{"id":96,"date":"2012-08-31T14:03:15","date_gmt":"2012-08-31T13:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/?p=96"},"modified":"2012-08-31T14:03:15","modified_gmt":"2012-08-31T13:03:15","slug":"back-to-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/?p=96","title":{"rendered":"Back to School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fellow Wine Lovers,<\/p>\n<p>The Stoke Mandeville Sports Event kicked off in big style this week and with 4,000 athletes competing, I\u2019m sure we can look forward to thrills, excitements and disappointments over the next week or so.<\/p>\n<p>This week also saw the annual Tomatino Festival in Bu\u00f1ol in Spain, where participants threw 120 tonnes of tomatoes at each other in a tradition that started in the 1940\u2019s. Double-check where your passata is from is all I\u2019m saying.<\/p>\n<p>Channel 4 has come under fire for its presentation of the opening ceremony and I have to join in: Jon Snow, white suit with a white shirt, what were you thinking?<\/p>\n<p>The story that gave me the biggest smile was about procrastination. \u00a0Craig from Bedfordshire bought a book entitled \u201c<strong>52 Steps To Defeating Procrastination<\/strong>\u201d and never read it. \u00a0I have to say that struck me as almost artistic!<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Wine School<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The six-week term starts at <strong>8pm, Wednesday 19<sup>th<\/sup> September<\/strong>, here at the shop. \u00a0It goes on for 6 consecutive weeks, costs \u00a3150 per person, and in this time you will <strong>taste around 60 different wines<\/strong>.\u00a0 Homework is all on a practical basis, and you can do as much as you want! \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Haven\u2019t signed up yet? \u00a0Full details attached for those of you who\u2019ve been <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">boozing<\/span> snoozing in the sun somewhere &#8211; there are just a few places left.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Cheese &amp; Wine Tasting<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Thursday 20<sup>th<\/sup> September at 8pm, <\/strong>four cheeses, with six or so wines (whites as well as reds) to match.\u00a0 Tickets are <strong>\u00a315 per person<\/strong> as usual, and there are a few spaces left\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Chile<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For September we have teamed up again with Wines of Chile for a closer look at the country\u2019s wines.<\/p>\n<p>Chile is a long, thin, and many would say, fairly isolated country. \u00a0To put this in context, pin the top of Chile to John O\u2019Groats and you\u2019d find the bottom hanging out in Niger around the Southern Sahara! \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Isolated by the Andes that run the length of the country\u2019s east, and then barely 100-150 miles to the west you\u2019ll find the Pacific Ocean. \u00a0This isolation very often works in the vine growers\u2019 favour since many vines grow on their own rootstocks, whereas in most other parts of the world this is not the case as vineyards have been ravaged (most notably in the late 19<sup>th<\/sup> century) by a root eating louse known as Phylloxera. \u00a0Chile is protected, and strict quarantine regulations aim to keep it that way.<\/p>\n<p>The long thin nature of the country gives a variety of microclimates and different soils, all bringing little bits extra to the party. \u00a0Running along the coastline we have the Humboldt current, which brings a cooling influence to those vineyards closer to the sea such as Casablanca and San Antonio\/Leyda.<\/p>\n<p>All this folks adds up to some very interesting wines, which we hope to explore with you all over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Tasting This Weekend<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>To ease us all gently back in to it, we will be tasting the three wines we carry from <strong>Oyster Shack<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>These wines are all from the Central Valley which stretches south from Santiago, in the corridor between the mountains and the sea.\u00a0 Within the valley are a number of sub-regions with specific geographical traits &#8211; Maipo, Cachapoal, Colchagua, Curic\u00f3, Maule, Itata, Bio-Bio and Malleco.\u00a0 We will look more closely at these regions as we proceed through September, but for now we\u2019ll keep it simple with the Oyster Shack wines.<\/p>\n<p>We have <strong>Sauvignon Blanc 2011, Chardonnay 2010 and Merlot 2011 <\/strong>they all cost \u00a36.99 and will be open from this evening \u2013 see you after 5pm!<\/p>\n<p>Transfer window closes at 11pm, put your offers in\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fellow Wine Lovers, The Stoke Mandeville Sports Event kicked off in big style this week and with 4,000 athletes competing, I\u2019m sure we can look forward to thrills, excitements and disappointments over the next week or so. This week also saw the annual Tomatino Festival in Bu\u00f1ol in Spain, where participants threw 120 tonnes of [&hellip;]<\/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-96","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\/96","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=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions\/97"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parkvintners.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}