Confessions of a Wino

Every January I do my penance and teach my evil body a lesson by depriving it of alcohol, caffeine and fried foods, and forcing it to strain and pump to weird tunes on my cross training sessions.  Usually I get bored after about two weeks.

Sat here in the middle of my current detox, not one single person has asked me which water is best for detoxifying with, so I thought I would tell you.

The still water of choice in the Wino household is Volvic.  I find Evian just a tad too chalky, and others too expensive, although my local Spar currently has 4L of Evian for £1.25 so chalk it is for now.  Well we are in a depression aren’t we?

On celebratory evenings, my fizz is supplied by San Pellegrino, the sparking water of kings and the Mafia.  The bubbles are just right and if drunk cold, is a perfect refresher after exercise.  The bottle recommends serving at 8 to 10 degrees Celsius but I say take it straight from the fridge at about 5 deg.

So for good detox simply sleep well, drink water and exercise a lot.  You will feel great, but don’t die of boredom.

Currently I have only old wine notes to publish, which offer limited stimulation to a writer’s juice flowing equipment.  Oh well, once more unto the breach of the cross trainer…

2008 was a mixed year for most.  Economically, certainly the most unusual and shocking in my living memory.  Oenologically, one of the most interesting for different reasons.

I explored a wide range of wines from a litany of suppliers serving us through clicks and sometimes bricks.  Wines have ranged from the decadent to the indecent, the sublime to the slime, the super duper to the pooper scooper.

For personal and professional reasons I have found myself eating out more than usual in the last 12 months.  My regular haunts of London, Leeds and Manchester all have nice places to offer, but finding VFM has not been easy.  I predict that with falling oil prices bringing the cost of food back to manageable levels, and customers more concerned with paying off debt with the spectre of redundancy lurking in the shadows, than consuming a frothy onion cappuccino as a “free” amuse-bouche, that VFM will be the largest determinant in any restaurant’s success this year.

In short, 2008 has been an immensely enjoyable and scary ride.

May 2009 bring you good wine, good news and some remnant of financial stability.  Best wishes.

I’ve spent a number of happy occasions rinsing my bladder in perfectly poured Guinness in this imposing public house overlooking O’Connell Bridge.  The architecture both inside and out is stunning and the location and views of bustling Dublin are unparalleled, yet I have always thought it quite an ordinary pub grub place as far as food is concerned.

When I saw that Michael Winner had raved about Messrs Maguire in a Sunday Times review I thought I would revisit and try the food again.  It was still ordinary.  But for me, eating is not the point of this place.

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You may be sick of me carping on about wine temperature, or you may be a staunch supporter of my unfortunately acronymed WART campaign.  Personally I am getting ever more fed up of the ignorance of British bar and restaurant staff bringing me Beaujolais from the wine oven and Chablis from the beer freezer.

But what worries me more is the attitude I get when I ask for a red wine to be chilled.  Replies range from the polite but sardonic “That’s a red wine, sir, it should be served at room temperature” to the downright rude and sneering “You’re wrong, sir, it should be served warm”.

As it is Christmas, I dug out one of last year’s presents, a wine thermometer.  It is quite enlightening to read the instructions and I hope I am not breaching copyright by reproducing them verbatim.

The single most important factor of serving wine at its optimum is the temperature.  The enclosed thermometer will give you an exact reading for you to follow on our guide and eliminate the need for guesswork.  We recommend you serve wine one degree lower than the guide indicates to compensate for the wine glass warming up to room temperature.

16-17°C – Vintage red wines when mature Bordeaux type
15-16°C – Vintage Burgundy type
14-16°C – High quality or vintage red wines still young
14-16°C – Vintage dry white wines
11-12°C – Light fruity or young red wines
10-12°C – Dry and young white wines
10-12°C – New or young red wines
10-12°C – Very fruity rosé wines
8-10°C – Light or local white wines
7-8°C – Champagne or sparkling wine
5-6°C – Sweet or aromatic wines

Whilst you may quibble about some of the individual detail, and I could find a case to change one or two recommendations by a degree or two, the range of recommended temperatures is valid.  When you consider that most restos serve all red wines at 25 degrees and all white wines at 5 degrees Celsius, it is clear there is some education required out there.

