Fellow Wine Lovers,
As an antidote to the cricket, the Harlequins, and various football team’s fortunes, we have been focussing on winning this week. Visitors to the shop have noticed the Cheltenham festival trotting away in the background as we’ve got on with things. A thoroughly enjoyable diversion as every race has had a winner. We’ve not been so successful ourselves but surely the fun is in trying.
This weekend we see a return to action in the Six Nations with Twickers hosting the England Scotland game at 5 o’clock on Saturday. At the risk of supplying an opener for the worm can, I’m hoping England have a big bounce back from their defeat at the hands of the Irish.
Elsewhere, we had a full house of graduates from the latest episode of Wine School. New dates coming to an inbox near you very soon!
In the wider wine world the big news was words from Robert Parker: “Spending a lot for a top quality wine is fine if you plan to drink it, but not as a form of investment.” He went on to point out the costs of storage and insurance, along with slow market appreciation make it an often fruitless exercise, and in his opinion after 37 years in the trade, it was a terrible investment.
Now these words are fairly similar to utterances you may have heard either of us say on occasion, we are certainly in the ‘wine is for drinking’ camp.
It was more the response to his comments that caught our attention, with several commentators suggesting it was disingenuous of Mr Parker to “criticise the concept of wine investment”. Now, I’m sure it will come as no surprise to most of us that all these comments came from people who have a vested interest in talking us all into investing in wine.
Why is it nowadays that every time somebody voices an opinion, it is immediately taken as a criticism by those with a different view? Do we not learn things from opposing views, are we so scared of a different view that we have to resort to such aggressively defensive language?
Rant over!
Weekend Wine Tasting
The sharp eyed amongst you will have noticed some unfamiliar (or as we like to call them ‘New’) wines appear on the shelves the last few weeks. These are the fruits of our dashing around town in sniffing, slurping and spitting whilst you were all dry January-ing. See how we sacrifice ourselves?
We shall share a couple of those with you this weekend: we’ll start in the white corner with La Terre Promise (£16.99) from our chums Jonathan and Rachel at Domaine Treloar. A delicious Catalan white and certainly the first wine we’ve listed that is named after a Bruce Springsteen song.
In the red nose corner, we’re staying firmly with the Catalan theme but crossing the border and driving down the coast a bit before we turn inland at Tarragona. This is where we find the Montsant region, home to Mas Collet (£14.49) from our very newest chums at Celler Capçanes, a delicious blend of Garnacha, Samsó, Tempranillo and Cabernet Sauvignon.
That’s it from us folks, we quite like the form on Road to Riches and Coneygree in the Gold Cup but do remember we work with wine, not horses!