Fellow Wine Lovers,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How are you all feeling today, a little bit over Haribo\u2019d? Judging by our sales yesterday, many of you were anticipating that, from about 4.30pm, you\u2019d be wearing a warty nose and a pointy hat with a glass of wine in one hand and a bowl of Starmix in the other \u2013 the Halloween speedball if you will \u2013 ready to face the marauding, ravening hordes of over-stimulated \u2018trick or treat\u2019 monsters\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what got finished first, the tasty Tuscan or the Tangfastics and was it a good wine\/food pairing? Perhaps more importantly, who else had always thought they were called Tangtastics\u2026 my kids are going to have to re-write their whole childhood!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re also in the midst of Diwali festival, the festival of light, a celebration of the victory of light over darkness and good over evil. It\u2019s a gloriously positive festival, full of hope and goodwill, plus a lot of lovely sweets \u2013 what\u2019s not to like?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And we need some positivity and hope right now, placed as we are, smack bang between the UK budget and the US election. On Wednesday, the MP for Leeds West and Pudsey (no, not the bear), delivered her first Autumn Budget and, as we all know, there weren\u2019t too many surprises in there. There also wasn\u2019t much good news for any of us, unless you happen to be one of the climate activists known as Esso, Shell or BP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Duty on fuel remains frozen, as it has been since 2011. Actually, I lie. In 2011 it was 57.95p per litre whilst the current duty is actually 52.95p per litre, thanks to the 5p duty cut implemented in 2022, when we were all paying \u00a32 for a litre of diesel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, we got out our fag-packet, which nowadays is a very expensive notepad, and crunched some numbers. According to a variety of sources, in the financial year 2023\/24, UK consumption of petrol and diesel was more than 46 billion litres. Imagine if somebody were to decide to remove the 5p duty cut on these fuels and return it to the levels we had in 2022 (and the previous 11 years), how much would we raise? The cigarette packet calculator says \u00a32.3 billion, which seems like a decent bit of revenue to us but then we didn\u2019t do PPE at Oxford\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a guide, current duty on wine is \u00a33.56 per litre, before it all changes again in February 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, across the pond, by this time next week we should have a good idea whether \u2018garbage-gate\u2019 was the October Surprise no-one expected. Effectively, does America think it\u2019s more offensive to call Puerto Rico a \u2018floating island of garbage\u2019<\/em> or to say of Trump that \u2018the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala, was born that way… She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could\u2019ve allowed this to happen to our country. Anybody would know this.\u2019<\/em> Donald Trump \u2013 29\/09\/24<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wayne has been very excited this week by the announcement of the route for the 2025 Tour de France \u2013 his poor wife must be sick to death of him discussing the first Ventoux finish since 2016 (stage 16) or the weirdly short 11km individual time trial (stage 13) that surely must be a typo or quite hilly! Elsewhere, in rugby, the Autumn Internationals start tomorrow with England versus New Zealand at 15:10 (tickets from \u00a399 to \u00a3229) and then Scotland versus Fiji at 17:40 (tickets from \u00a325 to \u00a355) \u2013 who knows, we might have it on in the shop (tickets from \u00a30 to \u00a30). Cricket \u2013 back to being a work in progress it would seem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, enough silliness, time for some wine!<\/p>\n\n\n\n This weekend we\u2019ll be opening a bin-end parcel we\u2019ve picked up \u2013 we\u2019ve only got 24 bottles but thought we\u2019d share them out! Domaine Charles Baur Pinot Gris 2020 – \u00a318.99 \u2013 <\/strong>from Alsace, all their vineyards are organically cultivated and hand harvested, with several parcels located in the Grand Cru vineyards of Eichberg, Pfersigberg and Brand. This is a delicious drop, well worth wrapping around your Vietnamese takeaway!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given the topics we\u2019ve discussed earlier on today, we thought a wine called Showdown Man with the Ax Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 – \u00a312.99<\/strong> might be appropriate. Hailing from California, this rather stopped us in our tracks (we liked the label\u2026. I know, even we fall for it!). The grapes are mostly from Lodi and give us a wine with ripe cherry and cassis fruit, with a soft, juicy, yet long finish; this would be fab with almost any red meat but is equally comfortable on its own in front of the telly-box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, the Champagne & Sparkling Wine Tasting – \u00a335<\/strong> – taking place on Thursday 28th<\/sup> November at 7.30pm<\/strong> sold out by the end of last Friday. However,<\/strong> one of the bookings later discovered they had jumped the gun and had to cancel their booking so we have 3 spaces available, first come, first served.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s it from us, pinch\/punch First of the Month and all that \u2013 we\u2019re off for a couple of pints of draught now that it\u2019s a whole penny cheaper – buy cheap, buy twice as they say!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cheers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fellow Wine Lovers, How are you all feeling today, a little bit over Haribo\u2019d? Judging by our sales yesterday, many of you were anticipating that, from about 4.30pm, you\u2019d be wearing a warty nose and a pointy hat with a glass of wine in one hand and a bowl of Starmix in the other \u2013 […]<\/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-1890","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\/1890","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=1890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1891,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890\/revisions\/1891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}