Confessions of a Wino

Beans on toast.  One of life’s staple meals.  So simple, so healthy, so cheap, so erm, studenty?  Of course there are only two types of baked bean, Heinz and shite.  And there are only two types of toast, the type that sets my smoke alarm off, and the type that is undercooked and flabby.  The absolute secret to beans on is to make sure the toast is as crispy as possible before you soggify it with the beans.  Also helps if you cook the beans over a low heat for a decent amount of time to reduce the sauce.

So sitting in the flat to the tuneful, albeit duotonous, harmonies of Manchester Fire Brigade’s finest, my mind inevitably wanders.  My challenge over the last couple of years has been to find the perfect wine match for this honourable meal, and I think I may have just succeeded in Spades.

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I assured some French friends who visited recently, that ignorant southerners who claimed that it rained in Manchester 24 hours a day were plain wrong.  In my experience the average precipitation is a considerably more modest 23.  I am looking forwards to tomorrow between 8 and 9am when we are promised a refreshing spot of light cloud.

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So Man City’s UEFA dream survives after clinging by the loosest of threads for 90 minutes plus extra time and penalties.

I never supported the appointment of Mark Hughes.  However, I have held my tongue whilst others have defended him.  Apologists are fine, but with the budget he has, I think the fans deserve more.

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I was at Sam’s Chop House in Manchester earlier this week.  Pat and Martin were kind enough to chip in and buy me a decent bottle of wine in memory of my birthday.  One from the year of my birth and reduced by an impressive £50 from the normal price.

Riojanas Monte Real Reserva 1964 had a dodgy cork, took an age to decant and was served too warm for me (about 23 degrees – I would serve at 18).  But it is probably the oldest wine I have ever drunk, so I was intrigued.

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I was going to title this post “Give me a Thai five”.  There are at least that many restaurants of the genre in Manchester.  I love Chaopharaya, the offshoot of the Leeds original.  But that only opened recently.  The longest serving Thai dates from 1985.

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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.

When my flat was constructed in 2006, at the peak of the city centre building boom in Manchester, decent workmen were hard to find, or so it seems.  One employee of venerable but notorious subcontractors, Boddgit and Scarper, found a new use for 4 inch nails:  Namely to use them not only to station a roughly fitted cupboard shelf but also to make an elegant, if unnecessary, belly button piercing in the hot water pipe that feeds the kitchen tap.

It is a miracle that this did not result in a visible leak until late summer of 2008.  The nail finally rusted away and now most of the hall floor, skirting and cupboard wall has been temporarily removed, whilst a dehumidifier is valiantly trying to soak up the excess “moisture” like a digital sponge.

I often find that Aussie Shirai (I assume that is the plural of Shiraz) are a bit drying in the mouth, so I don’t drink anywhere near the amount of down under wines that I should.  I am not about to launch a flood of reviews but let’s try to redress the balance one drip at a time eh?  A drop of Eden Valley “The Saviours” 2003 had been sitting in my rack for a while.  I needed something to take my mind off things.

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I’ve written before about the rip-off wine mark-ups at the Gaucho Grill (branches in London and Manchester).

Although the wine is outrageously priced, I do pop in occasionally for a top class steak.  And so last week saw me in the Manchester restaurant.  I thought it would be interesting to revisit the wine prices.

In my post of March 2007, I benchmarked a bottle of Susana Balbo Malbec (excellent stuff) at an eye watering mark-up of 250%.  The bottle, available at the time from the Wine Society at £11.95, was marked up to £42.

Time to check out the latest prices.  I checked the Wine Society website and, fair play, it is in stock and still £11.95.  Inflation rate = 0%.

When I checked out the Gaucho Grill wine list, the price has inflated by a Graf Zeppelinistic 22.6% to £51.50.  This now makes the mark-up (against retail price, and one assumes that Gaucho can buy much cheaper) a groin kicking 331%.  By far the highest I have ever seen in any restaurant.

The matured meat may be superb, but I would rather cut my pupils out with a serrated steak knife, than pay these prices.

By all means eat at the Gaucho, but when it comes to wine, just say “NO”.

When I was a kid growing up in Cheadle Hulme, a post war suburb of Manchester, there were shops everywhere.  Within just 10 minutes walk of a fair sized shopping centre in the village, was another conurbation of shops based around the Kenilworth pub.  On one t-junction there was a chemist, a newsagent (RS McColl), a greengrocer, a post office, two bakers, two butchers (Breens’ and Pimlott’s), a toy shop (Playland), a Chinese takeaway, a Shell garage (gas station), a hardware shop, a small grocer and, rather bizarrely, a garden centre (Spreadboroughs – donkey’s years ahead of its time).

Thinking back, it’s amazing that we allowed Tesco and the other major supermarkets to put virtually all these businesses out of business.

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So, for all Tony Blair’s efforts to be remembered as a world leader of stature, the only true legacy he leaves behind is his controversial 45 minute claim, and a slightly more insipid and politically correct (in every sense) BBC.  Meanwhile battered PM, Gordon Brown, has just turned the world on its head with a well received financial rescue package that most countries are following.  Gordon has gone from zero to hero in one single policy announcement that took about 45 minutes to deliver, and press rumours have him auditioning for the new James Bond movie, The 600 Billion Dollar Man.

Time will tell whether the economic tankers of the world will be steered clear of the rocks of doom by midshipman Brown.  But oh how Tone must be wishing he was here to be seen to solve the defining crisis of our times, rather than his current brief to search in vain for an answer to yesterday’s problems.  I wonder if he rues the day he handed over to hapless Gordon, whose Falklands moment could only have been a financial holocaust.  And what of David Cameron?  Nero to Oh Dearo.

Memories eh?

I took this photo a while ago, but the place shut down before I got around to reviewing it.  Shame really.  It did have a sort of sense of James Bond’s New Orleans, but it has always been a bit of a graveyard site.