Fellow Wine Lovers,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This week, I\u2019ve found myself watching the Newsnight <\/em>and Sky News<\/em> round-ups of the newspapers to try and get my head around this election business. I have learnt quite a lot from it. I have learnt that regardless of who you vote for taxes are unlikely to go down. And I have learnt that when Nigel Farage tweeted that Lettuce Liz and Kamakasi Kwarteng\u2019s budget was the best Conservative budget since 1986, he actually liked it so much that Reform have included a similar unfunded amount of money in their manifesto. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My biggest takeaway though, was that these programmes are very easy to nod off to. Given the content and time of the evening, that shouldn\u2019t be too much of a surprise but, if the angle of your head isn\u2019t quite right, you can awake with a rather stiff neck. Now, I do have a solution for this. We could take Countryfile<\/em> out of the earlier evening slot, shuffle everything along by that amount of time and then put Countryfile<\/em> on after Newsnight<\/em>. Surely, a programme with all those sheep and lambs is ideal for the countdown to bedtime so, if any of our readers at the BBC could put a word in, we\u2019d appreciate it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Talking of sheep, Rishi Sunak is so confident that the country is still with him that he and David Cameron were campaigning this week in a North Devon constituency with a large Conservative majority. The obligatory photoshoot was of trying to feed sheep that all turned and ran away from them. Just can\u2019t catch a break, eh lads?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following on from last week\u2019s chat about the Gambling Commission looking into a Tory MP for placing a bet on the date of the election, it turns out that the Director of Campaigning, his wife, who is a Tory candidate, and a member of Sunak\u2019s police protection are also being looked into. The policeman has been suspended and arrested. The politicos? Not so much\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just when you thought it couldn\u2019t get any worse Post Office, it turns out that they have published the names and addresses of 555 postmasters prosecuted during the Horizon scandal. Whilst the Post Office has, quite rightly, referred itself to the Information Commissioner, as I type this, it is yet to issue an apology. How are our institutions so riddled with such incompetence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a lighter note, England\u2019s T20 World Cup defence finally got some oomph to it with a decent eight wicket win over the West Indies. Phil Salt was man of the match with an unbeaten 87, with some great willow slinging by Jonny Bristow too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems Andy Murray has picked up an injury at Queens which might rule him out for Wimbledon. Let\u2019s hope not, eh? Just 10 days to go, the action starts on the 1st<\/sup> July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Olympics news, Katie Archibald has had a disaster, suffering a freak accident tripping over a step in her garden. She has managed to break her tibia, fibula and detached a ligament or two. She is now recovering from surgery and we wish her a speedy recovery. It\u2019s unlikely she\u2019ll manage to get up to race speed in the 35 days till the Olympics start in Paris so we\u2019ll be adjusting our medal expectations down by at least a couple!<\/p>\n\n\n\n With just 8 days to go until the Tour de France has its first ever Grand D\u00e9part in Florence, we see that both Wout Van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard have been named in the Visma Lease a Bike team, seemingly recovered from their early season crashes. Should you be a person of leisure with some spare time and planning to watch a bit of a bike race I\u2019d suggest stage 9. It starts and finishes in beautiful Troyes, the entertainment of Beefeater Bend is going to be there, and it\u2019s in the champagne region. What\u2019s not to like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In wine news, chemists at the University of Cordoba have established that a liquid found in an urn, during the restoration of a house in Carmona, is a 2000 year old wine. It is the oldest liquid wine discovered and appears to be a white, sherry-like wine from the local area. The urn also contained the cremated bones of a man and a gold ring, so I\u2019m not sure anyone will be rushing to taste it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shall we taste something a bit fresher this weekend? As the sun is out, we thought we\u2019d stick a pink in the fridge:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ch\u00e2teau Paquette C\u00f4tes de Provence 2023 – \u00a318.49<\/strong> \u2013 so a few weeks back we have a routine meeting with a supplier to taste a few new wines. One of them to be pulled out of the bag is this, a Proven\u00e7al ros\u00e9 that, frankly, we weren\u2019t looking for. Anyway, the cork gets pulled, we have a taste and decide that it is really rather good. Lovely and crisp with bright fruit, a touch of herbiness and a long dry finish. It turns out that the wine is a blend of Syrah, Grenache, Mourv\u00e8dre and a local variety, Tibouren, which is what brings the herbiness. It also turns out this small estate in Fr\u00e9jus was pointed out to our supplier by Elizabeth Gabay MW, who is the world\u2019s foremost expert on ros\u00e9. Probably you should try it\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hesketh \u2018Unfinished Business\u2019 Pinot Noir 2022 – \u00a316.99 <\/strong>\u2013 this is perfect summer drinking. Made with fruit sourced from a selection of premium cool climate vineyards within the renowned Limestone Coast region in South Australia\u2019s south-eastern corner, this is made in a way that allows the juicy intensity of this parcel of fruit to shine. Light to medium bodied with luscious red fruits and juicy acidity pursued by plush tannins, this is an incredibly moreish wine that we expect to be rather tasty gently chilled in an ice bucket!<\/p>\n\n\n\n So that\u2019s it from us, enjoy the sunshine!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fellow Wine Lovers, This week, I\u2019ve found myself watching the Newsnight and Sky News round-ups of the newspapers to try and get my head around this election business. I have learnt quite a lot from it. I have learnt that regardless of who you vote for taxes are unlikely to go down. And I have […]<\/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-1842","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\/1842","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=1842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1843,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1842\/revisions\/1843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}