Fellow Wine Lovers,
Everyone booked a haircut? Table in the pub? Holiday to Crete? Theatre ticket?
I know, it’s very exciting isn’t it! In the much heralded but ultimately fundamentally underwhelming Boris statement on Monday we learnt that within 4 months we might just about be ‘back’. Focusing heavily on data not dates, we now have 8th March, 29th March, 12th April, 17th May and 21st June in our calendars and these could be added to if we don’t behave ourselves and toe the line, so just watch your step or you’ll get sent to the Home Secretary!
So, on 8th March all the kids go back to school and try not to touch each other too much. Oh, and finally we can meet up recreationally in groups of two… because of course, this hasn’t been going on throughout lockdown at all but the good news now is we can take a sandwich with us and eat it together without risking arrest.
29th March brings us the unofficial first anniversary of Matt Hancock and Boris both getting Covid and the official start of the barbecue season as the ‘rule of six’ returns and we can go and sit in a friends garden and hang out but not use their loo, of course. Grass roots sport can also return, which will be good news for England’s Rugby and Cricket teams as they might be able to get a game more suited to their abilities.
12th April – not just Westlife’s Brian McFadden’s birthday but also the day we can have a haircut, go to the gym and then go and sit in a pub garden, have a beer with another bubble and now, excitingly, also use the loo.
17th May – the big one…we can now go inside our friend’s houses, sit on their chesterfield and raid their fridge – all with Boris’s blessing. If you meet friends at the pub, you can sit inside in a group of six from two households however, if you brave the garden you can be in a group of up to 30 with no household limit although this might be a bit intimidating for those of us who’ve only just got used to meeting up recreationally in groups of two.
21st June – summer solstice, watch the sunrise at Stonehenge, go to a wedding, hit a nightclub and then go and watch England v Czechia at Wembley the following evening because now we’ll be free, free to do what we want, any old time!
Very exciting, plenty to look forward to!
Right now though we have much to look forward to over the next few days – with the 3rd Test between India and England balanced on a knife edge and the all-conquering England Rugby team journeying down to Cardiff tomorrow afternoon it should be a veritable festival of sport this weekend… oh wait, hang about, I’m totally deluded. The cricket is over, in quite an extraordinary manner and, as a wise man said yesterday, if you scrub out the Saracens players from the England squad then you’ve got the bare bones of a decent team. In the meantime, I feel another drubbing coming….
In the world of wine we have a few titbits which may or may not be of interest relating to stock. We’ve managed to get hold of some more Pulenta ‘La Flor’ Cabernet Sauvignon and Pulenta ‘La Flor’ Malbec wines which were both much missed when they lost their UK distributor. The good news is they have a new distributor and thus are back on the shelf at £16.59 per bottle. This new distributor also sold us a couple of new wines/old favourites from the legendary Maculan estate in Breganze, Veneto. The red, Brentino 2018 (£23.99), is a delicious Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon blend which has been Alex’s wine of choice at Buona Sera on Northcote Road for a good 15 years, if not longer. The other old friend is Torcolato 2017 (£28.99) – a half bottle of simply delicious sweet wine from the Vespaiolo grape variety, which are then air dried for 4 months before crushing to produce a sweet and full bodied dessert wine that I will likely be having with a bit of blue cheese tomorrow night.
Oh, and we also bought a few bottles of the Christian Moueix Othello 2014 (£50) which is a Bordeaux blend made at the famed Napanook vineyard where Christian established Dominus Estate in 1983. As a side note, the 2014 Dominus is currently about £180 a bottle so we thought this was little more wallet friendly!
So, having tantalised your taste buds why don’t you pop in and follow your palate!
A customer this week was chatting about brand image and how often people get it very wrong. We concurred, citing this weekly email as text book example of how not to do it. She disagreed (was probably just being polite, she has a history of being so) saying that she admired the ‘insouciant, don’t give a damn attitude’ that emanates from our witterings on subjects often not associated with wine – however, having just re-read this week’s version, I’m very sure I don’t know what she was referring to!
And with that I’m gone, until next time!