Confessions of a Wino

I am getting spammed by Barker & Stonehouse, an upmarket furniture retailer in Yorkshire. I bought a couple of sofas from them in 2002 and since then they have kindly alerted me to their keen offers by SMS. It all started out quite benignly with an odd message to my phone every few months.  Then I decided to unsubscribe as the text messages were simply not relevant to my current needs. But horror appeared in the form of a recent phone bill from O2.

I had tried a total of four times to unsubscribe and each time it had failed. Everyone makes mistakes. But they don’t usually charge for them.  33p is the cost of sending a text to Barker & Stonehouse to unsubscribe. That is a liberty beyond belief in the face of success. It is unbelievably, arse-bendingly, penny-pinchingly, temple-bulgingly farcical in the case of failure.  After four efforts (and £1.32) the spam continues.

At the other end of the Bathgate respect for organisations spectrum is The Wine Society. In piquant ascendancy right now, it reminds me of where Tesco was 4 or 5 years ago (for groceries, not wine). Great service, huge growth prospects, loyal customers, great products at reasonable prices.

This awesome Savigny-Laviéres from renowned Camus-Bruchon et Fils, was an en primeur purchase a few years ago that, after tax and delivery, netted out at about £16 per bottle. Madame Google is struggling to find current UK stockists, although US prices indicate you would probably have to pay £25 to grab a bottle these days.  Even at that lofty price it is well worth it.

The wine, like many fine Burgundies is tawny and thin to look at, but fruity and composty to taste, with the educated and structured acidity of a Jeremy Paxman interview. At 13 degrees ABV, this is a refined, delicate, Catherine Deneuve of a wine. If you know where to get more, please drop me a line.

If you share my distaste for spam and illegal marketing practices, feel free to join my Boycott Barker and Stonehouse group on Facebook. If you like the idea of decent wines at fair prices, join the Wine Society.

I’ve been looking for a reason to slate The Wine Society.  I have not always got on with this venerable and sometimes crusty institution.  At the moment, however, it seems that it can do no wrong.

So let’s try to find their Henry IV moment – not dying majestically in battle but from a limp bout of debilitating psoriasis.

A bog standard own brand at the low end of the price range? Check. From the cheap as chips, rough and ready end of France, the Languedoc? Check. Come. Sharpen the knives. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown!

Read the rest of this entry »

Dining fatigue. It’s a disease I never imagined would afflict my jowly, portly and contented frame. Yet I piled on a couple more waistline inches at Corrigan’s recently with little spirit and less joy.

I can’t fault the food and, at £27 for three generous courses, it stands up to the Sunday lunch value test, in London at least. The service is also impeccable, if a little sterile. I will take issue with the wine list, which is expensive to the point of leaving you with the distasteful feeling of having been ripped off. £44 for a low rent, screw cap, Blaufränkisch that stings of balsamic and glacé cherries is poor value, even at the “cheap” end of the list.

The decor is a little strange but I guess, in an area of London where you can buy a shotgun and a pair of plaid breeches, from a shop next door to one that sells 7ft high Ming vases, the locals probably feel at home. But I feel justified in my disappointment at the lack of game, and notably grouse, on this late August menu, in a place where dark duck feather lampshades shed amber light over dingy booths (which, a couple of districts to the east would have illuminated illicit poker games), and pictures of Hooray Henries pointing their Purdeys all over the shop with gay abandon adorn the walls.

Sitting eating in Corrigan’s I could have been randomly transmogrified, without even noticing, to The Ivy, Scott’s or The Boxwood Café (RIP), although at least the surviving brace in that list have some defining quirks: In the latter case, the Star Wars shellfish bar, and the former, Gestapo style service.

Talking of service, on vociferous enquiry, I discovered that the mandatory “optional” 12.5% goes to the house, so I hope that, like me, you will have that removed and leave a cash tip.

Apart from that foible, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Corrigan’s if you like this type of stuffy high end dining (and I am far from allergic). I guess I just expected a bit more craic from an Irishman.

If James Bond were to dine in London today, he wouldn’t take his Danish bird to Corrigan’s.  I suggest that, unlike a review quoted on the Corrigan’s website, he might still prefer Scott’s down the road, where he might at the very least meet the ghost of his creator.

Corrigan’s, Mayfair
28 Upper Grosvenor Street,
London
W1K 7EH
T: 0207 499 9943
E: reservations@Corrigansmayfair.com
W:  www.corrigansmayfair.com

£125.40 plus service for 3 course Sunday lunch for two with wine and coffees.

