Fellow Wine Lovers,
Well, at the risk of bringing rain to anyone’s parade, it’s been rather Spring-like this week, hasn’t it?
Stood here in Arthur Road we see a lot of life passing our window. Sons and daughters who seemed to be in buggies just last week walking from school on their own in smart new blazers, football crowds on the way to Plough Lane and grumpy traffic tooting with impatience at that oversized lorry trying to reverse around the corner to go back the way they came. Why don’t they update their SatNav?
Boris Johnson, the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, could be that oversized lorry. His constituency office, about 19 miles up the A40 from Westminster, really should update his SatNav. In the last fortnight he’s taken more than one serious wrong turn. Firstly, he pitched up in Kyiv, some 1500 miles to the east of Uxbridge, possibly in the belief that he was James Cleverly. Returning from Kyiv he seems to have overshot by some 3650 miles and ended up in Washington DC having a chat with the Speaker of the House. Perhaps he’s pretending he is still Prime Minister. Maybe, all along, he has been Mr Benn?
It could, of course, just be a distraction from the fact that the National Audit Office is investigating the state funding, to the tune of £220,000, of his legal defence against the “Partygate” investigation by the House of Commons Privileges Committee. This will, of course, determine whether he committed contempt of Parliament – an allegation he denies. Personally, I think a man who made £1 million last month by after dinner speaking can afford to pay for his own defence! Dominic Raab may have shouted at his last civil servant, it looks like we’ll hear sooner rather than later. Finally, in a sign the world really is still slightly crazy, there is talk of a comeback from Lettuce Liz Truss. Talk is that she’ll try and position herself as an “intellectual visionary” who was misunderstood at the time.
In other news, Shell has announced the biggest profits in its 189 year history, clearly switching from seashells to oil in the 1880’s has paid off! Centrica has admitted that contractors working for British Gas broke into vulnerable people’s homes to fit prepayment meters, something that thankfully Ofgen has banned this morning! The Bank of England raised interest rates as did the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve.
Meanwhile, the Royal Navy has ordered an investigation after allegations that broken bolts on HMS Vanguard were fixed with glue. The terrifying part is that HMS Vanguard is a nuclear submarine and as far as we can see on our tube of No More Nails it doesn’t seem to mention nuclear coolant pipe insulation!
The transfer window slammed shut on Tuesday with Chelsea the big spenders, spending £288 million, which is more than all the transfers in the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1 added together. How big is their team bus now? No pressure Mr Potter!
Meanwhile, 2nd division Portuguese side, Oliveirense, have signed 55 year old Japanese player King Kazu on loan from Japanese club Yokohama. He has previously played in Brazil, Italy, Croatia and Australia and has plans to play till he’s 60!
Saturday sees the return of the Six Nations with a returning Gatland-inspired Wales hosting favourites Ireland in the early game (14.15) at Cardiff whilst Twickenham will be filled to the rafters as England host Scotland (16.45). I still have Italy’s name for the wooden spoon despite them beating the Wallabies in November and they play France on Sunday (15.00)
As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the film Groundhog Day (yes really), I would just mention that Phil saw his shadow this year so, according to folklore, Pennsylvania will have six more weeks of winter!
Tasting this Weekend
We thought we’d take a trip to Chile. Representing the white corner will be a family favourite at Wayne’s house…
Aromo Viognier 2021 – £9.99 – from the Maule Valley, 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.
Whilst sneaking into the interesting red category will be…
A Los Viñateros Bravos Volcánico País 2021, Itata, Chile – £17.49 – over the years we have tried our fair share of wines from the grape variety País. Most of them, to be fair, have been a bit ordinary and we could easily understand why it was, for the most part, distilled into Pisco. You can imagine the eyes rolling when this was poured into the glass. It is not like any of the others. Really lifted aromatic fruit on the nose, fresh and juicy, almost spritzy even in the mouth and with really fine tannins. A proper vin de soif that’d be perfect with some slow cooked pork.