Easter opening / Provence Rosé & White Burgundy

As I am taking a couple of days off with my son today and tomorrow (playing the tourist around my own City) I will either be clear or potentially clear this weekend for any wine purchases. Shop opening hours detailed below. I am still recovering from my hand operation so at best can carry six bottles, any full case orders might be safest collected for say the next week. If the weather is that good we have, aside of the St-Baillon, another Provence Rosé, at a relatively modest £ 8.50 a Bottle and £ 17.00 by the Magnum.

For everyday White Burgundy we have found the Fourrier Blanc 2008 is really hitting its stride, as I predicted it would do come the Spring. We have just 9 Cases left so be warned, it won’t last indefinitely! For those who don’t always recall the name of a wine, the Fourrier has the label of two scantily clad ladies. That might help.

Tomorrow, Thursday 21^st April – OPEN as usual

Good Friday 22^nd April – Open By Appointment (07900 818 400)

Saturday 23^rd April – OPEN 9.00 a.m. until 7.00 p.m.

Sunday 24^th April – Open By Appointment (07900 818 400)

Bank Holiday Monday 25^th April - Open By Appointment (07900 818 400)

Weekly indulgence:

10 Magnums of:

Château Phélan-Ségur 2003

St-Estèphe Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel

at £ 75.00 per Magnum

Bordeaux En Primeur 2010

Château Beaumont has been released today, worry not as we will secure a decent size parcel and recommend this in larger formats (Magnums; Double Magnums; Imperials) in the weeks and months to come. This En Primeur Campaign will likely run some considerable time so when I have recovered full strength to my writing hand I will finally decipher my Bordeaux tasting notes and pitch my judgement upon the veritable merits. This will likely be a week after Easter. No particular rush as I see it. Especially a I will be re-trying many of my favourite Châteaux and many of the questionable ones in the first week on May so will almost certainly add and detract a little from my initial tastings.

Silly Season

£ 1,460,000 is the total sum repaid to date by M.P.’s after the recent expenses scandal. Thank you. However, £ 10,400,000 is the greater sum that has been paid out for resettlement grants and pensions who stepped down at the 2010 Election. I can only say, as Hansard would have it, that I refer to the answer I gave some considerable time before (and not merely once the scandal broke) which is that M.P.’s are grossly underpaid. They should be paid at least three times the salary but then have to budget themselves and if they need a secretary it comes from that pot and if they want an extra dozen paper clips tough t***y. No need for a Committee to oversee, no need for associated costs.

Another repeat rant I am sure is LEGO. In my day they were simply building blocks and that is it, the imagination was 100% down to you. Hats off for re-inventing as they have done but my son keeps asking me to buy this little figures and I am sure they cost tuppence to make but are retailing at £ 3.00 a pop. Nice mark-up if you can get it. If they were good quality perhaps but they are basically just the same. Paint some long hair and you have a pirate, a moustache and you have a Mexican… This weekend my son dragged me back into Hamleys intent on spending his entire pocket money on a few squares of plastic. In his wake I spotted the most gopping variation on Lego: sheep shearing. I know you won’t believe it so I’ll repeat it, Sheep Shearing. Peel a white brick off a sheep’s back and that’ll really set me in the mood!

For the benefit of sanity I won’t list all my bug bears but Civil Service speak has been a real thorn for me in recent years. Here is a classic from Aunty Beeb:

“This week, BBC online meets another important milestone in its plan to fully embrace and adopt the discipline of Product management across the BBC Online Portfolio – the implementation of Full Product Lifecycle Management across all ten BBC Online products, outlined in the Putting Quality First announcements of January this year… The BBC’s Product Lifecycle Management process describes the way in which the Product Lead and Editorial Lead for each product should work together with their team, and their stakeholders inside and outside the BBC, to define and deliver the strategic goals for the product.” (Chris Russell, head of product management at the BBC.) And some of you thought I talk utter tosh about wine!

New House Champagne for Huntsworth...

Has our love affair with J.M.Gobillard & Fils finished? This has been our main House Champagne for almost fifteen years now. We are still massive fans but with recent Champagne price increases (pretty much gone are the days of supermarkets selling obscure, often poor, Champagne Houses for a tenner) the Gobillard 1er Cru should in theory be retailing at £ 26.50. Enfin, un peu trop cher. Just before our recent hop to Bordeaux we sampled a teeny weenie little property, which is overlooked by the Hotel Champagne which I am sure some of you will know, and have decided to take R. & H. Lamotte Premier Cru as our new House Champagne. As an exclusive import to us this can be fractionally but sufficiently cheaper at an opening offer of £ 23.00. This is where we feel the Gobillard should be price wise but it isn’t!

R. & H. Lamotte Premier Cru Champagne, Champillon

at £ 23.00 per Bottle

This is the epitome of where a Champagne becomes more than just a Champagne but a wine in its own right.

Full-bodied, flavoursome, complex. Lovely secondary flavours. Distinctive, characterful, harmonious. And all that in a House Champagne!

Most people’s House Champagne will be pennies or pounds cheaper but they won’t be a patch on this elegantly crafted Premier Cru.

£ 15.00 per Half-Bottle

And £ 52.00 per Magnum

We are delighted to take on board this family-run Champagne House which produces a modest 2,000 Cases from their three hectare Premier Cru holdings in the Village of Champillon. This cuvée is predominantly Pinot Noir and the balance, Chardonnay. No Pinot Meunier. And it has three years bottle-age.

