As if it wasn’t hard enough already (no pun intended), blokes everywhere are giving up hope of ever getting another blowjob.
Before Americanisation, I used to think that “head” was the foam on a pint of beer. As a mature Wino, I now I fully realise that it is the bubbles on top of a Bellini. And I love a Bellini.
I’m not having much luck with my latest Burgundies from the Wine Society. This one would have cost £24.25 if it had not been included in a cheapo Burgundy bin end case. The 2004 is available at £28.50 – maybe that is a better bet now?
The 2001 I opened the other evening was slightly oxidised but there was clear evidence of a super wine under the dull acidity.
Apple and blackberry, raspberry and ginger. It tipped a good nod to Pinot Noir with the smell you get when you chuck damp leaves on a fire. It wasn’t so badly oxidised as to make it undrinkable but a £25 Nuit St-Georges like this should have had me in ecstasy rather than objectivity. Shame.
Some gadgets are adorable and some are practical. None are both.
My iPhone is adorable but lacks practicality on so many levels. It is missing some very basic technical features like cut and paste.  I keep dropping it because it is too smooth to hold. It always looks like it’s been pawed by a jello wrestling dog that has just walked across a skid pan.
Jo le taxi (aka wine delivery driver) this week brought me a small but intriguing parcel I ordered en primeur over a year ago.
The reason I was interested in this wine was threefold…
1) it was by Paul Jaboulet Ainé
2) it was from Beaumes-de-Venise, a well known sweet white wine area but this was a red Grenache/Syrah
3) it was pretty cheap!
As taste sensations go, there is little to beat a hunk of well seasoned Argentinian beef, chargrilled and accompanied by a glass of decent Malbec. Chewing on the salty, aged and bloody meat causes a tingling in your gums as if a bovine mouthwash.   This then undergoes some kind of chemical reaction with the deep, moody, spicy wine that leaves you digesting the meal for a whole week. Sharp pangs – taste reminders – keep haunting you like salivating ghosts of taste past that make you press your teeth together in muscle memory.
As Argentinian steakhouses go, The Gaucho Grill takes the biscuit. Not only for great steaks with superb ghost potential, but also for awesome (by which I mean sky high) wine prices. Markups of over 300% are commonplace. That is four times the retail price and presumably they pay the importer much less! Is there a venue which matches the steak quality and authenticity, but where the only fleecing is associated with an occasional lamb chop?
In Leeds, a place I dine all too rarely these days, River Plate has appeared on the site once known as the Calls Grill. The menu looked pretty similar to Gaucho but, to be frank, the wine list looked cheap!
It seems that people haven’t stopped spending after all. January 2009 retail sales in the UK were actually 0.7% higher than last month and a whopping 3.6% higher than Jan 08. Analysts (who are these anonymous experts? It’s like reading about comments from “community leaders” after a local riot) suggest that deep discounting in the January sales was the cause. Whatever. It shows that if you can get your value proposition right, people will still buy.
I’ve had a couple of marketing lessons recently.
The first was pulling into a service station with my iPhone flashing a “10% power” warning. A FoneBitz franchise saw me coming (and presumably had the pictures). It was more than irony that they stiffed me for £24.95 for an in-car charger. When the assistant saw me laugh out loud (LOL), she didn’t. The iPhone cost less than that, I giggled. “Do you want the item, sir?” said the straight-faced lady. I had 20 phone calls to make and 200 miles to drive, so I handed over the dirty ransom.
This may be made from M. Burguet’s favourite old vines but I am not that impressed.
The first bottle I opened was cloudy as a January day in Manchester (any day in January, take your pick) and as bitter as a teaspoonful of chicory essence – remember that wartime coffee substitute? No I don’t either.
The second bottle wasn’t cloudy but failed to live up to its price tag of £26 from the cyber-shelves of the Wine Society.
I will give the second bottle the benefit of my detox tainted palate, but I will be writing to Messrs Johnson and co to get my £25.95 back for the first.
For the record it was a little soapy although had a few redeeming flavours of radishes and Eton Mess. I would expect more from a £7.50 bottle of Chilean Pinot.
To pass the time during my New Year detox, I have been hoovering up wine bargains to stock up for the year ahead and to get my taste buds flowering in anticipation.
Two bargains stand out from the crowd, one from Costco, one from the Wine Society. One Champagne, the other red wine but from a relatively close starting point.
Germans never use three letters when it is possible to craft a word from three k’s, four ch’s and at least two consecutive f’s. W also features prominently. Perhaps it was a German who extended the short form “world wide web” into the excessive and unnecessary “www”, possibly the only acronym with three times as many syllables as its original “long” form.
Perhaps it belies a Teutonic predilection for taking more time than is sensible in the name of quality, or detail at least, and if this applies to winemaking, this may explain some of the prices of German Rieslings I have seen recently. And I bought most of mine before Sterling/Euro parity played havoc with my holiday plans. I don’t suppose Angela Merkel would have welcomed me to her country anyway, given her views on Gordon Brown’s “world saving” economic initiatives.
Stumble It!