Fellow Wine Lovers,
What a time to be alive! On Monday this week The Daily Telegraph published an article by Tim Stanley with the headline “Climate change is real – and the Right needs to get serious about it”. It went on to suggest that we might just look out of our windows to see the evidence. Well, better late than never eh? Or, as the kids might say, “Telegraph enters the chat”.
Wednesday this week saw the 24th day this year that the temperature in London exceeded 30˚C. In the 1980’s an entire decade had just 21 days. Musically the 1980’s rolled in just as XTC’s “Making Plans for Nigel” rolled down the charts and ended with Soul II Soul’s “Get a Life” at number six in the charts. Randomly, Andy Stewart’s “Donald Where’s Your Troosers?” was also in the top 10!
Meanwhile, Nigel has spent a lot of time being angry. He’s angry that people keep asking about £5 million that was given to him with no strings, he’s angry that nobody is falling for his diversionary tactics involving t-shirts in Bristol. He might be angry at the Clacton café owner who told him he had 36 flavours of milkshake, but I suspect this week he’s angry because somebody has spotted that the 2024 donation of $2 million (£1.5 million) that Reform received from Fiona Cottrell in fact arrived in her accounts from her son. It seems now that the Police and HMRC have joined the voices asking questions about Reform’s financing. On the plus side Nigel, you only have two more weeks arguing with a bin.
On the sport front, Gianni Infantino has put forward a proposal to sell off stakes in the World Cup to private investors. If stories are to be believed, Jared Kushner’s fund is near the top of the list. The potential for corruption here seems so enormous that the idea has succeeded in uniting all of UEFA’s 55 associations in announcing a boycott to the plans. With any luck, it’ll finish off Infantino’s tenure, his key advisor, Carlos Cordeiro, has already quit.
In real sports, I find myself amazed that a 3 week race can end with the favourite winning by over six minutes and still offer up such a thrilling watch. Chapeau to Tadej Pogačar for Tour de France number five, with very honourable mentions to Mads Pederson, Richard Carapaz, Paul Seixas and Remco Evenepoel.
Tour de France Femmes starts in Lausanne on Saturday with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Demi Vollering as favourites. Nothing is a given though, and the toughest course yet sees plenty for wine fans, an individual time trial from Gevrey Chambertin to Dijon, a cruise through the rolling hills of Macon and Beaujolais, and a mountain top finish on Mont Ventoux. Keep an eye out for Marlon Reusser on time trial day; she may well set the race alight!
We spoke about the early harvest of grapes at Domaine Lafage in the Roussillon recently and thought we might expand on that a little. Champagne’s governing body has just announced that harvest is likely to start around August 20th around 10 to 15 days earlier than usual.
Across much of France the rain and flooding we had in January ensured well replenished water tables. This was followed by normal flowering and then no frost anywhere, not even the shadowy corners in Chablis. Since then we have had perfect sunshine and just 3 days of rain since April. Healthy good size crops pretty much everywhere, possibly one of those vintages we’ll talk about for years and not just for the early harvests.
The one thing we do need to think of in this fabulous vintage is smoke damage. You’ll recall in the California fires a couple of years back that more grapes were lost to smoke damage than fire, and I suspect that’ll be true in Bordeaux too. Not good news for the poor folk of Pessac-Leognan, Pomerol and St Émilion who’ve had their windows and doors shut for too many days already!
Tasting this weekend
We’ll swing by Austria for a sample of Funkstille Grüner Veltliner 2025 (£14.99). Niederösterreich is Austria’s largest Qualitätswein wine-growing region and home to the excellent Grüner Veltliner grape. As with many Austrian producers, quality and sustainability are top of the agenda here – they produce their own fertilizer, hand harvest the grapes whilst their winery is energy neutral, and their biogas plant actually produces more energy than is required. Oh, and the wine is vegan too, but how does it taste? Excellent, is the answer; dry with ripe pear and fresh citrus aromas and a palate rich with melon and grapefruit and a refreshingly zippy finish.
Then we’ll head a bit further south for Calappiano Chianti 2024 (£13.49). With a fascinating history, dating back to Medici Florence in the 1500’s, the Fattoria di Calappiano as we know it today is made up of 200 hectares of vines, planted alongside the olive groves and woodlands. We are huge fans of this wine; it is velvety smooth, yet light with some smoky earth aromas and plenty of black fruits on the palate. Perfect on its own, with a Bolognese, or just a pizza!