Fellow Wine Lovers,
Science
This week we’ve learned that Dinosaurs were just unlucky to be wiped out, and that if the asteroid that did the deed had shown up a couple of million years earlier or later it would have all been ok. What’s a few million years amongst friends?
Boffins in Cambridge have developed a new technique using out of focus lasers to do some needlework with nano particles making meta-materials that reflect light the wrong way, thus rendering invisibility cloaks a real possibility. Hide and seek will never be the same again.
Sports
On the sports front football players have been bought and sold, gold medals are being won, lost and fiercely contested in Glasgow. England beat India in a test match!
Beer
On the beer front we find ourselves wondering if the craft brew concept is getting a little carried away with itself as news reaches us that Dogfish Brewery in Delaware has produced chocolate lobster ale. It is called Choc Lobster, and alongside the traditional Porter base ingredients include 5 lobsters, 6lbs of cocoa powder and basil tea.
A brewery in Iceland is launching an IPA smoked over sheep dung; I think I prefer mine floral and hoppy!
Wine
Not a lot on the wires wine news wise but our chums at Maison des Bulliats got a nice write up in the recent issue of The Wine Advocate…
2012 Maison des Bulliats Regnie – £10.99
“Proprietors Fred and Helen Lockwood kindly drove down the A3 to my home in Guildford to drop off samples of their Beaujolais wine. Together with their two sons, they have owned around 7.5hectares of vineyard since 2005, seduced by their love of France and its wines. The day-to-day running is delegated to oenologist Sylvain Dory. They were sanguine about the notion of winemaking being a profitable business, and as we chatted over my kitchen table, it was clear to me that Maison des Bulliats is more a labor of love. But that is often the foundation of its best wines, and they produce simple, delicious, uncomplicated…carefree Beaujolais wines that I would happily polish off over dinner (and I must confess that later that evening, I did precisely that.) The 2012 Regnie is a delightful wine that delivers a lively, brisk red cherry and strawberry-scented nose that is clean and nicely defined, neatly avoiding some of the under-ripeness that maligns some of their peers. The palate is well-balanced with nicely judged acidity, and although I would never describe it as complex, it is clean and fresh, with abundant red berries on the finish and a spice-tinged aftertaste. Lovely. Drink now-2016.” Neal Martin Wine Advocate # 213 (Jun 2014)
After all that I fancy a glass of wine…
So we’ve clearly got a contender for the red corner in that review above, we’ll head to Argentina where we will get our tongues tangling with a Torrontés!
Crios Torrontés 2013 – £13.49 is from Susana Balbo’s Dominio del Plata winery and is packed with that summery fragrance we love, not dissimilar to Viognier but with a bit more of that crisp zing and zip we find in a Sauvignon Blanc.
That’s all from us this week, just time to remind you all to put your fantasy football teams together!
Cheers,
Wayne & Alex.