Quite earthy and rich and tasting of beetroot and tomato purée with some plummy fruits and vanilla thrown in, this Côtes du Rhône Villages goes brilliantly with Heinz tomato soup, which if you are over 9, only really tastes acceptable when accompanied by a tipper truck load of ground black pepper and a toasted white pitta bread.

So, having set a British & Commonwealth record for the longest opening sentence on a Confessions post, my mind turned to where I may have procured this very decent tasting bottle, and its pecuniary value, given that I (unusually for me) kept no record, nor scrawled any details on the label, and whether I was also going to set a record for the second sentence, and penultimate paragraph before I ran out of breath and all remaining readers had passed out, so I wantonly speculated that this was probably a £7.50 wine and turned to Lord Google.

It is rather nice, so I shouldn’t have really been so surprised to find it at Berry Bros.  They only have it In Bond (for delivery when?) at £130 per case which is just under £11, but normally one must add shipping and VAT, so maybe my estimate is out by a factor of two?  Hmm I might stretch to that for a couple of bottles, but the price does appear to have been influenced by a Parker rating of 88-90.

Compared to London in the best of times and the worst of times, Exeter city is beautiful, but only within a guillotine blade width of the cathedral. And in this tale of two cities, Exeter is almost uninhabited. But like most of provincial England, the restaurant scenery is so familiar and populous it could be Stockport, or Slough,  Scunthorpe or Staines. Desperately avoiding chain store massacres, I chanced upon Coal, which was bucking the trend on a late summer Tuesday evening, in that trade was brisk and I didn’t recognise the name from the FTSE brands directory.

Read the rest of this entry »

A bizarre encounter with some of York’s finest scummy kids, as we walked from our hotel in leafy Clifton past the glorious Minster, meant that we nearly missed our table at the Blue Bicycle, a place recommended by a friend who used to live here. I had expected a smooth passage (both before and after the meal) but, to be honest, the bottom feeding teenage toe-rags that I almost ended up having to punch away from us, left me wondering whether there is a city in this country that is safe to cross on foot. Where could I have been more surprised to learn this than the twee and ancient Roman city of Eboracum?

By contrast, the interior of the Blue Bicycle is very Bohemian with ultramarine water glasses, Van Gogh sunflower coloured walls, and Lautrec painted mirrors. A little reminiscent of the label of a Hahn Estates Cycles Gladiator wine, and no doubt inspired by the same genre of painting.

Read the rest of this entry »

And while we are on the topic of barking mad wines, I’ve had a variety six pack of Domaine Tempier in the rack for a while now.  Meanwhile, the perfect wine marriage for beans on toast remains unconsummated in my experience. Can you see what’s coming?

Read the rest of this entry »

The wines of Château Musar are often thought of as a tad barking mad. At #EWBC 2008 in La Rioja, delegates were presented with a blind tasting. Not one person out of 50 odd wine buffs got even close to identifying this Lebanese woofer. So is it really so weird?

I bagged a bottle of the second wine, “Hochar” 2003 from the Wine Society at a reasonable £10.50.

It tastes like a cross between a Bordeaux and a Burgundy. Very subtle and fine tannins, some barnyard, and loads of fruit. A Pinot Noir on speed? The Bordeaux is represented by cherries and cedar wood.

Trouble is, it is not even close to barking mad. Actually it is quite classic French. But, it is priced at French levels, and that makes it a direct competitor.

If I am wrong, I have a couple of bottles of the first wine in my cellar which I can’t wait to try. If I am right then maybe I shouldn’t drink it at all, instead focus on finding the right moment to sell at enormous mark-up to a Chinese speculator, who will probably end up enjoying it with Coke when the fine wine market finally implodes.

Scalini Fedeli is such a high end Italian, it could be the Silvio Berlusconi of restaurants. As I walk in, I imagine Wall St bankers taking their prey to be softened up with an expensive Chianti before mugging them for an eye-watering commission.

I reckon the waiting staff are in on the act.  They look impressively like Spatz Domino’s henchmen. I wouldn’t dare send anything back. Having said that, ruthlessly efficient and courteous. One of the themes of NYC service that has changed since my last visit 18 months ago (and one small part of me regrets this) is the tolerance, politeness, and friendliness you can nowadays expect even in the diners and delis.  Is there an economic down cycle or something?

Read the rest of this entry »

I pity these crazy foo’s?  That’s certainly not the order I would put them in.  And Confessions of a Wino would definitely not be in my top ten of UK wine blogs.  Laughable. I am not even trying to make money out of my site.

No wonder I get so many pesky (usually trite) press releases. I ain’t getting on no airplane with these guys!

Feel free to send me more samples though.  My neighbours keep asking about the parties, and I do occasionally write up wines if they are interesting in some way.

Got no more time fo da jibba jabba.