Fellow Wine Lovers,<\/p>\n
A hearty welcome to February and a warm welcome back to the three of you who managed to stay off the grog for the whole of January.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now that all that January daftness is well behind us we can look forward to 28 days filled with rugby, half term skiing (we can all dream), St Valentine\u2019s Day, Pancake day, Lent (no point in giving up booze again<\/span> is there), and, news just in, International Condom Day on 14th<\/sup> February – not sure if this is about using or abstaining, but anyway, always nice to know that all the good work is being recognised, internationally.<\/p>\n Oh and it\u2019s Groundhog Day tomorrow, Oh and it\u2019s Groundhog Day tomorrow, Oh and it\u2019s Groun…,<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather.<\/em><\/p>\n Keeping with the US and for those of you who like a bit of pub trivia: the Superbowl is on Sunday and the opposing head coaches (of the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers) are brothers John and Jim Harbaugh.\u00a0 Yes, I know, fascinating.<\/p>\n Back on home turf we have the start of the Six Nations, the timings of which are:<\/p>\n Saturday <\/strong>Wales v Ireland 13:30 and England v Scotland 16:00 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Sunday <\/strong>Italy v France 15:00<\/p>\n The PV predictor says home wins all round, but do bear in mind that this is a wine shop talking – you wouldn\u2019t ask Manu Tuilagi for his opinion on the 2011 Burgundy en primeur campaign now, would you?<\/p>\n With all this going on we fully expect to see no one between 4pm and 6pm, but fear not we will be here, manning the pumps.\u00a0 Plus, we\u2019ve got beer in the fridge: Rocky Head Pale Ale<\/strong> (\u00a33.00)<\/strong> brewed locally by superstar winemaker Steve Daniel; almost as local, from Battersea, we have Sambrook\u2019s Junction<\/strong>, Pale Ale and Porter (\u00a32.59)<\/strong> although no Wandle unfortunately, it\u2019s still not in the bottle, next week I\u2019m told… and then from the North \u2013 Chalk Farm from memory \u2013 we have the delicious Camden Wheat Beer (\u00a32.29<\/strong>) and the Camden Hells Lager (\u00a31.99)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n For those of you who prefer their relaxation to be more wine-bottle shaped, we have plenty of wine, too many to list here, but we will have a couple of bottles open for tasting.\u00a0 To maintain rugby neutrality (ish), we\u2019ll crack a couple of bottles from the home of the current World Champions, or, as some might put it, England\u2019s most recent scalp.<\/p>\n Both wines are from the Morton Estate Hawke\u2019s Bay<\/strong> vineyards – the Chardonnay 2010<\/strong> is rich and toasty with peach and pear notes, buttered toast and a super citrus laden finish that nicely tidies up the fruit richness.\u00a0 The red is The Mercure 2009 <\/strong>a Bordeaux style blend, Merlot dominant but including Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Malbec to give the wine some structure and complexity alongside the supple plumy fruit.\u00a0 Add a touch of spice, some rounded, soft tannins and we\u2019re really cooking!\u00a0 Both wines are \u00a310.99<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Well that\u2019s it for this week, pop along, have a glass with us, celebrate Groundhog Day, and with this in mind, over to you, Bill Murray:<\/p>\n –\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank pi\u00f1a coladas. At sunset, we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over?<\/em><\/p>\n Over and out.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fellow Wine Lovers, A hearty welcome to February and a warm welcome back to the three of you who managed to stay off the grog for the whole of January.\u00a0 Now that all that January daftness is well behind us we can look forward to 28 days filled with rugby, half term skiing (we can […]<\/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-182","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\/182","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=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}