We held our Summer Tasting at Lichfield Festival last night - needless to say our plans to hold it on the Cathedral lawn were abandoned due to the weather but salvation was at hand in the form of college hall. A record attendance of over 110 squeezed into the hall for a very enjoyable tasting and we announced the winner of our first quarterly competition.  The winner was Nick Weate, Nick please come and claim your prize. To see a video of the draw please visit our home page.

It’s election day and I was down at my polling station bright and early this morning before getting off to the warehouse to await deliveries. Thankfully the powers that be have decided that children are now allowed in polling stations as I took my eldest son along to see democracy in action. I resisted his suggestion that I vote Monster Raving Loony and put my cross next to one of the big 3 instead.Anyway, there’s no doubt that whoever gets in the duty on alcohol is sure to increase dramatically – it’s currently an outrageous £ 1.69 a bottle. So remember you get much better value for money the more you pay for a wine as the duty remains the same whatever the cost of the wine. Or as my son would say TF (which in adult speak is true fact).

It’s been a while since my last blog and it’s probably fair to say that I’ve not really mastered the art as yet. Anyway, just thought I’d post a quickie and a link  to my favourite everyday wine of the moment – Cabernet Franc I Cjamps, Piero Martellozzo £ 6.99 - http://www.worthbrothers.co.uk/index.php?main_page=ritaly3.

This  juicy, low alcohol wine (12%) has a nose of aromatic herbs that combines forest fruit flavours with a hint of liquorice  – we should all drink more Cabernet Franc.

I’m writing this whilst taking a break at my favourite event of the year. The event in question is a trade wine tasting with a unique agenda – all the wines are aimed exclusively at the independent market. So the onus is on the real, the interesting and, in certain cases, the worryingly eccentric – in other words a top tasting, which brings me to the point of this email.

NEW ZEALAND WINE TASTING
with Mark Neil from
Morton Estate Winery
THURSDAY 18TH MARCH
7.30PM – 9.30PM
£ 5 PER PERSON

BOOK YOUR PLACES ONLINE AT www.worthbrothers.co.uk/site/events/

Based in Hawkes Bay and Marlborough, Morton Estate produce an impressive array of wines that ranges from quality sparkling wine to elegant Bordeaux blends and not forgetting their superlative Sauvignons. We’ll be choosing 8 of our favourites from their list and then Mark will tell us all about them – simple really. If you fancy doing a bit of homework beforehand why not check out their website www.mortonestatewines.co.nz

And finally, here’s cult Kiwi comedy duo – The Flight of the Conchords – facing up to anti Kiwi prejudice. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=913l_qzPWsU

Contrary to popular belief wine merchants don’t spend all their time tasting and drinking wine. Less glamorous pursuits - mainly humping cases of wine around - take up a large portion of our time. So we always look forward to the winter wine tasting season which snaps us out of our winter torpor and lets us discover new wines for the coming year.

Recently, we attended a large and impressive event at Oval cricket ground followed, the day after, by a top end French affair at a rather interesting Eastern European resturant.  There are lots more events planned for the next few weeks and we hope to discover plenty of exciting new wines and to post a few photos and videos of wines that have particularly impressed us.

Watch this space.

We held our first private tasting of the year last night and it was an absolute pleasure. We had a charming group of people in from the Police Mutual down the road and they seemed to really enjoy themselves – none more so than, star of the evening, Melanie, who impressed us all with her ability to read out the clues in a variety of a national accents. Whether the French would be amused at their beloved soil being described as ‘terrier’ is another matter!

The star wine of the evening, as it so often is, was K – Naia, Bodegas Naiades £ 8.99

Gently aromatic with subtle flavours of tropical fruit such as passion fruit, kiwi and guava with an underlying minerality.

I’ve been a bit remiss on the blogging front. After all, Christmas is to be enjoyed not blogged about and January is, as you’d expect, pretty quiet in the world of wine. So, I thought I’d let off a bit of steam by having a moan about :-

1) The weather – enough is enough.
2) The anti drinking lobby and today’s new initiative to state how many cls can be ’safely’ consumed. Maybe all wine bottles should be calibrated to aid us in this joyless business.
3) Radio 2 DJ rejigs – who cares?
4) Argon – £ 60 for a cannister and always running out at inconvenient moments ie. today when I want to put some new wines on ‘The Taster.’
5) Argon again – the spare cannister has been leaking and is empty.
6) Couriers – no argon till next week.

What a weekend! My large bet on Villa paid off and we’re now up to 3rd in the table. Is 125/1 to win the league a bet too far? – probably. On Sunday, after manic last minute decorating, we were able to welcome friends, at last, into a habitable room in our house. I laid on a bit of a casual wine tasting and was pleased that the Barbera Agostinelli 2006 - £ 10.50 proved to be the hit of the day as the more unusual wines can often pass under the radar.

Loads of orders to sort out today before I can get back to the, seemingly, interminable task of loading info onto the website.

I’m still plugging away at adding all the tasting notes etc. to the site. It’s not exactly stimulating work but I’m determined that the website be as user friendly and up to date as possible, so it’s an essential task. When I’m up to speed with this we can set about posting more videos and details of plans that we have for the New Year.

I’m hoping that Villa do the business at Man Utd today as I couldn’t resist odds of 6/1 for the win and have staked more than I would normally bet on us winning at Old Trafford for the first time in god knows how many years. It would have been an even larger bet, such is my confidence (misplaced?), but my wife caught me just as I was pressing the bet now button.