Fellow Wine Lovers,<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s pretty potent.\u00a0 Not the cork.\u00a0 Your after-shave.\u00a0 Strong enough to bury anything. But the wine is quite excellent.\u00a0 Although for such a grand meal, I would have expected a claret.\u201d Oh yes, he\u2019s back.\u00a0 The man they call Bond, James Bond.\u00a0 Skyfall premiered on Tuesday night, Wayne lent Bear Grylls his special Saturday night strides, the red carpet groaned beneath celebrities ranked from A to Z, and they all drank Heineken and Martinis into the wee hours.\u00a0 Hopefully only the Martinis were shaken, otherwise it could have been a touch messy…<\/p>\n But, as you see from the opening quote from Diamonds Are Forever, times have changed a bit for Mr Bond.\u00a0 Clever wordplay about First Growth Claret has given way to, well, lager.\u00a0 WKD, Magner\u2019s, Hooch \u2013 get those cheque books ready, there\u2019s a new film due in a couple of years.<\/p>\n Doesn\u2019t mean to say we won\u2019t go and watch the film though!<\/p>\n Otherwise the week has carried on in its own sweet way.\u00a0 Some brilliant results in the Champions League, Malaga beating AC Milan, Olympiakos beating Montpellier and Borussia Dortmund beating Real Madrid \u2013 not sure if any English teams were playing though, perhaps not…<\/p>\n Cycling is still taking a battering, the Kick it Out anti-racism t-shirt standoff seems to be getting more polarised on a daily basis, and two Olympic medallists lose their medals sometime between midnight and five in the morning \u2013 if you know you\u2019re going out late, dancing and perhaps even carousing a little, maybe don\u2019t take the most valuable thing you own with you, chaps?<\/p>\n \u201cRed wine with fish. Well that should have told me something.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Loving these Bond quotes, managing to waste many hours \u2018perfecting\u2019 the accents!<\/p>\n Anyway, I suppose I best talk about wine now.\u00a0 As an opener, you can have red wine with fish, Pinot Noir with tuna is a common favourite, but perhaps not the bottle of Chianti to go with Sole that Bond is referring to.<\/p>\n We finished our wine course this week, 6 weeks of vinous discovery rounded off with a foray into the world of fizz.\u00a0<\/p>\n As ever Moutard Grande Cuv\u00e9e (\u00a326.49)<\/strong> was highly acclaimed, as was our new vintage Champagne, Chassenay d\u2019Arce 2004 (\u00a333.99)<\/strong>.\u00a0 From the non-champagne side the dry Mayerling Cr\u00e9mant d\u2019Alsace Rose (\u00a315.49<\/strong>) and the Mas Macia Cava Brut (\u00a39.89)<\/strong> both showed that there is oodles of quality to be enjoyed outside the realms of Champagne, and the Emeri Sparkling Shiraz (\u00a313.49)<\/strong> became everyone\u2019s guilty pleasure.\u00a0 We\u2019ve also formulated a strategy for \u2018a day of bubbles\u2019 starting at breakfast and finishing after dinner, but this is still Top Secret, I\u2019m afraid.<\/p>\n So what shall we taste this weekend?\u00a0 Greywacke Sauvignon Blanc 2011, Marlborough, New Zealand (\u00a316.99) <\/strong>and Domaine des Pierres Blanches 2008, Faug\u00e8res, France (\u00a39.99),<\/strong> simply put.<\/p>\n Greywacke<\/strong> is the pet project of former Cloudy Bay winemaker, Kevin Judd.\u00a0 When I say former, he was the winemaker for 25 years from its birth until his last vintage in 2009.\u00a0 In 2009 he decided that the Cloudy Bay world was not enough, and that he should set up his own label and thus Greywacke was born.\u00a0 Universally acclaimed with near Universal Exports, this is a golden opportunity to taste what all the fuss is about!<\/p>\n The Domaine des Pierres Blanches <\/strong>is one of the wines that we fell in love with at a southern French tasting earlier in the year.\u00a0 Grenache, Carignan, Syrah, Mourvedre from the hills above Beziers, just east of St Chinian, this has dark fruits, herby spice character and a rich mouthfeel.\u00a0 Faug\u00e8res Eyes only….<\/p>\n That is probably enough bad wordplay for this week, I must apologise, please don\u2019t unsubscribe, I think you\u2019re all Thunderball!<\/p>\n Halloween next week, trick or treating, ghostly pumpkins, scary skeletons, enough to scare the Living Daylights….<\/p>\n Park Vintners Will Return!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fellow Wine Lovers, \u201cThat’s pretty potent.\u00a0 Not the cork.\u00a0 Your after-shave.\u00a0 Strong enough to bury anything. But the wine is quite excellent.\u00a0 Although for such a grand meal, I would have expected a claret.\u201d \u201c Of course. But unfortunately, our cellars have run out of clarets.\u201d \u201c Mouton Rothschild is a claret. And I’ve smelt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201c Of course. But unfortunately, our cellars have run out of clarets.\u201d
\n\u201c Mouton Rothschild is<\/span> a claret. And I’ve smelt that after-shave before, and both times I smelled a rat.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n