Fellow Wine Lovers,
How’s your week been? Action packed? Monotonous? Same, same but different? A bit meh? Yep, same here – all a bit of a non-descript week, nothing really to report, quite looking forward to the weekend if we’re honest.
In times when not a lot has happened, we tend to nostalgically trawl the archives for inspiration and to see what we found to talk about in other years this week – so we lifted the following:
2010 – no Friday email yet, we were coming to the end of our careers at Wines of the World and were about to requalify as painter/decorators as we started works on the shop here and didn’t even have a computer, let alone a clue, between us
2011 – having had a computer for a while now, this week we were discussing ‘a runner at the Kielder marathon being stripped of his medal after confessing to using a bus for part of the course, Paul McCartney has the noise police visit at 1am (party on dude!), and news reaches us that Yetis really do exist, so be careful if you’re spending the weekend in Siberia! Oh, and Wayne broke his leg…..’
2012 – ‘We watched as the USADA unveiled their case against Lance Armstrong (and it seems pretty damning to us). It’s tough to lose seven titles I’m sure, but you know what, I guess it really wasn’t about the bike.’ Still annoyed he cheated.
2013 – we just talked about wine, clearly another non-descript week.
2014 – ‘Poor old Kevin Peterson had the mickey taken out of him in the changing room and Roy Keane thinks the song “Dancing Queen” is not an ideal pre-match motivator’ Staying with sport we also reported that on 7th October 2014: MK Dons 2 – AFC Wimbledon 3 – not sure that would be the scoreline if they played today.
2015 – We were getting our knickers in a twist about loopholes ‘multinational companies can use loopholes like a back-to-front telescope so that they end up paying less corporation tax than your local shop.’ Clearly our Private Eye subscription was well used that week.
2016 – Bob Dylan won the Noble Prize for Literature for creating “new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Wayne went to a wine tasting with Champagne Tarlant and Alex went to Hawksmoor on the Monday and discovered the joy of steak and Pintia from Toro.
2017 – it was National Curry Week and National Chocolate week and Wayne was very excited.
2018 – Patisserie Valerie discovered a £20 million hole in their books and called in the forensic accountants whilst we rocked back on our heels at the news that nearly 30% of young people in England don’t drink, before looking more closely at the study and noticing that by young they weren’t joking, some 22% of the people discussed weren’t even legally allowed to buy booze! It’s all about the headline though, isn’t it?
2019 – we revealed ‘it seems Colleen Rooney has been up to mischief trying to find out who has been leaking stories about her to the press. The story is too dull and attention seeking to go into here but headline writers have run amok. It even made it onto Peston which I had believed to be a political comment show. Wagatha Christie indeed!’ Cannot believe this farce took so long to resolve itself.
2020 – in the thick of lockdown, or semi-lockdown or whatever it was, we heard that ‘you and I as taxpayers have employed a selection of consultants from Boston Consulting Group at a bargain basement DAILY rate of around £7,000 to sort out track and trace. I suspect we could have asked a district nurse to run it for considerably less than that!’ Funny, I wonder if any other big corporations benefitted from the ‘business’ of Covid? I’m sure we’d have heard by now…
2021 – Boris went to Benahavís and stayed for free at Zac Goldsmith’s £25,000/week pad. And still he managed to cling on as Prime Minister for another 9 months.
And now here we are in 2022 – keeping with the Boris theme for now, we learn that The Office of Boris Johnson Limited has been incorporated this week. It’s not entirely transparent (really?!) what he will use the office for, particularly given his past history but we hear that, as an ex-PM, he can claim up to £115,000 expenses running his office, a sort of parachute payment for redundant Prime Ministers to help them re-adjust to normal life. So glad he’s going to be alright, we were worried.
So, it could be said that, historically, the second week of October is not terribly eventful – perhaps next year will be different?
As we said at the top, we’re quite looking forward to the weekend if we’re honest and to help us into it we’ll be opening a couple of bottles to tickle the tastebuds. Both come from Italy and neither has been opened for tasting for a while.
Ciù Ciù Merlettaie Pecorino 2020, Offida, Marche – £15.99 absolutely nothing to do with the cheese of the same name, this has a pleasing floral nose with clean and refined aromas of banana, broom, apple, hazelnut and plum followed by a hint of vanilla. The mouth follows the nose, a slightly round attack however balanced, agreeable crispness, good body and intense flavours. Similar weight to wines from southern Burgundy but more interesting than any at this price!
CentoPassi Giato Nero d’Avola/Perricone 2021, Sicily – £15.99. My tasting notes remind me that this is an organic wine with spiced black fruits, hints of cloves and decently full bodied. Equally as interesting is the news that the wine is the result of a project working to rebuild communities and honour Mafia victims using land seized from Mafiosi. Nice story, nice wine, cannot believe the last time we had this on the table was 2014!
That’s it from us for this week, hopefully next week we’ll have something fun to write about but for now we’ll leave you with quote of the week, courtesy of the BBC last night:
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has insisted he is “not going anywhere”, despite the market turbulence he admitted was caused in part by his policies. Asked if he and PM Liz Truss would still be in their jobs this time next month, he said: “Absolutely, 100%.”
Bye, bye, bye…