Fellow Wine Lovers,
You’ve got to love a short week, am I right? 4 days off, 4 days on, imagine how quickly we could all get used to it? Next thing you know, we’ll all be working from home and investing heavily in lairy loungewear, baking our own bread and watching Joe Wicks workouts – no, I know, just joshing, that could never happen….
Anyway, for those of you not dwelling in the past, this weekend is Marathon weekend, for me the watershed weekend that signifies the proper shift into spring even if the clocks did change weeks ago. All the winter training faces its stiffest test this weekend, when you find out if running around in the dark, wearing multiple layers, gloves, a beanie and a head-torch has really properly prepared you for 23 degrees Celsius and a gentle breeze! I would also advise that you don’t do it in ski boots, just because that’s already been done… anyway, good luck to anyone embarking on this adventure, get your people to source you a nice bottle of Champagne for the finish line and know that this time next week it’ll all be behind you!
Or perhaps you get them to buy you an alcohol free beer to celebrate you achievements? Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it? Although, we read in Drinks Business that now 1 in 15 beers sold in Europe is non-alcoholic, so perhaps I’m just a dinosaur… but hang on a minute, flicking through a few more pages of this magazine, we learn that James Suckling, a renowned wine critic, has over 400 wines available by the glass at his Hong Kong restaurant – James Suckling Wine Central, and they all seem to have an ABV – time to catch a plane!
Elsewhere, we read that Majestic has tightened the screw, post duty reform. and removed a number of wines from its list. Sadly the big players remain, with their sometimes underwhelming offerings whilst the cull has mainly been of wines from small vineyards with higher ABV who suffer higher administrative costs and comparatively small volumes. All businesses need to make tough decisions, accepted, but as we feared we may be just at the beginning of a drastic homogenising of wine choice available on the high street.
However, if you looked at the BBC yesterday, they were all about the important news of the day. Nestled between an article about Harry & Meghan, whoever they may be, and a piece promising a heatwave next week was the important news of the day – and it’s about biscuits! In a debate that could rank alongside the great scone debate (which actually isn’t really a debate, there’s the right way – jam then cream – and then there’s the other way), we are told that we’ve been eating our Chocolate Digestives wrong – the biscuit should be on the top and the chocolate is the base, according to McVitie’s. In a follow up press release, Pizza Hut issued a global apology for having spent so many years incorrectly serving their pizzas upside down rather than bread on top and the National Union of Toastmakers issued updated guidelines relating to how to successfully butter the underside of your warmed bread…
We then read that Tom Fletcher from McFly has been signed up to write music and lyrics for a Paddington musical and began to wonder if someone had slipped a Mickey Finn into our lunchtime espresso because, frankly, everything was getting a bit too weird.
So, we strove to pull ourselves together and focus on what wines to open this weekend. Wayne treated you all to some lovely Albariño and a delicious Lebanese with your lamb last week, so we thought a visit to Italy might be a nice diversion.
Casalfarneto Collequieto Verdicchio dei Castelli Di Jesi Classico – £13.99 comes from a family vineyard, with around 35 hectares between the Apennine Mountains and the Adriatic coast, who we think offer excellent value. Verdicchio is one of Italy’s noble white varieties and this has delicate hawthorn aromas as well as apple and citrus. The palate is a little richer with a lovely freshness, some minerality and a touch of nuttiness to the finish.
Casalfarneto Collequieto Montepulciano d’Abruzzo – £12.99 comes, as you may have noticed, from the same winery. I can now tell you that the vines are at 320 metres above sea level and that, of the 35 hectares of vineyards, 28 are planted with white grape varietals and the remaining 7 with red. Being somewhat contrarian, it was this red that really caught our attention, before the white! A warming balanced dry red with lots of red fruit flavour and soft tannins that’d be absolutely bang on with, well, almost everything!
There may be some cycling on this weekend, Wayne hasn’t kept me up to date so I cannot comment and as I normally keep an eye on AFC Wimbledon/Tottenham/Harlequins, there will be no sports coverage today, in an attempt to keep the blood pressure down….
So that’s it from us, have a lovely weekend, have a digestive however which way!