Fellow Wine Lovers,
Our Dry January Menu: Dry White Wine, Dry Gin, Dry Vermouth… Dry Roasted Nuts?
Pat, one of our customers, saw this brilliant piece of graffiti on the ‘wall of truth’ in Daly’s Wine Bar on The Strand, and correctly surmised that it might strike a chord..
The beginning of 2017 was an arid wasteland for the alcohol purveyors amongst us; everybody seemed to get so caught up in the vortex of alcohol abstention that was #dryjanuary, that we spent most of the month reading the paper. As a further consequence of temperance, many bold moves were made to discover new and interesting flavours, alcohol free cocktails and exotically sludgy smoothies – 2017 was to be the year that boozing died and, with it, so too perhaps fun.
But February rolled in on a wave of Six Nations Rugby, Valentine’s Day and half term and suddenly a glass of proper fizz on Friday garnered more appeal than San Pellegrino, who skulked back once more to the bottom shelf. By the end of the summer we had sold pallets of rose and prosecco and sludgy smoothies were much forgotten, the wine status quo had been achieved. Christmas arrived in all its splendour and with it the New Year and then another month of abstinence…
….Or so we thought. It would appear that many people had such a miserable time last January that the idea of 31 days off the grog, ever again, seems cruel and unfair and certainly contrary to all the rules and conventions that keep society social. Some extreme abstainers, perhaps giddied by how much fun avocado and kale smoothies were last year, have decided to adopt Veganuary as their test this year – but don’t get me started on that!
Anyway, whether you have given up or not, you should certainly take advantage of our January 6 for 5 offer.
If you’re still drinking then the prospect of 16.66% off your six pack is not to be sniffed at whilst, if you are on the wagon but still reading this, I am guessing you might be back in the throng sometime in early February, the 1st perhaps, and you’ll be wanting something nice to drink. Fill your rack up now and avoid the disastrous double whammy of missing out on wine in January whilst also missing out on the big discount!
Foxdenton
Now, one man who is definitely not a vegan is Nick Radclyffe from Foxdenton, our Sloe and Rhubarb Gin guru. Now Nick seems to spend his time equally between creating delicious alcoholic tinctures, selling such tinctures and shooting things. Hence not a vegan. Anyway, Nick popped by on Tuesday to replenish our Rhubarb Gin stocks and, being both a gentleman and a salesman, he also brought us some of his other tipples with him. He left us the bottles, with a view that we could try them out with you lot and see if any gained any traction! The flavours we have to try are:
Damson, Golden Apricot, Raspberry, and Winslow Plum. He also left some Christmas Liqueur and his 48% Gin, both of which pack a punch!
Anyway, they’re all here for tasting, we’ll set up a sheet for scoring anonymously so we can get an idea of which one we should stick on the shelf.
Wine
If you don’t fancy fruit based spirits this weekend then we will have a couple of rather nice wines open. Domaine Séguinot-Bordet Chablis 2016 – £20.99 will be delighting us in the white suit whilst Innocent Bystander Pinot Noir 2016 – £16.99 will be the rogue in red – we’ve got plenty of stock of both wines so plenty of opportunity to get a six box!
And with that I’m gone!