Montagny 1er Cru 2009 Jean-Marc Boillot

This week a wee step above our basic Bourgogne Blancs from Cave de Prissé; Olivier Leflaive and Jean-Marie Fourrier.

Montagny 1er Cru 2009 Jean-Marc Boillot at £ 17.50 by the Bottle

(£ 16.50 by the Case, or more.)

This is a lively, zesty, fresh White Burgundy from that most southerly of Burgundy Villages, Montagny.

With age this will ripen and fatten but for now, a good lively accompaniment with pastas and salty fish  and shellfish etc.

For that extra bottle-age, depth & ripeness we do have Jean-Marc Boillot’s 2005 Puligny-Montrachet at exactly double the price.

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We sampled the basic Côtes-du-Rhône Rouge 2007 from Guigal earlier in the week and will be featuring this in perhaps a fortnight. Super impressed by it but I would only be recommending it now as a wine to cellar. This is typical with Guigal’s basic Côtes-du-Rhône as it is invariably a treat with 5-8 years bottle-age. Usually however it drinks straight away as well as worth cellaring, with the 2007, we think not! We will likely stick with the 2006 for current drinking and highly recommend hiding the renowned 2007. Hence no rush today, an offer will follow.

Next week will be our exclusive Grand Cru Avize Champagne and we will probably have an Open Day and evening for tasting this, for all those within walking distance.

Weekly indulgence:

Château Mouton Rothschild 1967

Pauillac Premier Grand Cru Classé

at £ 125.00 per Bottle

We have just taken in three cases of Château Mouton Rothschild 1967 from a customer’s cellar and they have lower neck levels than we would like, even for their 43 years age! As such we are putting the best 12 Bottles (high to mid shoulder levels) in the Shop at a tempting £ 125.00 a Bottle. They are not likely to drink brilliantly, 1967 was not a great Left-Bank Vintage, but I can assure you that they do at least drink okay. Henry and I opened two of the Bottles (with the worst neck levels) on Monday night just to check. Not great but not shot as we had feared. The first bottle would could clearly sense was a First Growth, just a wine so gentle and brittle and clearly 15-20 years past its prime. Many will buy Mouton purely for the label as a collector’s item and £ 125 is unlikely to be bettered. That or a bit of a gamble to drink!

Silly-season:

Well, Andy Gray, silly boy but hands up who hasn’t been guilty of a flippant remark or two or three? Bullying is one thing but are we having to re-write some of the foundation blocks of comedy here? Mother-in-laws…Italian War Heroes…German humour (it is still no laughing matter)…and a classic - women and the off-side rule. Are these all now verboten, off-side so to speak? Women and the off-side rule has been Pub talk for every beer drinking Football bore for decades now. Linesmen, that’s man, men have been scuttling up and down the touchlines of soggy northern towns making right and wrong decisions for a hundred years or more. And I have no doubt that early doors they were booed, abused, disabused, laughed at and so on and as time evolved (if you can use that word in relation to a game as simple as Football) they got better and what perhaps was a joke is no longer a joke. Finally, we get our first high profile (due to the power of Television) Sheila (it is Australia Day) and we have to all grow-up, change and ditch certain frivolous, maybe inaccurate but amusing thoughts overnight. Nope. This will take time. Eventually we will accept but natural progression and evolution by proving oneself is surely preferable to overnight “legislation”. You are not allowed to do this is one thing but you are not allowed to think that… We learn from experiences but a leopard can’t change its spots overnight. Just pause for thought, if you were wired to a microphone all day and someone played that back at the end of play, who wouldn’t find themselves cringing at certain things that one uttered? Many a man wanders into my Shop and orders some half-decent wine for themselves and then remarks that they also need something for the mother-in-law but perhaps knock a nought off the price. So to do some women mention that men can only do one thing at once, or given “Man Flu”, nothing at all! Personally, I don’t take offence at either. Sian Massey will be accepted one day if she proves to be any good, if not, like many a linesman before her will be open to question, doubt, ridicule. That’s Football.

Burgundy 2009 & alot more...

Burgundy 2009

January is the traditional round of U.K. Trade and sample tastings for Burgundy 2009. An impressive Vintage though with a few noticeable question marks. A longish list of recommended wines will be culled somewhat, on price. Like Bordeaux there are over-priced offerings in 2009 but equally others that have pitched fairly. These we will indulge in. Within the hour I head to the City for yet more Burgundy trials and tribulations and hope to add to my select list. Over the next couple of days my recommended list will go to those regular Burgundy and or En Primeur buyers. If you think you are not on that list but would like to be, do let me know.

Jean Daneel “Signature” Chenin Blanc – Past, present and future.

