Fellow Wine Lovers,
Greetings from the biggest and busiest carpark in south-west London. If you can’t find a taxi near you it’s because they are all sitting on Arthur Road, shouting at each other and trying to squeeze through spaces made for a VW Polo and not for a Land Rover Defender, so, if you don’t mind, you’ll have to reverse…
Welcome to Wimbledon fortnight, come and smell the fumes.
As you’ve no doubt read, perhaps even experienced, the security at the All England has been ramped up this year, seemingly inspired by the actions of the Just Stop Oil activists at other events. The arrival of the updated Public Order Act 2023 in May this year added the ‘Offence of being equipped for locking-on’ to an already long list of offences we can commit unknowingly. According to our correspondent on the inside, every morning at 5.45am when he arrives to start work for the day, on his bike, he has to explain why he has a lock ‘hidden’ in his bag. We have now suggested he places his D-lock inside a 1,000 piece Centre Court View Jigsaw Puzzle box (£22, no longer for sale on site) as these seem to sail through security uncontested.
Otherwise, the tennis championships seem to be following their usual course. A couple of upsets; Venus failed to turn back time but gave us all hope; some plucky Brits got plucked in the first round, and the rain teemed down on some other plucky Brits sitting on Henman Hill, getting their 15 minutes of fame at the end of the BBC evening news. Having watched Novax play yesterday, we did wonder if it would be far more sporting if he wasn’t allowed to join in until the second Wednesday, just to give some of the others a chance?
Outside of SW19, in Leeds we have a couple of dozen men in white pyjamas throwing a little red ball at each other at sometimes at speeds of over 95mph whilst in the south of France we have a bunch of jokers dressed up in multi-coloured lycra onesies piling up and down hills on their very expensive pushbikes, sometimes at speeds of over 100km/h! All of these sporting spectacles are hugely entertaining, it’s just a shame that everything is on at the same time!
You will recall that our chum Tim is riding the Tour de France to raise money for Cure Leukaemia. They are riding a week ahead of the professionals, so today are tackling Stage 13: Châtillon-Sur-Chalaronne to Grand Colombier, an 138km mountain stage whilst the professionals ride stage 7 an almost pancake flat stage to Bordeaux that may see Mark Cavendish break a record.
To donate to Cure Leukaemia here is the link: Tim Goodman is fundraising for Cure Leukaemia (justgiving.com)
Westminster will not be providing the fodder for our moans this week, at least not directly. When I mentioned car fumes earlier, it reminded me that local boy and London Mayor incumbent, Sadiq Khan, has made the 29th August (Tuesday) the day that ULEZ spreads over the whole of London. For those who exist outside the London bubble, what this means is that from this date onwards petrol cars registered before 2005 and diesel cars registered before September 2015 will have to pay £12.50 every day they are driven. Sadly what this will mean for us is that our longest serving member of staff, the Volvo will be retiring. Years of good service will perhaps be rewarded with a happy relocation to the Cornish sunshine – I don’t believe Lower Sticker will be inside the zone in the very near future…
But before we get to that end of August, we have some unfortunate news coming our way on August 1st (Tuesday, again).
As I’m sure not a single one of you will remember, the Chancellor’s Budget on 15th March announced changes to alcohol duty. Duty will now be calculated on a new ABV-based system and, simultaneously, will be subject to a 10.1% RPI-linked increase. In simple terms, this means that wines of different ABV will pay different amounts of duty, except for wines of 11.5%-14.5% ABV that for now will pay the same duty as a 12.5% ABV wine until 1st February 2025, when it will become more complicated.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I won’t bore you with any further technical details; suffice to say, in shop terms, what will happen is
- every bottle of wine will go up by £1
- every bottle of Port will go up by £2
I know, miserable.
On the upside, this doesn’t happen until the end of the month and we can still fill the Volvo’s gigantic boot up to the roof for another 50 days – so, anyone need a top up?
If I can’t tempt you to stock up, hopefully I might be able to tempt you at least to taste the wine I have open this weekend? We are going to open a couple of Italians today because we haven’t had either of these for a while.
For the white, we have Produttori Del Gavi ‘Gavi Mille 951’ 2022 – £17.99. Made at their winery overlooking the historic Gavi fortress, this cooperative has been making wine for over 65 years. Aromas of pear peach, apricot and yellow plum greet us on the nose whilst on the palate we have the same fruit characters with hints of almond in the background. Dry, light and moreish, ideal on a warm summer evening.
The red hails from far further south, Puglia, and is Tufarello Nero di Troia 2019 – £14.99. Nero di Troia is the grape here and the name attests to its Greek influences – it is said to take its name from the nearby town of Troia, named by the Greek invader Diomedes. The wine saw a limited amount of oak treatment to soften the natural grape tannins and is deep red in colour with purple hues. There is a good depth of sour cherry and blueberry fruit on the palate, with supple tannins, good acid and length. A good all-rounder as they say…
That’s it from us, enjoy your weekend and make good use of all that charcoal!