Fellow Wine Lovers,
How’s your week been? Ours hasn’t been bad, we’ve had a couple of meetings, tasted and listed some new wines, been to the pub. Mostly though, we’ve been moving boxes and catching up with Glastonbury on the interweb. We’ve enjoyed Foo Fighters, Chic, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Warpaint and couldn’t help but wonder if Liam Gallagher is growing up in his old age. Anyway, that’s enough of last week, looking onwards and upwards sees a jam packed agenda.
You’ll have seen the Wimbledon branded cars driving around on their practice runs the last two weeks (I’m sure they used smaller cars in the past, maybe saving on hotel rooms?). This can of course mean only one thing: Wimbledon fortnight is upon us! The Co-op will have sold out of all useful lunch items for the next few weeks so Alex and I will be on the microwave stew or Uncle Ben’s rice packs. More strawberries will be consumed in SW19 than the rest of the country, and Murray will likely have a five setter that’ll make us all late for supper. Sadly we’ve had no luck in the ballot this year, so we’ll be joining a queue at some point if we can manage it.
Greatest race in the world starts this week too. Saturday sees the start in Dusseldorf, a 14km time trial mostly along the Rhine, so nice and flat. It may well see Chris Froome take some early seconds out of the Grand Classification contenders.
I’m excited about this year’s Tour (isn’t he always?) as it’s a different kind of terrain to the last couple of years. Starting with tomorrow’s time trial, the penultimate stage is a time trial too, and there are quite a few long, relatively flat stages that should give us breakaways to cheer. Whilst all eyes maybe on Froome, Quintana, Porte and Aru for the GC, keep your eyes out for Simon Yates, a very strong contender for the White Jersey this year. You’ll recall his twin brother Adam wore it last year. As always, stay upright and avoid the motorbikes for three weeks to stay in the mix!
There is of course, to accompany your breakfast, a British & Irish Lions vs All Blacks fixture too. I’m not sure I should comment much after last week’s debacle but I am enjoying Mr Gatland’s continual confounding of the armchair team pickers. Farrell and Sexton have got to be an exciting prospect, surely?
Anyway, I started off by saying we’d bought some new wine so, moving swiftly on, I’ll tell you about the Volcanico Pais 2015 (£15.99), from Chile, or perhaps Samurai Shiraz 2016 (£10.99), which apparently tastes “like Australian sunshine and Ninjas” though I’d suggest black raspberry and eucalyptus is closer to the mark. It may be that Pinot Noir is more your thing, in which case I may mention Domaine Faiveley Mercurey La Framboisière 2015 (£23.99), which really does have a strawberry like character to its fruit, particularly in such a fine vintage as this.
I’ve mentioned three very different wines from three very different grapes and three very different countries. Want to know more about their differentiators?
Sign up to our Wine School
Autumn Term runs Wednesday evenings 4th Oct- 15th Nov with half term on 25th Oct.
You’ll taste around 60 wines and the six week course costs £150.
Drop us a line or phone 020 8944 5224 to book your place.
If you are of an impatient nature then do not fret. We will have some wine open to taste this weekend, as usual.
We’ve had a look and none of our German wines are from Dusseldorf so we have instead decided to open a red and a white from the Pyrenees, made by an Englishman who is married to a Kiwi. We think that covers nearly all the bases, so roll up to the podium Domaine Treloar.
Domaine Treloar is a small family run estate based in Trouillas and we think they make possibly the best wines in the Roussillon. You can read more about them here:
http://www.domainetreloar.com/uk/ourStory.htm
In the White Jersey will be La Terre Promise 2015 (£16.99) “Named after the Bruce Springsteen song “Promised Land”. A natural wine made from Macabeu (Viura), Grenache Gris and Carignan Blanc. Nothing is added during its conversion from juice to wine.”
Whilst the boot of the Commissars red car will be stocked with Le Ciel Vide 2015 (£11.49) “Named after a Bruce Springsteen song “Empty Sky” which, for us expressed most clearly the memories of September 11th. This unoaked red is made from Syrah and Grenache.”
That’s it from us folks, have a great weekend!