Fellow Wine Lovers,
Clearly the big question this week isn’t:
- why did I think it was a good idea to give up alcohol in January?
- who would be an Aston Villa fan?
- how did Marlon Samuels miss Shane Warne’s head from that distance?
But is, in fact:
- who is the lady in the new David Bowie video? Rumours that it is Iggy Pop seem, thus far, to be unfounded…
See it’s not all about wine, just mostly.
Moving on, we’re now fully ensconced in the New Year, Christmas trees are sprawling on the pavements like drunken weebles and it’s darned cold and grey. Only one thing for it, let’s open some fizz!
Introducing Digby
Many moons ago Wayne and I ran a little wine shop in Clapham Old Town, up there in t’big smoke. We had many good and loyal customers, some of whom became friends as time progressed and minutes spent chatting about wine in the shop often turned into hours spent having a few pints and ironing out the creases in the worlds fabric.
Two of these characters were Trevor and Jason. Bright chaps, fun to talk to and fully excited about wine – but with sensible grown up jobs that paid mortgages, bought food and perhaps even sent them on holiday a couple of times a year. Fast forward a couple of years and where do we find them?
Sussex.
They’ve only gone and got into the wine trade.
Not the wine-trade of opening at 11 am, -‘Cup of coffee, Wayne?’ -‘Don’t mind if I do Alex, and then we’ll do some work shall we, there’s some Burgundy to taste here and then perhaps, this afternoon, we should have some lunch…’ variety, but more the ‘we’re actually making our own English Sparkling Wine, it’s called Digby, there’s a Brut Vintage and a Rose Vintage and it’s regularly kicking known names from the UK and Champagne into touch’ style.
These two aspects of the trade would not exist without each other and with this in mind (and to shorten what has already become a long story), Trevor came to see us on Wednesday and left us a sample of each of their wines, the Brut and the Rose. It’s brand new, I’m not even sure if anyone is selling it yet, so we thought we’d open it up on Saturday so that we can all try it together and get very excited at the launch of a brand new Fine English wine. Usual routine, glasses charged around midday so come in and have a sample and then hopefully we’ll get it on the shelves very soon.
Where were you when they launched Digby, Grandpa?
Wine School
This is filling up. Places are still available, so if you want to learn more about what you like, what you don’t like and perhaps even why this is so, sign up for this six week tasting-based course. As we always like to point out, you will have tasted 60 different wines by the middle of March (day 103) which is not a bad start to the year, and you’ll have a pretty tough time keeping up that momentum!
Join us, it’s fun, informal, educational, and it breaks the weeks up nicely between the weekends.
6 Week Wine School – commences Wednesday 30th January until Wednesday 13th March (no class 20th February for half term) – 8pm until around 10pm – £150 per person.
Further details attached.
Park Vintners Wine Club
I know we mentioned this last week but we now have an addition. Alongside our normal monthly mixed six for £50, we are now doing a quarterly mixed six for £100. Same rules apply, the wines are just more Saturday night dinner party rather than Tuesday night pizza, but having just finished writing the tasting notes even if I say so myself, it’s a cracking selection.
Let us know if you want to find out more about these cases, how the wine club works, how we chose the wine, ask away.
6 for 5
One of the easier mechanics – buy 6, pay for 5 (but not Krug unfortunately). It doesn’t even need to be 6 of the same wine; some of you have dipped your toes in, more of you should, since this won’t happen again until January 2014…
That’s it from us, come and meet Digby tomorrow, sign up for wine school, buy a six box – any questions?
Cheers!
Alex & Wayne