Fellow Wine Lovers,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well how\u2019s your week been going? I spent an hour and half yesterday trying to persuade a small bird to leave the building. It entered by the window behind me, hovered by the whisky for a bit and settled on the shelf by Italy. It didn\u2019t want to leave by the open front door, didn\u2019t want to sit on the handle of the feather duster to be led out. Then visited France for a bit, before flying a few lengths of the shop and finally leaving by the window it arrived through (I hope, certainly not seen it since!). Not that we generally discourage visitors you understand, but I\u2019m not sure our wine and food matching is up to be speed with greenfly, blackfly or birdseed. For the ornithologists amongst you it was a little brown one a bit smaller than a sparrow, not as small as a wren.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve heard from the government and they\u2019ve clearly decided that they\u2019re fed up with us pointing out the confusion and contradictions in their guidance. Over 100 scientists have written a letter to suggest the government is now conducting \u201ca dangerous and unethical experiment\u201d but what- Ho; July 19th<\/sup> looks like it\u2019ll be \u201cfreedom day\u201d with remaining restrictions likely to be largely lifted. Those returning from \u201camber\u201d countries will no longer have to isolate, you\u2019ll be able to go to the bar and order a drink and finally we\u2019ll all be able to go nightclubbing again. Please don\u2019t fly in the back window though, it\u2019s rather distracting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other news the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill was passed, considerably hindering the right to peaceful protest, particularly if you\u2019re a bit noisy. Pritti Patel\u2019s Nationality and Borders bill has been published. It seems to put us in opposition to the Law of the Sea that ships have a duty to assist those in distress by making it illegal for anyone<\/em> to help asylum seekers by removing the clause \u201cand for gain\u201d. The RNLI has already been moved to defend itself. Of course, it was easy to miss this as all the press was talking about \u201cfreedom day\u201d. An absolute coincidence I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well it could be coming home, we\u2019ll find out for sure on Sunday, but in the meantime it has certainly set the postcode into the satnav in preparation. I\u2019m talking, of course, about the England football team\u2019s fine performance in getting to face Italy in the finals of the 2020 Euro at Wembley on Sunday. I might avoid Piccadilly Circus on Sunday evening if you\u2019re in a hurry to get anywhere; it seemed slightly chaotic on Wednesday!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile a state of emergency has been declared for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, meaning stadia will be empty of fans. That\u2019s got to make quite a difference to the 15000 athletes expected to attend, we\u2019ll all have to cheer encouragement through our TV sets, it seemed to work for the footie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In proper sports the Tour de France has been playing an absolute blinder! We\u2019ve had crashes, grown men crying, sprinters doing well in climbing stuff and unexpected people being sent home for wearing the slow legs on the wrong day. We have a man on the ground who tells us that the ros\u00e9 is rather tasty on a hot day, and there are worse places to stay than the southern Rh\u00f4ne. We\u2019ve shuddered on seeing that Vincenzo Nibali hit a speed of 107kmh descending from Ventoux! A lovely, wide, smooth road closed to traffic but 107 kmh! We have a mostly flat day today, 220km travelling through the glorious countryside from Nimes to Carcassonne, I wonder if that Cavendish fella might fancy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In wine news it has all kicked off in Russia. Champagne have fallen out with Russia in a labelling row, the term Champagne is heavily protected and legally defended as we all know. But last week Vladimir Putin signed a law saying that only sparkling wines produced in Russia can use the word \u201cshampanskoye\u201d on the front label. Comment was quick to emerge from Champagne that it was protected in 120 countries and this law change would result in a temporary suspension in shipments. I suspect as we speak new back labels are being printed, we\u2019re all in sales after all!<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other wine news, Angeline Jolie has filed papers requesting an injunction be lifted so that she can sell her share of Nouvel LLC, the company that owns Chateau Miravel, the Provencal wine estate the couple bought in 2011. Seems she has a buyer lined up so no point putting a bid in!<\/p>\n\n\n\n We actually went to a wine tasting this week, almost a year since we last went to one, boy were we out of practice! I forgot how tiring it can be (cue the violins!) and having a personal spittoon means you\u2019re always one hand short of the right amount, spittoon, glass and pen for tasting notes, yet just two hands! On the plus side we are now up to speed with several new vintages, have tasted a few new things that may well appear in a few months\u2019 time and also caught up with chums from around the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think that\u2019s enough from us for this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dare to believe!<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fellow Wine Lovers, Well how\u2019s your week been going? I spent an hour and half yesterday trying to persuade a small bird to leave the building. It entered by the window behind me, hovered by the whisky for a bit and settled on the shelf by Italy. It didn\u2019t want to leave by the open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436","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\/1436","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=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1437,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/1437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}