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?
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.
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,