With 50 Cases having arrived on New Year’s Eve we are already just over halfway through this stock. So we’ll be lucky if the stock will last another month. Alas Daneel has no more 2009. He is doubling our allocation for the 2010 Vintage but it won’t be bottled until February; then he wishes it to settle for 3 months; then it’ll take a month to ship, and then I have to determine how good and how it is drinking. Even if approachable, we are looking at June at best to re-stock. We still have some 2009 but it’ll likely last 3-4 weeks and not the 3-4 months we’d like. On the plus side, he is relinquishing from his own stock 6-36 Bottles of historic Vintages like 2001-2003-2004-2005. Those of you lucky enough to have delved into the 2003 originally will know how complex these become with good bottle-age. Again, let me know if interested. These will be shipped circa June. Along with a tiny amount of the legendary 2001 “Signature Red”.

Still to come, next week or beyond:

A couple of everyday numbers (£ 10 to £ 17.50) – a 2007 Rhône and a Premier Cru White Burgundy

Weekly indulgence:

We have just acquired tiny parcel of an old favourite from Ribera-del-Duero. V.A.T. increase – pah! Exactly a year ago we had this wine and price wise it was £ 26.00 a bottle.

This little parcel happens to have cost us that bit less so we have priced it accordingly and despite V.A.T. now at £20%, we are happy to offer the Viña Sastre at bang on £ 20.00.

30 Bottles only (5 half-cases of 6 bottles each in their own wooden cases)

Viña Sastre 1999 Pago de Santa Cruz,

Ribera-del-Duero, Spain at £ 20.00 per Bottle

Classic sweet Ribera fruit but softening as it has hit perfect full maturity. Nice, soft, comforting, characterful nose. Enjoyable.

Silly-season:

Call me a Luddite but last night I dropped in to some School friends of my son and the younger sister (aged 5-6?) had her own I-Phone. Boy did I feel old. I still feel that a Volvo and vinyl are State of the Art. Will I be finally dragged kicking-and-screaming into the 21 st Century? It has been said of Ireland (Eire) that it went straight from the 19 th Century to the 21 st Century. Should I now entertain such a similar shock to my system? Some things however don’t always stack up. I treated myself over Christmas to a small DVD player so I could watch a few old films and did something a bloke doesn’t or isn’t suppose to do: I read the instruction manual. Does that now make me a Meterosexual? Jury’s out. For a full twenty minutes I pushed and prodded and unplugged and reset but nothing. Re-reading the manual I discovered that the remote control should be used from 15 inches or less. That is 15 inches, a mere few millimeters longer than my left foot. Not 15 feet, 15 inches! Call me a couch potato but at 15 inches I think even I can stretch forward and hit play or the on/off button. Technology, humbug.



The Ashes . What a result lads. Phenomenal. Maybe I am just getting old but I did feel a pang of sadness for the old enemy, those Kangaroos. And that was before hell washed through Brizzy etc. Cricket is A religion in England whereas down under it is The Religion. On the night “we” had won the Ashes I sat in a Sussex Hotel dining room with my son, filled with perhaps 60 or more English, families, couples, groups and so on. In the entire evening, not a whisper; not a mention; not a cheer about the Cricket. In England, Cricket is one of perhaps fifty culturally enriching endeavours. In Australia it is one of perhaps half-a-dozen. Think, if the Aussies had just won, retained, regained The Ashes and you were in some Kalgoorlie watering hole or some swish Sydney Hotel, would you have heard anything other than the Cricket? Of course not. It meant alot to me and a few other Hooray Henrys and beyond but it means far more to those Wallabies. As such I actually felt a wee bit sad for the Aussies. Perth and Western Oz aside I am told by many an Aussie friend (counting on one hand I do have a few) that they are in a real depression about this. It’s like Russia and then Qatar being granted the World Cup. Yes there were reasons to host it here in Blighty but let’s be honest, I think it’ll mean more to the Ruskies and the Quataris than it does to us. Likewise the Ashes. Perhaps next time we should let the Aussies win. For such an outgoing nation like the Aussies, I personally am struggling to gain pleasure from seeing my Aussie mates, Angus, Mark, Nic, Rod, Sheila (the last one I made up) and others so glum. Cheer-up mate. We, sort of, know what it’s like.

Don’t ask an American Mum this but why do Chocolate Brownies never actually taste that good?!

Played hooky t’other day and went to see “The King’s Speech”. Worth a butcher’s. Funny to see Timothy Spall playing Churchill in this one and just last night as a projectionist in “Quadrophenia”.

“History will say that the Right Honourable Gentleman was wrong. I know it will because I will write it.” - Winston Churchill.