Fellow Wine Lovers,
We’ll start with some words from Fiona Beckett, award-winning food and wine writer, one of the world’s leading experts on food and drink matching, wine columnist for The Guardian and the author of 25 books on food, wine, beer and alcohol-free drinks.
Vindependents buys exclusively for independent merchants, and often unearths wines you won’t find anywhere else in the UK….
What the indies do have to offer, however, is wine you just can’t get elsewhere, much of it from small producers who don’t make enough to supply the bigger retailers, as well as a real human you can talk to….
Things are rather better, though, for the 55 members of an enterprising consortium called Vindependents (vindies for short), an agency that buys wine exclusively for the independent sector….
What I like about the wines the Vindependents select is that there’s almost always a good story behind them…
Fiona Beckett on drinks – The Guardian – Fri 20 Oct 2023
So what, I hear you say?
Well, if you hadn’t guessed already, we are one of the 55 members of the Vindependents buying powerhouse – roughly 20% of our wines come from here, numbering amongst them best sellers like:
- Champagne Lété-Vautrain
- Domaine Landreau Cremant Rose
- Vilacetinho Vinho Verde
- Domaine Fournillon Chablis
- Follas Novas Albariño
- Iris Malbec
- Cantine Povero Cabanè Langhe
- Collequieto Montepulciano d’Abruzzo
So we’re dead excited that Fiona has looked beyond the supermarket offerings and championed us minnows – thank you well, Mrs B.
But that’s enough about us, what about the rest of the world?
I suppose the first thing to mention is that summer is now definitely over. I appreciate we have not broken news there but it becomes official on Sunday morning when we put the clocks back an hour and it starts to be dark for more than 60% of the day – happy days, red wine ahoy!
I’ve been warned not to mention sport which is easy since there doesn’t seem to be any going on at the moment – both the cricket and rugby world cups seem to have finished quite abruptly and Wayne hasn’t mentioned much cycling recently, so they must be on an eating phase. Arsenal are third in the Premier League though, which is brilliant news……
And we obviously don’t want to talk about the AELTC, suffice to say chopping down mature trees and replacing them with a 95-metre long, 28-metre high, 8,000-seat show court doesn’t feel terribly Greta….
Back to football, loosely speaking, we see that Eric Cantona, famous sardine/seagull behaviourist is now a singer, having released an EP, I’ll Make My Own Heaven, at the end of last week but more on that later.
Yesterday, I was reminded of a pet peeve of ours which is the inexplicable popularity of celebrity drinks. Union, a company that runs systems for high volume hospitality in the US, have crunched the data they accumulate from sales at the venues they serve and have come up with the following disturbing trend – punters are paying on average 73% more on drinks made by famous people! Gulp. We’ve laughed in the past at Kylie being 10th in the list of 100 Most Influential People in Drinks but hadn’t actually pondered on the fact that people might be paying more for the pleasure… I mean, I enjoyed Breaking Bad as we all did but I don’t think it ever made me think that I must rush out and buy the Bryan Cranston/Aaron Paul Dos Hombres Mezcal at £60 a pop!
Which brings me back to Cantona – does this mean we would expect to pay treble for his album because he is famous for something completely unrelated?!
I think no….
Back to wine, we thought it apt to taste a couple of the wines that Fiona B highlighted in last week’s article:
Le Veritable Jurançon Sec 2020 – £11.99
A lush, peachy white made from the local gros manseng grape. Fresher than you’d imagine from a 2020 vintage.
Sierra de Enmedio Monastrell – £10.99
Appealingly soft, juicy Spanish red. Easy to drink on its own, better with tapas.
Ok, so I’ve written longer ‘unsubscribe me’ emails but at least we know she liked them as much as we do!
Have a lovely weekend, enjoy the lie in on Sunday and try to avoid midgets demanding sweets on Tuesday!