Finding it is a bit like going to a rave. First, you need to know a local hombre to get the number. On tinkling, you are directed to another telephone box to wait for a call. Then, like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn, a taxi appears to pick you up from Alicante town centre and you are driven 20 minutes up the coast, blindfolded.
This sort of experience excites the hell out of me and has my salivary glands pissing like a Dutch dyke.
A London based PR company sent me this fab bottle of Chablis but I can’t find out where to source it in the UK so you may have to go to France if you want to try it (seems to be readily available in the US, however).
As a WART fan member, I was pleased to see the label recommended serving temperature was 10-12 degrees, about twice the temperature of the average UK fridge.
The wine was grapefruity, tangy and yet with the stainless steel flintiness you expect from a good Chablis. More zingy than a Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc, and with a finish longer than a David Cameron speech (but without the gaffes).
If you can find it in the UK, do let me know. I’d like some more. Oh! It goes perfectly with Camembert.
The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive – John Sladek.
Buying wine futures is no different to taking a long position on Brent crude, although the end result is often tastier – Me.
Except buying en primeur is fun and when I stick to the more reasonable end of the price range I frequently get outperforming wines for the price. This Crozes-Hermitages was a great example at about £10 per bottle.
Les Baux-de-Provence is not a place I have ever visited. But it has just blasted its way up my desirable-where-to-do-dégustation-in-France list, purely based on this wine, which is one of the most delicious reds I have tasted in a long time.
I spend far too much of what economists laughingly call my “disposable” income on wine.  I also buy more shoes than I can reasonably polish. I like to think of it as keeping in touch with my feminine side.
Imagine my delight then, when I discovered that Oliver Sweeney has been bought out of administration! I haven’t purchased a pair for a couple of years (but still own numerous), so maybe I am in some small way responsible for their near demise. Mind you my temporary desertion of my favourite footwear brand was not purely for economic reasons. I thought the designs lost their way. Brands are about consistency of product, not advertising. Any clever agency can get you to try a product once but loyalty is expressed in repeat sales and recommendations, which only come from over-delivery of the promise.
You could consider wines to be micro brands and I was not that impressed by the product quality of a 2008 Mahi Pinot Noir. Will the Sauvignon Blanc resole my trust, or leave me with a hole in my shoe?
Marqués de Riscal is getting older by the day. When I reviewed the 2003 eighteen months ago, the bottle pronounced that the Bodegas was founded in 1860. In this latest 2004 release, two new years have been discovered. It’s a bit like Joan Collins in reverse. Wine must be the only field in which the older you are, the more attractive you become.
I could fall in love with Jane Hunter,
I have never met her, she might be a munter,
But if I could turn back the callous hands of time,
Her success, her money and wines would be mine.
After all, if her wines are a personification of her true self, then surely she must be gorgeous, tasty, exciting, full-bodied and just a little tarty (in a nice discreet way)?
But, probably, I would not ask her to hurry the wines to my cellar because, having tried her Sauvignon Blanc for the last few vintages, I think it tastes much better after a year or more of ageing. I know this flouts convention, that NZ Sauvignon Blancs should be drunk within a year.
There is much competition amongst Kiwi winemakers these days. Since the success of Cloudy Bay, ten thousand maniac (give or take a few thousand) imitators have gradually eroded the price of Marlborough gooseberry cat-pissers. I got my 2009 Hunter’s from the Wine Society (£10.50) at barely a gnat’s fart more than the price of the 2006 (£9.95).
The 2009 is a bit two dimensional. Gooseberry and sugar. It is zingy but bland, if that is not too much of an oenological oxymoron.
Nonetheless, from previous experience, I suggest you buy a few bottles and lay them down for, oh I don’t know, twelve to twenty four months and I am sure you will see massive improvement.
It’s Christmas Eve and I am enjoying some rump. But that is enough about the wife.
I dug out a 2005 St. Emilion that looked like it might go with a bit of bully.
I am Legend. Well, not so much me as Will Smith. Yes, I’ve just watched the film about the British scientist who inadvertently cures cancer with a virus that mutates into a killer strand that genocidinates the humans of the world (and for the purposes of the film, the World is New York). One American male and a dog are the sole survivors charged with finding a cure. I thought I could guess the ending but actually it finished rather suddenly, which was a shame as the plot was hugely promising and I was just starting to crap myself.
The last time I was genuinely scared at a horror movie was a David Cronenberg double bill of Rabid and Shivers at the Manchester Odeon in 1979.
Have you ever placed a bet you can’t lose? Cast iron guaranteed?
Just prior to the start of the season I wagered the considerable sum of £10 with fellow Man City fan, Jamie Goode.
Stumble It!