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 once returned 5 badly corked bottles of Luis Cañas to the Sunday Times Wine Club, one by one.  The poor call centre staff, on seeing my number, started greeting me with “your usual complaint, Mr Bathgate?”.  They had a point.  I had only ordered half a case.  But, fair play to them, they refunded every bottle.

And that meant that ordering Luis Cañas again was not scary, not even from the same merchant.

Mind you, I still opened this bottle with a little trepidation, as my Tesco pizza frazzled in the oven.  It cost me about £20 after all, having arrived as part of a President’s Cellar selection from the STWC.

At first it was a shade bitter but, no worries.  After a bit of air, all the smoothness of the 18 months of oak ageing came through and the wine revealed its fruity, mellow underbelly.  A Spanish wine that tastes more like a Bordeaux and yet goes marvellously with spicy pizza?  That has to be worth £20.

Burgundy wine can be expensive.  Gevrey Chambertin is no exception.  So when the moths blinked as I opened my wallet to send £20.99 to the Sunday Times Wine Club for this Labouré-Roi, I took Tony Laithwaite on face value, (and that takes a leap of faith).

I must have ordered just two bottles because I found this right at the back of my rack, and I reviewed it once before (and loved it) a couple of years ago.

This time round I wasn’t quite as impressed.  Did I over-chill it?  Maybe it was going through a famed Burgundian middle-age crisis.  Either way, it is a tastyish wine – I just question whether an investment of over £20 plus two year’s storage charges in my Combine Harvester is really worth it. 2009 Beaujolais looks better value to be honest, and is outperforming many a Bourgogne right now.

I’ve been a W man for so long that people are starting to call me George Bush.  So, when will you believe my double dip recession prediction?  You might have to admit defeat at the end of Q1 2011, if GDP growth is negative for the second quarter.  But I must admit that even I thought that interest rates would have to start rising before we took the second dive.  If all it took was a VAT increase, then we are potentially  heading for more of a “plummet”, than a “dip”.  All of which leads me to continue looking for best value wine.

And that sometimes means belief in your future health by investing in en primeur wines.

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Lemony smell, bright yellow colour – sounds like a “golden shower”?

Fortunately it tastes of pomodorino tomatoes on toasted ciabatta.  Superb with pan fried salmon and new potatoes.

As ever, don’t mask the fine flavours by over-icing.  Take WART advice and serve at 10-12°C.

Mine came from the Sunday Times Wine Club, President’s Cellar 6 monthly case, which regular readers will know implies about £20 per bottle.  I’d say this one is well worth it, and drinking well now.

Interest rates artificially low.  Share prices rising.  Inflation a constant news item.  Retailers gloomy.  The price of luxuries like clothing and food are under threat.  Irish banks bailed out yet again.

Could there be any clearer signals that the double dip is on the way?  When it comes to recession theory, I firmly believe in the BIG W.  The other big W in my life belongs to Bacchus.  But how much longer will I be able to subscribe to the President’s Cellar?  Pretty much the only wine I buy from the Sunday Times Wine Club these days, and the only circumstance in which I relinquish the responsibility of choice, delivers 6 secret bottles every 6 months at about £20 a head.

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After a visit to the Wine Gallery in Bordeaux where I tasted some of the best (or in any case, most expensive) wines in the world, La Brasserie Bordelaise was the destination for a bloody, but fatty, grisly and tough, entrecôte steak.  What could match the power of Château Latour or Cheval Blanc to accompany such a dish?

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Tucked away in a place so secret that only the French Foreign Legion knows of its existence, this place is more charming than Dartagnan and better for juicing up a hot date than a pair of George Clooney’s underpants.

You can expect French service, though, which is the exact opposite of New York service.  That is to say, friendly but slow.

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The big thing about buying wine in bond is that you are supposed to stash some aside for drinking later.  Especially if, like me, you are fortunate enough to own a Combine Harvester.

So how come, I’ve already drunk 7/12 of these bottles that arrived from the Sunday Times Wine Club in August 2009 with a recommended drinking date of up to 2014?

Well, good is good, and brilliant is brilliant, but this wine is awesome.  I can’t stop pouring it down my neck as if I was a human decanter.  Smooth yet spicy and zingy, it is everything I could wish of a Pinot Noir.  Tar, tea, cranberry and redcurrant and worth every penny of the £21 per bottle it eventually cost me.

Finally, one in the eye for the Kiwi arrivistes.

2004 was, by most commentators, considered to be a good year in Rioja, and Laguardia might be the prettiest village in all of Northern Spain.  So this wine has two things going for it already.

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