Confessions of a Wino

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.

(more…)

I have a lot of respect for Stuart Pearce.  I liked him as manager of Man City although clearly he was not experienced enough at the time.  For the last couple of years he has been preparing England Under 21s for the European Cup.  We were clearly the best side in the tournament with the possible exception of Germany, who gave us a 4-0 bloody nose in the final.

But for 3 key suspensions, England might well have put up a fight, but what do I know?  I don’t have Sky Sports in the flat so I have had to suffer Wimbledon instead where sulky Scot/plucky Brit (depending if he loses/if he wins), Andy Murray, was on terrestrial TV playing in the latest night ever finish at Wimbledon (no football connection there – not any more anyway) against Stanislas Wawrinka, the more than plucky Swiss.

Bellingham “The Bernard Series” Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2007 is pretty plucky.  I thought Chenin Blanc tipped a wink to Blandshire, on average.  But this far from average example has more spunk than Murray, more intensity than Pearce and more grunt than Michelle Larcher de Brito.

(more…)

Just one day after the final match of the season, the 2008/9 FA Premiership is already a distant memory.  We now enter the silly summer season where silly sums will be spent on sop soccer stars with scant regard for common sense or the common fan.

If there is one maxim in life that everyone understands it is that money does not guarantee success.  I mean, look at Mark Hughes’ under-achievers.  Being a long suffering Man City fan, it is no surprise to me that we scraped in mid table a whopping 5 points clear of footballing paupers, Stoke City, even though one of our players cost more than Stoke’s entire squad.

I have to congratulate Stoke on an over-achieving season.  Based on the resources available to them and being newly promoted to the division, they were odds on to get relegated.  But Tony Pulis had a well thought out strategy and it worked.

Strange game football eh?  But the same can apply to wine.  This bottle came from a Wine Society Mystery Burgundy Case (average implied bottle price £20 but actually was on sale for £56.75 on the WS website).  Ouch!  It better be good!

(more…)

I’ve got my comeuppance for slagging off Mark Hughes.  Man City announced that the UEFA Cup quarter final home leg would be a “reward for the fans” and tickets were priced at only £5 so “ordinary fans” could come and watch.  I am obviously not an ordinary fan since, despite numerous calls to the ticket office (engaged tone) the match is sold out and I have to watch on some backwater internet channel.  Shame – I am in Manchester on 16 April when the town turns into a Hamburger for a night.

So perhaps I should be more complimentary about people I have never met.

Everyone knows that it is impossible to mass produce and mass market a decent wine – especially a Pinot Noir.  Trouble is, nobody told Alfred Hurtado.  His Chilean Cono Sur brand is taking over the world and rightly so.

(more…)

Have you ever watched a football match where the result went against the run of play?  Or fancied a bird whose face was constructed from the Pam Ayres book of beauty?  Or eaten something like a Seekh Kebab that looks like a dog turd but tastes bloody lovely?

(more…)

So Man City’s UEFA dream survives after clinging by the loosest of threads for 90 minutes plus extra time and penalties.

I never supported the appointment of Mark Hughes.  However, I have held my tongue whilst others have defended him.  Apologists are fine, but with the budget he has, I think the fans deserve more.

(more…)

The third sample from Rowan Gormley’s new venture, Naked Wines, is a Chenin Blanc from a part of the world Rowan should know well, since he was born there.  Not surprising then that South Africa is well represented in the early offerings from Naked, and Bain’s Way seems to be manning the midfield with several varietals available.

I like Rowan and want to support his new venture but I can’t pretend that I like a wine when it smells of napalm.  Come to think of it, I have never smelt napalm but I imagine it to be a rubbery petroleum mixture.  Anyway, of the first two naked wines that I tried, one was good, one poor.

So with the scores level at the hour mark, can Bain’s Way nip into the penalty box and slot home the winner?

(more…)

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.

(more…)

I’ve held my tongue for a while.  I don’t want to sound like yet another whinger that told you so, but I was never in favour of Mark Hughes being appointed manager of Man City.  I admit that I reneged on my promise to turn up at the first game of this season and shout the Sven mantra.  I actually turned up at Eastlands yesterday to see Man City suffer a humiliating 2-1 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur, albeit after some questionable refereeing and grim Manchester weather.

But whilst luck and refereeing even out over a season, we have a number of more fundamental weaknesses.  Dunne is looking disastrous, Vassell is just not in the same class as his team-mates, Zabaleta still has to convince me he is even close to Corluka who left for Spurs in August.  Worryingly I hear rumours that Hughes’ intentions of splashing the Abu Dhabi cash in the January transfer window are targeted at a handful of his Blackburn ex-employees.  The ones who helped him reach the astonishing heights of mid table obscurity, admittedly at low cost.

Sometimes, though, if you have the money, you need to aim a bit higher.  I am not exactly rich so it was a stretch for me to fork out £21 to the Wine Society for this Kanzem Altenberg Alte Reben Riesling Spätlese, von Othegraven, 2007 from the Mosel.  A mouthful in every sense…

(more…)

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.

(more…)