Fellow Wine Lovers,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We seem to have arrived at this week\u2019s missive with indecent haste. We\u2019ve managed to avoid most of the monsoon falling on our heads, stayed up too late watching amazing triathlon performances by both men and women that featured crazy boat manoeuvres, silly rainfall and final kilometre punctures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our roving correspondent who is wearing the Cheap Sunglasses<\/em> and checking the lay of the land in Devon, reports that there is still ice cream available, and considerable uncertainty on the cream and jam positioning on scones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have also heard that Groove Armada were great at Alexandra Palace last weekend, Latitude was fabulous, particularly Wolf Alice and The Vaccines. Smaller festival Standon Calling was drenched in glitter before being deluged in rain and called off on Sunday. It seems if you didn\u2019t leave early a boat may have been required. There is much talk about an outstanding performance by Hot Chip including a guest spot by Jarvis Cocker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Normally at this stage of The Weekly Wine we might take the opportunity to poke a bit of fun at the political folks who spend all of our taxes. A quick glance around the press this week and we thought we might just pass it up. It feels like we\u2019re standing over a barrel of fish with a gun. I mean, it\u2019s not for us to mock the \u00a32 million that Westminster Council spent installing a scaffolding remake of the mound from Close Encounters of the Third Kind at Marble Arch. Or the fact that they plan to charge you \u00a38 to climb it and see the traffic from a higher vantage point!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m Bad, I\u2019m Nationwide<\/em>, but surely that\u2019s not our Prime Minister and Home Secretary declaring that crime is illegal and that they\u2019ll open some of those courts that they closed to help deal with it. Chain gangs are coming back too apparently! If we\u2019re not careful someone will suggest building railways!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Olympics have been cracking on in Tokyo, Team GB seem to be doing alright, just missing out in the rowing is a bit of a blow, but Charlotte Dujardin got a bronze in the dancing horses to make her Britain\u2019s most decorated female Olympian. I\u2019m hoping she doesn\u2019t hold on to that accolade for long as Laura Kenny goes into action in the velodrome next week with three events that would be nice to win. The gold medal in the BMX for Bethany Shriever after she had to crowd fund her trip to Tokyo absolutely captures the true spirit of the Olympics for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not poking fun at politics has Got Me Under Pressure<\/em> so I think we\u2019ll just have to talk about wine this week. As luck would have it Sunday is #albarinoday. We seem to have a ready-made subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Albari\u00f1o is of course Spain\u2019s most fashionable white grape variety and is very much at home in that damp north western corner of Spain just above the Portuguese border. One look at us and you\u2019ll appreciate we know nothing about fashion, but we do have an idea of where the grapes are grown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Galicia is home to the wine region R\u00edas Baixas (REE-ass BYE-shuss since you ask) where 95% of the grapes planted are Albari\u00f1o. Some of the keen cyclists amongst you may have noticed that the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a is often in this part of the world and that it\u2019s actually pretty hilly and green. It gets plenty of rainfall, is probably the wettest part of Spain in fact. As a result of this the vines are all grown on pergola type arrangements where the wind can blow through and keep the grapes and vines healthy. If ever you were thinking of a holiday that may involve grape picking we\u2019d head here. It\u2019s much less back breaking to harvest from these trellises and you\u2019ll spend much less time at the osteopath on your return!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, we appear to be getting a bit off message here. We\u2019ll talk first about Follas Novas Albari\u00f1o 2020 (\u00a314.49) <\/strong>a delicious example from Val do Saln\u00e9s, one of the five distinct sub-regions of R\u00edas Baixas. This is the oldest of the sub-zones, the coolest and wettest yet also the birth place of Albari\u00f1o sometime before the 12th<\/sup> century. The vines for this wine are between 20 and 40 years old and vinified in a state of the art winery completed in 2005. Fabulously clean and crisp with citrus and floral notes on the nose, tangy stone fruit on the palate and a lovely mineral laden finish. But why not come and have a taste and decide for yourself!<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also have Noelia Bebelia Albari\u00f1o (\u00a321.49)<\/strong> a very recent addition to the range; someone very quickly christened it \u201cthe posh Albari\u00f1o\u201d. <\/em>This one hails from Soutomaior the smallest of the sub regions, south of Pontevedra in the hills at the head of R\u00eda de Vigo. Noelia and husband Simon have a less is more approach in both vineyard and winery. Grapes are hand sorted so only the best bunches make it into the wine, most practices in the vineyard are done by hand too. The winemaking is gentle and mostly involves patience. The result is an Albari\u00f1o with an uncommon intensity, a real weight and elegance to the classic stonefruit notes with a taught focused freshness to the finish. Posh indeed!<\/p>\n\n\n\n So pick up some fish or shellfish from the farmers market tomorrow morning, maybe some Padron Peppers even, we\u2019ve got the drinking sorted!<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019ll be enough from us this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n RIP Dusty Hill, a Sharp Dressed Man<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fellow Wine Lovers, We seem to have arrived at this week\u2019s missive with indecent haste. We\u2019ve managed to avoid most of the monsoon falling on our heads, stayed up too late watching amazing triathlon performances by both men and women that featured crazy boat manoeuvres, silly rainfall and final kilometre punctures. Our roving correspondent who […]<\/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-1443","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\/1443","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=1443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1444,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions\/1444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}