Confessions of a Wino

Sometimes, something grabs you about a wine: the aroma, the château, the winemaker, the flavour. In this case, my balls were tickled by the price: Just £3.29 – a bottle of wine for the price of a pint of beer. Yes, that’s what I thought, have I woken up in the 1970s? Am I the new Doctor Who’s new assistant?

With aromas of Ribena, Fairy Liquid and white pepper, this is a confected, and far from perfect wine. But, if you are on to your third bottle in the middle of a liquidised summer barbecue, and you don’t want to waste any of your favourite wines on the neighbours, it will float your boat. And you can stock up with cheap beefburgers from the Aldi freezer cabinets, add several bottles of this rosé and still entertain your whole street for £25. Get onto it for the August Bank holiday weekend!

If ever there was a wine that tasted of strawberries and cream (maybe with some rose hip syrup thrown in), this Anjou Rosé is it.  OK, so rosé is rarely going to make it onto your fine wine baseline, and to make a good food match point you are probably thinking “serving fresh shellfish on a warm, sunny terrace in Monaco”.

But this is not just Wimbledon fortnight, it is barbecue season and for once, Thor has kept his weapon in his pants.  So take advantage of these lazy warm nights and dip your toe, your racquet, or preferably your tongue in the rose coloured water of Anjou.

I got mine from the Wine Society at £6.25 (my balcony cost considerably more even though in Manchester, and not Monaco).  And as a post script may I add that the berry fruit sweetness offers a love-all counterpoint to salty blue cheeses, of the sort you might find on Thor’s weapon.

I have pondered, on increasingly rare occasions in my curmudgeonly middle age, whether to write about poor wines.  It is hardly constructive.  There is at least one theory that says make positive comments public and keep negative ones private.

But this website is my own personal record that I rely on for my own future advice.  So I reckon it is OK to report wines that I really don’t get on with.  Otherwise I might buy them again in the future, at my own cost.

Malumbres 2009 came to me as part of an end of season mixed rosé case from my most dependable supplier, The Wine Society.  Here, in England, we have experienced an Indian summer, at least in terms of temperature.  I was in London today – early November and 16° C!  That would have charmed June in the 1970’s (OK, 1976 excepted).

But this Spanish wine, that should boast of bull fighting and castanets and taste of sunshine actually couldn’t even outshine a (burnt) microwave massacre# pizza from Sainsbury.  Lacking in acidity and fruit, it reminded me of the place I once worked: The 3 B’s:  Bitter, bland and burnt.

Note to self:  When you look back at this post-senility, BBBs stood for Bradford & Bingley Building Society.  Like Accrington Stanley, who are they?  Precisely…

# Following on from the Sainsbury Basics and, Taste the Difference ranges, Microwave Massacre is the latest Sainsbury lifestyle brand.  Or at least that is my prediction for 2011.

On a stinking hot sunny day, 36 lobster-skin inducing degrees, what is a pale Englishman to do but find a shady spot, some food and a petit pichet of local rosé?

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Sometimes the seedy looking places turn out to be greatest.  When walking along a Spanish seafront a good tip is to choose the place that has the most punters irrespective of decor or appearance.  Xe Que Bó, Alicante Marina is just one of those places.  It looks tackier than a Leeds nightclub carpet, but the food is fab.

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Blimey!  I didn’t mean to start World War III with my cast aside comment that Mark Hughes might not be the right manager for Man City.  Even though I regularly tell anyone who will listen that I never approved of his appointment in the first place, even I, the Bathsheba Everdene to Mr Hughes’ Gabriel Oak, acknowledged that the least worst option was to give him more time to prove himself.  Instead the Man City hierarchy (and I smell the ruthlessly inept Garry Cook behind this one) make us look fools again, executing a manager change with the dexterity, care and good intentions of Fred West laying a new patio.

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Think of a long, lazy, boozy summer lunch in the south of France and you think of rosé.  Well I do.

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Last year, we watched the yachts of the rich and infamous from La Bocana overlooking the harbour entrance.  The food and wine were good enough to warrant a revisit in 2008.

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There are occasional tiny slivers, splinters of darkness in my life, that give me a sharp reminder of what I am giving up for my work.  It’s not that I resent it, entirely my own choice after all.  When I started the company in 2001, I went in with my eyes open.  I realised it would mean sacrifices.

This afternoon I took my 10 year old god-daughter to see Man City.  The look of delight on her face when City beat Spurs 2-1 was matched only by my relief at the end of an awful run of games that had put us on a snake track slithering down the league table.

Kellie came over from Dublin for the weekend with her sisters, Rebecca and Chloe – all gorgeous girls, well behaved, entertaining, polite, model children.  Kellie is obviously my favourite and she is the footie fan, tomboy, fitness fanatic, make-up-rejecting bundle of energy.

And now they have all gone and I am alone in the flat.  It’s strange how lonely you can feel when sudden mayhem is suddenly replaced by a sudden quantum of solace.

So to cheer me up, apart from consoling myself that City are back on the ladder of success, I have dragged out my notes from a bottle of Shampoo I sampled last weekend.

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Castlefield is a very trendy part of Manchester that (according to estate agents) has now encompassed formerly ropey areas like Hulme and will probably soon extend to Rusholme and Moss Side.  Location, Location, Location, as they say.

I grew up in Manchester so I am proud to have a flat in Hulme and I refuse to call it Castlefield, (until I decide to sell, of course).  But whatever the address, it is only a short walk to “real” Castlefield and on a sunny August day, where better to take our mates Tony, Jeanette and son Charlie, than to sit outside by the Canal.  Dukes 92 is the obvious choice because it is so popular but it was very exposed and at least two of us appreciated a bit of shade from the midday sun so we chose another place.  We made the choice to choose Choice.  Now if you clicked on the hyperlink you will have reached the most annoying site on the world wide web.  Fortunately, despite this, if you go the restaurant you will find one of the best Sunday lunches in Manchester.

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