We will be shipping at the end of the month or the first week of May.

Sub £ 10.00 Provence Rosé.

Also delighted, once the warm weather returns, that we will be getting in a very well-priced Provence Rosé (Bottles and in Magnums) which amazingly enough is produced from some friends who used to be neighbours in nearby Brunswick Gardens. The price is yet to be set but is likely to be as much the right side of £ 10 as the subtle and refined St-Baillon is the wrong side of £ 10.

Weekly indulgence:

Graham’s 1966 Vintage Port at £ 110.00 per Bottle

Like England’s World Cup victories, this just gets rarer and rarer.

At forty five years old and along with Taylor, Dow, Fonseca, one of the four self-proclaimed First Growths, this is not an outrageous price for a taste of history!

  

Silly-season:

Having had a wee operation on my right hand yesterday my left-handed typings are both slow and tiring. Any politics; cinema; television; restaurants etc will simply have to wait ‘til next Wednesday. Plenty of time to contemplate.

Charity:

A Marathon to me is something coated in chocolate and wrapped in brown paper. The mere mention of the word hits me with a wave of exhaustion and a simple desire to seek out the nearest sofa and gather my strength. Needless to say I have never actually run a Marathon and nor had Henry’s girlfriend, Charlotte, until last week that is and she decided to fly out to Morocco with roughly a thousand other nutters and run six Marathons in six days (the Marathon des Sables). Just thinking about that is restricting my breathing. Charlotte not only started but she finished and in doing so has currently raised an impressive £ 2,251.00 (Sue Ryder) and £ 2,186.00 (F.S.I.D.). For further details please click on the links below.

http://www.justgiving.com/Charlotte-Hickinbotham

http://www.justgiving.com/Charlotte-Hickinbotham2

Tuggy

St-Baillon Rosé de Provence (& Bordeaux 2010 - a sniff)

My weekly e-mail should have winged its way to you yesterday on Wednesday as per usual but we were instead on the slopes of St-Émilion sampling from the Grand Cru to the Grand Cru Classé to the Premier Grand Cru Classé B to the Premier Grand Cru Classé A. Not as easy a job as it sounds. Blackened teeth and red faced (from the three uninterrupted days of sunshine) I am now back to mull over the details and with not to dissimilar weather, for now, making our first Provence Rosé offering.

Slightly up in price from last year with the recent increase in Import Duty (and still poor Euro exchange rate!):

Château St-Baillon Rosé “Reserve du Château” 2010 Côtes-de-Provence

At £ 11.50 per Bottle (£ 11.00 last year)

At £ 25.00 per Magnums of 2009 (Same as last year, same Vintage)

At £ 63.75 per Double Magnum (£ 61.25 last year)

Stock will be in, chilled, from early tomorrow.

Next week:

Chianti Classico 2009 Castellare di Castellina

We have just run out of the textbook Chianti Castellare from the 2008 Vintage at a very sensible £ 15.50 per Bottle. Fortunately the 2009 is an absolute delight and will be at the same price. Details and tasting notes on this little charmer next week.

Bordeaux 2010 – En Primeur

My initial notes and overview on the merits (and otherwise) on Bordeaux 2010 as an En Primeur Campaign will be ready in about a week or two. I really feel there is no rush at this particular juncture as I fear the Bordelaise will be releasing their prices even later than usual and anyone who is anyone, likely after the June Vin Expo (19-23^rd June). Just be warned that this is a very different Vintage from the easy charm and understated balance of 2005 and the terrific character and variation of 2009. My immediate thoughts are that this is not a Vintage to literally stick a pin in the map and buy absolutely anything (like in 2005) but in amongst the hype (and I expect this to build to a veritable crescendo over the next 2-3 months) there will still be Estates worth buying for value and undeniably for quality. Despite clear recessionary issues for most of us, do not remotely expect the Bordelaise to take any of this into account when looking at anything Grand Cru Classé or anything over £ 250 a case. Bordeaux has traditionally responded well in difficult economic times but I detect the playing field has been shifted of late so do not hold your breath as you’ll likely be sorely disappointed. The perceived Trade wisdom is that 2010 will be price on a par with 2009. I pressed many a Château owner on this subject, not one committed to their 2010 likely to match their 2009. They all felt their 2010 was better than their 2009 (I would disagree on a good 60% of those) and there will have to be some early and notable failures to keep the price even at parity. Currently I have an intended shopping list of about 40-45 Estates (half of my picks in 2005) but I am convinced this ideal list will be seriously eroded on price, let alone the game playing that ensues with allocations from the Bordeaux end.

I anticipate a campaign of absolute extremes. Timing…pricing...quality…successes…failures. Those wines that are sufficiently well-balanced will be predominantly ones for considerable cellaring potential. With that in mind I think Estates that excelled in 2005 like Château Beaumont will in 2010 make an ideal opportunity to still buy modestly but in larger formats (Double Magnums, Jeroboams, Imperials…) and simply put away for that unique occasion in 2020, 2030… I stress that selection for Bordeaux 2010 is very, very important and therefore so is your choice of Wine Merchant. I intend to buy heavily but please do not be sucked in by every mail shot or e-mail or call trumpeting “wines of extraordinary power and concentration…” because in amongst the good and the great I certainly detected the downright ugly!

Tuggy & Henry