By the way, if you don’t own a thermometer, about an hour in my fridge gets a wine down to about 15-16°C.

Now I have had my rant I can get back to the Xmas festivities and a particularly feisty yet lithesome bottle of Riesling.  Can I take this opportunity of wishing you all the highest compliments of the season.  May your food be warm and tasty, and your wine chilled and dandy.

The papers here in the UK seem to be turning against Mark Hughes, embattled manager of my beloved Manchester City.  His honeymoon period as “the most promising young English football manager” is over with a lunar bump that lacks any sweetness.

The Sunday Times for example alerts Hughes to the fact he is “skating on thin ice”.  The latest defeat at home by an injury depleted Everton squad has once again placed the media spotlight on him.  After all, a mentally anguished Roy Keane recently fell on his sword at Sunderland because they were languishing in the under-achieving position of bottom quarter of the table – equal on points with Man City.

It gives me only bitterness to gloat that I thought Hughes the wrong choice way back in June (before he had even been appointed).  But like all good Man City fans, I keep sailing the dinghy of naive optimism through the rough and tough waters of the Premiership perfect storm of despair.  One has to make the best of now, look to the future, place the past in perspective, believe that tomorrow will be another day (if it ever comes).  However, silver linings are increasingly less related to football, and more to do with other facets of my life.  My latest glint of sunlight peeped from behind the clouds of the top end of my wine collection, ironically squirrelled away at the bottom of my wine store.

The Charmes-Chambertin came from the Wine Society at an obscure price due to bundling a few Rousseaux together into a Burgundy Dividend offering, but I am advised the retail price (if you can find the wine at all) is about GBP50 – that’s nearly EUR50, or USD25 at current exchange rates, so it is held under lock and key in the Wino household.

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I just found out what Rowan Gormley (formerly of Virgin Wines) is up to these days.  He is getting naked – well in a wine sort of way.  It’s a new concept in wine retailing, although knowing Rowan, he would hate to see it described so stuffily and, after all, everybody hates “new concepts”.

This new concept could be yet another Wine 2.0 also ran – it is claimed to be a bit like LastFM where you can recommend and follow other people’s recommendations, except unlike LastFM I think you might be expected to actually buy some wine.  On the other hand maybe there is something new here – let’s wait and see.

Anyway, there is definitely one good side to it.  They are looking for 100 wine tasters to receive three bottles FREE OF CHARGE, simply in return for bringing your opinion back prior to launch.

As you might expect, being a thirsty (and gobby) git, I have signed up, so if you want one of the remaining 99 places head over to www.nakedwines.com

Since people were asking how to navigate around this site, for example to find recommendations for a decent red wine for less than a tenner, I weakly offered a “Wino’s Favourites” page to highlight what I thought was good at the time.

This has not been a raging success so I have deleted it and instead tagged all my posts with relevant monikers to make it easier to search the site.  You can do so by clicking on your preferred phrase in the tag cloud in the right hand column of the home page.

On a day when fell runners are being rescued from floods in Cumbria, we decided it was an opportune moment to head south into the Peak District, where the weather was balmy by comparison.  An extra hour in bed for the end of British Summer Time?  No chance – just got up an hour earlier to make sure we finished a 6 mile scramble in time for a pub lunch.

We passed the Robin Hood, half way round the walk up and down various gritstone edges, and, although not quite as notorious as the fellow it is named after, it looked homely.  At the end of the walk we drove round for a pie and a pint.

 

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In February of this year, I slagged off Binary as a stealth bar and it looks like I wasn’t the only one left unimpressed as customers stayed away in droves.

In the summer, during peak drinking season, the owners had the balls to shut it down for serious refurbishment and it re-launched recently.  I wanted to go back for another look, so I popped in to watch England refurbish the Kazakhstan football team, eventually wallpapering them by five goals to one.

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When dining out, one well known restaurant critic makes a point of asking how the tips are distributed, always leaving cash, and encourages readers to do the same.  So I dutifully asked the MO of one waiter at the Cornerhouse Grill and was stunned by his response.

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