Fellow Wine Lovers,
Man: Albatross! Albatross! Albatross!
Customer: Two choc-ices please.
Man: I haven’t got choc-ices. I only got the albatross. Albatross!
Customer: What flavour is it?
Man: It’s a bird, innit? It’s a bl**dy sea bird. .. it’s not any bl**dy flavour. Albatross!
Customer: Do you get wafers with it?
Man: Course you don’t get bl**dy wafers with it. Albatross!
Customer: How much is it?
Man: Ninepence.
Customer: I’ll have two please.
News reaches us this week that scientists are using high resolution satellite photographs to count albatross. The Northern Royal Albatross calls the rocky sea stacks near New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, home. But they are sadly on the endangered list and have not been counted since 2009. The inaccessibility of the sea stacks make it expensive and dangerous to do manually, so the US military’s spy satellites are just the ticket apparently.
As you read this the council elections around the country are being counted. For me it’s almost like going to the cinema in the old days, a quick b-movie before the main event on the 8th June.
France is having the final round of the Presidential Elections with Macron likely to win (?) but Marine Le Pen setting herself up for next time round, we think. In a last minute statement former President of the USA, Barack Obama backed Macron. There seems to be no end to foreign states interfering in other nations elections does there?
Prince Philip has sadly decided to retire from public life at the age of 95. I will certainly miss him; he has a wonderful catalogue of one liners, of which my favourite was from 1995. Speaking to a Scottish driving instructor “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”
On the sports front, Alex’s team won the North London derby last week and look certain to finish above Wayne’s team for the first time since Alex was at university.
In real sports, the 100th Edition of the Giro d’Italia kicks off today with a 206km spin along the north coast of Sardegna. Quintana to steal it on the hills in the last week? Geraint Thomas to rinse the two time trials to get him far enough ahead to hang on in the hills? Pull up an armchair; it looks set to be a cracker.
On the tennis front, is it only me that thinks Sharapova should have to go through qualification? She’s returning from a rather lenient 15 month ban for doping, so giving her multiple wild card entries isn’t likely to deter future players from taking “supplements” for “games of special importance”, is it?
This cold snap continues to play havoc for vineyards across Europe. Last week was sadly the turn of many English vineyards with some having between 50-75% of the buds destroyed by an air frost that chilled the vineyards down to a barmy -6˚C in some places.
We heard from one winery in Kent, where the frost alarm went off about 3am (yes, there are such things!) and they started putting the candles out but, before they had even got halfway the damage had been done, so cold was the wind.
In Bordeaux the same evening they suffered possibly their worst frost in 25 years. Even lighting fires and using helicopters to keep the air moving hasn’t managed to mitigate the damage in St Emilion, where some growers may have lost their entire crop.
Whilst this is particularly late for such severe frosts, much of the problem has been caused by the spurt of warm mild weather we had in March, which has encouraged everything to be a couple of weeks ahead of schedule and more susceptible to the freeze.
Looks like we’ll be drinking more Southern hemisphere wines in the future!
Tasting this Weekend
On the white front we’ll open Domaine Boeckel Pinot Blanc Reserve 2015 (£13.79) a wine we threatened to open a few weeks back but never quite got round to it. The wine is a bit of a charmer… Gently floral on the nose as you’d expect and the palate is crisp with citrus and orchard fruit notes, a central vein of minerality and a lively, crisp finish.
Red wise, I think we’ll slide along to visit our chums from Ramon Bilbao and sup some of their rather tasty Ramón Bilbao Edición Limitada 2013 (£14.99). A delicious Rioja Crianza made from some of their finest grapes. Soft and open with lovely creamy black and red fruit character.
Gannet on a stick!
Wayne & Alex