ 2020 – £15.49 – is the white choice – made at their winery overlooking the historic Gavi fortress, this cooperative has been making wine for over 65 years.  Aromas of pear peach, apricot and yellow plum greet us on the nose whilst on the palate we have the same fruit characters with hints of almond in the background.  Dry, light and moreish, a perfect aperitif!

Castel Firmian Merlot 2018 – £13.99 is this week’s red, from Trentino, right up in the northern-most part of Italy.  Wayne has always had a bit of a soft spot for Italian Merlot so it was no surprise that we really enjoyed this when we tasted it, lovely damson fruit character with a touch of leafy herbiness.  The wine spent just 3-4 months in oak barrels and has a lovely juiciness and drinkability, with some fine tannin just to keep it honest.  Being Italian it matches well with all sorts of food choices, perhaps a cheeky burger if the sun makes another showing?

And finally, we said goodbye to Sir Clive Sinclair this week.  Inventor of the pocket calculator, affordable computers, hand held televisions and of course the C5; a man who often invented things we didn’t know we needed – I mean, hand held TV’s and electric vehicles, you must be kidding?!

And that’s that – have a lovely weekend!