Fellow Wine Lovers,
Sometimes, we find ourselves wondering about the way the world works. Yesterday, the Bank of England Governor, Andrew Bailey, stated that if inflation behaves itself he will be more aggressive with interest rate cuts. This caused the pound to fall to its lowest level in 18 months, thus increasing the cost of imports which is surely inflationary? In the same interview he voiced concerns about a worsening Middle East situation affecting the oil price. I feel a strong urge to scratch my head.
In a gaffe worthy of the man himself, Laura Kuenssberg had to drop plans to interview Boris Johnson after she emailed him her briefing notes! Billed as his first major interview since leaving office, it was due to be broadcast yesterday evening at 7.30pm. I guess he’ll now just have to pay for any publicity for his new book himself!
Occasionally in these missives we like to talk about feats of human endeavour or tenacity. With that in mind, we’d like to commend Jimmy Carter for making it to a century! Neither of us remembers what he was like as a President, Alex was at junior school and Wayne doing his O-levels during his presidency but a hundred years is quite the innings. Happy Birthday.
Still on the subject of human endeavours, we’ll mention Lachlan Morton. Some of you may know him as a bicycle racer for EF Easypost. On September 5th, whilst we were all sleeping, he set off from Port Macquarie in New South Wales for a spin around Australia. His plan is to break the record held by Dave Alley who took 37 days 20 hours and 45 minutes to complete the 14201 km lap in 2011. It looks like Lachlan is going to finish this weekend beating the previous record by about a week.
We found a bit of the wine news rather amusing this week. You may recall a while back we mentioned the alcohol free sparkling wine French Bloom. Co-founded by Constance Jablonski and Maggie Frerejean-Taittinger back in 2019, French Bloom this week sold part of itself to LVMH. You may recall they are the enormous luxury good conglomerate that own Moet & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Mercier, Ruinart and Krug but not Taittinger. What amused us is that the UK distributors are neither Taittinger nor LVMH but in fact Bollinger! It’s a funny old world.
We also noted in the latest report by the New Zealand Winegrowers that their wine exports have suffered a significant drop. Now, we’re slightly nervous of linking this 22% drop to our wives swapping the Sauvignon Blanc for Gin and Tonic or Vermouth as their aperitivo of choice but we all know that statistics don’t lie!
Last bit of wine news for this week is that wine is absolutely the colour for this season. We sent Alex scouring the fashion press for clues as to why it’s not called maroon, burgundy or plum this year but his searches drew a blank. Wine is definitely the thing for Autumn whether in your glass, colouring your frock or indeed that swish new suit your mate might have bought you.
In a show of solidarity for the New Zealand Winegrowers we’ll open Southern Dawn Sauvignon Blanc 2023 (£13.99) a classic Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc with grapefruit, melon and passionfruit character and a lovely zippy finish that’ll be just great with that Goan fish curry you have planned for the weekend.
To offer our leather-armchaired support to young Lachlan, we’ll open the De Bortoli Heathcote Shiraz 2018 – £18.49. We like the approach at De Bortoli, who always look for freshness and balance in their wines. Heathcote, in Victoria, is an up and coming region for Shiraz and the wines have an elegant, spicy quality, as opposed to the fruit soup you can sometimes end up with. This has got spicy plum notes on the nose, whilst the palate is blackberry laden, with a touch of black pepper and spice and a nice dry finish. Sausages might be a nice idea.
Finally, the De Toren offer we hinted at last week…
As we mentioned last week our chum Seb has selected his favourite vintages for some mature drinking. If you’d like to order some for your own glass drop us a line, the prices below are per bottle and you can order a single if you’d like. We’re not sure they’re available in the UK otherwise.
De Toren are from Stellenbosch and their Fusion V is the left bank styled Bordeaux Blend with Cabernet Sauvignon dominance in the blend.
De Toren Fusion V 2013 – £102
De Toren Fusion V 2015 – £79
De Toren Fusion V 2017 – £62
Edition Z is the right bank styled wine with a Merlot dominance in the blend.
Edition Z 2013 – £52
Edition Z 2015 – £46
That’s it from us for this week, do pop in for a taste and we’ll raise a glass to Lachlan.