A bull at the door is a welcome nod to Wall Street riches, and I only wish my shares were stampeding a little harder right now.  But as a promise of what was to come, the comedy doggie doo left under the hindquarters of the statue was a more accurate entrée to the Bloomsbury branch of Black & Blue.
If there’s one thing better than a pint of Black Sheep, it’s a pint of Black Sheep served in a cosy warm Yorkshire pub, after a long Sunday morning walk on the moors.
The Star at Harome is just such a warming and friendly establishment but with the added bonus of being a restaurant that serves game, fish and fine wines. Oh and it has won just about every “best gastro pub” award going including, at one point, a Michelin star. It’s grouse season and I might just be in heaven. I am going to pay a celestial price too, £111 (a Nelson) plus service is more than a trifle in this part of the world.
Beaujolais 2009 seems to be getting better and better. I’ve still got a case or two, supposedly improving with age but, in reality, finding its way into my belly faster than the breaking of a New Year resolution.
Take this Côte-de-Brouilly from Nicole Chanrion, which I got from the Wine Society for £9.95. There is full on fruit in a way that makes it hard to believe it is crafted from the Gamay grape, that in poor hands can taste of little more than Bazooka Joe with Cherry Coke.
By contrast, Chanrion has delivered an intense boost of full on fruit. Not so much lipsmackin’ as tonsil tingling and jowl jiggling. It’s a really good beans-on wine match (remember to use Branston Baked Beans if you are an adult).
The Wine Society looks to have left 2009 behind, in favour of the subsequent vintage. The good news is, 2010 is another super year for this lovable, reasonably priced, yet often overlooked region.
I hear that 2010 Beaujolais is even better than 2009, and I thought that was the best I have ever tasted. So I have to make a little room in my Combine Harvester by clearing out a predecessor.
This Moulin à Vent, or to give it full title, Joseph Burrier, La Salomine, Château de Beauregard, Moulin à Vent, 2009, cost £14.95 from The Wine Society and is worth every penny. Blackberries, tart blackberries and sweet blackberries. Potent, yet refined and combining the youth and vigour of the Gamay grape with the middle aged maturity of nearby Burgundy.
Despite the 2010 hype, if you can still get hold of 2009 Bojo, I would stock a few away. I think most will keep improving for a couple more years yet. Meanwhile I am going to cover both bases and stock a case of each.
Spending a weekend in Brescia at the European Wine Bloggers Conference, seemed a pretty good way to try to fill in some of the blind spots in my wine knowledge, namely, pretty much all Italian wine.
But due to “real” work commitments I was unable to attend any of the post conference trips, the most appealing of which was Chianti.
I can stare longingly at a wine map, kindly donated by Steve De Long. I can laugh wryly at the treatment afforded to Jim Budd (a man so straight-talking his words are delivered on EU approved cucumbers) in his communications with a renowned Chianti producer. But right now, the closest I can get to saying I was there is by drinking a bottle that I procured from Sunday Times Wine Club (Laithwaites), en primeur, for about £16.
Like many indicters, I might allege that Italian red wine is all too often over-tannic for my tastes and this one plays up to my prejudices. However, on the plus side, there are punnets of blackcurrants, baskets of cherries and bright acidity that lasts in the mouth like a 24h menthol mouthwash (in a good way!).
This wine is young, of course. But I think relations between Baron Ricasoli and J.Budd Esq. will have thawed long before this wine’s tannins are soft enough for me to really enjoy it.
If you are into this type of wine, surely it would be magnificent with a hunk of rare red meat and a big bowl of salty French fries.
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. Â 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. Â I have not always got on with this venerable and sometimes crusty institution. Â 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!
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: Â 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.
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. Â Meanwhile, the perfect wine marriage for beans on toast remains unconsummated in my experience. Can you see what’s coming?
Stumble It!