{"id":1751,"date":"2023-10-27T12:39:51","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T11:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1751"},"modified":"2023-10-27T12:39:52","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T11:39:52","slug":"a-real-human-you-can-talk-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1751","title":{"rendered":"A real human you can talk to"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Fellow Wine Lovers,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019ll start with some words from Fiona Beckett, award-winning food and wine writer, one of the world&#8217;s leading experts on food and drink matching, wine columnist for The Guardian and the author of 25 books on food, wine, beer and alcohol-free drinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Vindependents buys exclusively for independent merchants, and often unearths wines you won\u2019t find anywhere else in the UK\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>What the indies do have to offer, however, is wine you just can\u2019t get elsewhere, much of it from small producers who don\u2019t make enough to supply the bigger retailers, as well as a real human you can talk to\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Things are rather better, though, for the 55 members of an enterprising consortium called Vindependents (vindies for short), an agency that buys wine exclusively for the independent sector\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>What I like about the wines the Vindependents select is that there\u2019s almost always a good story behind them\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Fiona Beckett on drinks &#8211; The Guardian &#8211; Fri 20 Oct 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what, I hear you say?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, if you hadn\u2019t guessed already, we are one of the 55 members of the Vindependents buying powerhouse \u2013 roughly 20% of our wines come from here, numbering amongst them best sellers like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Champagne L\u00e9t\u00e9-Vautrain<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Domaine Landreau Cremant Rose<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Vilacetinho Vinho Verde<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Domaine Fournillon Chablis<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Follas Novas Albari\u00f1o<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Iris Malbec<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Cantine Povero Caban\u00e8 Langhe<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Collequieto Montepulciano d&#8217;Abruzzo<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So we\u2019re dead excited that Fiona has looked beyond the supermarket offerings and championed us minnows \u2013 thank you well, Mrs B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that\u2019s enough about us, what about the rest of the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I suppose the first thing to mention is that summer is now definitely over.&nbsp; I appreciate we have not broken news there but it becomes official on Sunday morning when we put the clocks back an hour and it starts to be dark for more than 60% of the day \u2013 happy days, red wine ahoy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve been warned not to mention sport which is easy since there doesn\u2019t seem to be any going on at the moment \u2013 both the cricket and rugby world cups seem to have finished quite abruptly and Wayne hasn\u2019t mentioned much cycling recently, so they must be on an eating phase.&nbsp; Arsenal are third in the Premier League though, which is brilliant news\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And we obviously don\u2019t want to talk about the AELTC, suffice to say chopping down mature trees and replacing them with a 95-metre long, 28-metre high, 8,000-seat show court doesn\u2019t feel terribly Greta\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back to football, loosely speaking, we see that Eric Cantona, famous sardine\/seagull behaviourist is now a singer, having released an EP, <em>I\u2019ll Make My Own Heaven, <\/em>at the end of last week but more on that later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday, I was reminded of a pet peeve of ours which is the inexplicable popularity of celebrity drinks.&nbsp; Union, a company that runs systems for high volume hospitality in the US, have crunched the data they accumulate from sales at the venues they serve and have come up with the following disturbing trend \u2013 punters are paying on average 73% more on drinks made by famous people!&nbsp; Gulp.&nbsp; We\u2019ve laughed in the past at Kylie being 10<sup>th<\/sup> in the list of <em>100 Most Influential People in Drinks <\/em>but hadn\u2019t actually pondered on the fact that people might be paying more for the pleasure\u2026 I mean, I enjoyed <em>Breaking Bad<\/em> as we all did but I don\u2019t think it ever made me think that I must rush out and buy the Bryan Cranston\/Aaron Paul Dos Hombres Mezcal at \u00a360 a pop!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which brings me back to Cantona \u2013 does this mean we would expect to pay treble for his album because he is famous for something completely unrelated?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think no\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back to wine, we thought it apt to taste a couple of the wines that Fiona B highlighted in last week\u2019s article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Le Veritable Juran\u00e7on Sec 2020 &#8211; \u00a311.99<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>A lush, peachy white made from the local gros manseng grape. Fresher than you\u2019d imagine from a 2020 vintage.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sierra de Enmedio Monastrell &#8211; \u00a310.99<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Appealingly soft, juicy Spanish red. Easy to drink on its own, better with tapas.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ok, so I\u2019ve written longer \u2018unsubscribe me\u2019 emails but at least we know she liked them as much as we do!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Have a lovely weekend, enjoy the lie in on Sunday and try to avoid midgets demanding sweets on Tuesday!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fellow Wine Lovers, We\u2019ll start with some words from Fiona Beckett, award-winning food and wine writer, one of the world&#8217;s leading experts on food and drink matching, wine columnist for The Guardian and the author of 25 books on food, wine, beer and alcohol-free drinks. Vindependents buys exclusively for independent merchants, and often unearths wines [&hellip;]<\/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-1751","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\/1751","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=1751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1752,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1751\/revisions\/1752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}