Fellow Wine Lovers,
Time for lunch everyone and then an early finish this afternoon, followed by the fast train to the coast for the first free long weekend of the year – 22 degrees in some parts of the country, everyone get ready for pasty legs and bodies followed by sunburn and hangovers.
So, whilst I’ve just been away for a few days gentle queuing on the M20, Wayne has been propping himself up by the door in the hope that at least one of you might pop by so that he might entice you in with a cheerful grin, a witty one liner and promises of fine wine and eclectic music. However, by all accounts this didn’t happen very often – it seems many of you have also flown the coop and are currently poolside somewhere hot/fireside somewhere snowy.
And it’s not just you that are absent – all our Parliamentarians are also on their Easter Recess. What this means in real terms though is that between 31st March and 19th April should, for example, the PM and the Chancellor happen to get a fine for breaking the law having previously lied about it, then it’s ok because no one is there to make you resign and when the new term starts you can just pretend you went skiing like everyone else and nothing happened.
And you still get to keep your job? As Wayne said to me earlier, it feels as if the phrase ‘surely this time he must go?!’ has now become an ancient English proverb, it having been used so often!
Still, at least the Chancellor kept a cool head when faced with various ‘non-dom’ questions regarding both his and his wife’s activities – in truly Trump-esque style he totally ignored the significance of the accusations and showed far greater concern about who had revealed his secrets… really mate, get your coat, you’ve lost the room, time to slink off to California.
Whilst sitting in the fume-filled fairyland that was the Operation Brock, I did try to catch up on a bit of stuff that was going on outside of SW1 but without much joy – it seems there is very little that we aren’t already painfully aware of, as has been the case for the last few years. I did discover, whilst catching up on the Court & Social, the announcement that we have all been waiting for as it has been confirmed that Lady Denise van Outen of Basildon has partnered up with Lambrini, official drink of Essex, to create the much awaited ‘Bring the Brini’ campaign. Now, we’re not sure which of the two parties is going to suffer the most reputational damage in this affair but do have to confess that we were very surprised that both Denise and Lambrini were still knocking about as we were quite sure they were both put out to pasture in the late 1990’s!
As I said, no news.
However, as mentioned previously, it’s Le Big Weekend coming up, no work until Tuesday for all the good people of Wimbledon Park… however the less saintly amongst us will be putting in a bit of hard yakka, at least in the early part of the weekend:
Today, 14th April – 12pm – 7pm
Good Friday 15th April – 12pm – 5pm
Saturday 16th April – 12pm – 6pm
Sunday 17th & Monday 18th April – CLOSED
Tuesday 19th April – back to as you were – 12pm– 7pm!
Hoping that a few of you might venture out, Wayne will once again be standing by the door to entice you in with his cheerful grin, the same witty one liner but now with the added promise of a taste of the wines that we will have open from this evening onwards:
Flametree Embers Sauvignon Blanc – Semillon 2021 – £15.49
From Margaret River in WA, this is another fab drop from the Cliff Royle stable. We tasted this a while back but given the snail like movement of wine from across the world at the moment, it has only just arrived with us. We know we liked it, we suspect we can explain why but, to give full disclosure, we have forgotten what it tastes like so are very much looking forward to revisiting!
As it’s Easter and the rules state that you must eat lamb on Sunday, we thought we’d open one of our all-time favourite reds, Monemvasios Red 2013 – £20.99.
So, a quick intro. It’s from the southern part of the Peloponnese, in the southern part of Greece, made from 90% Agiorgitiko and 10% Mavroudi but I imagine you knew this already. It’s absolutely delicious, the fact that the wine has a nice bit of age means we have some lovely mature dark fruit and silky polished tannins – all in all a wine that gives some more famous (and more expensive) French and Italian cousins a good run for their money! All you need now is to remember to marinate the leg of lamb overnight and then put it in the oven for five hours before you want to eat it and voilà, Kleftiko!
That’s all from us for this week – have a lovely long weekend and, if at all possible, avoid travelling anywhere on Monday…
Yamas!