…all the time in the world?
We have all the time in the world, time enough for life to unfold, and of course to drink more good Claret and Burgundy, both dark or gold.
Well, I am not so sure as to where the time goes too these days. Today we are now beginning the new year, 2023, when it really still feels like we where just welcoming in the year 2022. Twelve months on and I am still trying to digest a little of the last 365 days. Not easy! I do know one thing for sure, and that is that my daily uptake of administration during this year has tended to dominate the working day, 60% and far too much.
Most of the admin and it’s problem relates to shipping wines both in/out of bond, or some Brexit cock-up by H.M.C. & E. and/or the French or Spanish authorities. Super boring all of it. I was asked the other day by a chum in Buenos Aires, to explain what the problem really is. I had to explain to her, that in theory the Brexit plan is a good one. The trouble to date is that those Westminster boffins in charge have done absolutely nothing to amplify or benefit the leaving. I said it was a bit like someone bringing, to the kitchen, all the best ingredients for a good Beef Wellington and nobody putting together the recipe and actually getting on and cooking the dinner. The other day I caught the back end of a BBC radio conversation with an old Wine Tradee, John Hearn and SW1’s Jacob Rees-Mogg MP. The Jacob is one of the boffins in charge of the department to put in place and to impliment Brexit goings-ons for Great Britain. He kept banging on about how there was a good trade deal with Australia and New Zealand that would benefit the British wine drinker and trade. When the Wine Tradee fellow piped up and explained to Mr Mogg that this trade deal had very little to do with our local and closest wine market, the European wine producers & merchants, clients & collectors with whom we are, or where that is, the biggest market. Our European imports and sales, last year 2022, at World Wine Consultants SA have been literally halved by the 2020 Brexit decision. I am pretty sure that we are not the only ones. One decision I have personally made is that we now cellar, or store more wines in France than we have ever done before, and in all 37 years of being in de business this is madness!
We have a Will, we have a Plan and we have the skill to adjust the Plan, when needed…
WP Hancock Esq. (1 Jan.2023)
On the flip side of the coin there are tastings, dinners, light lunches to keep our days fruitful and happy. The last two of this year being stonkers! bonkers! A blind lunch in my local and favourate Parilla Pena, lead to drinking the most delicious white wine, now my Wine of the Year:
2014 Edmond Vatan’s Sancerre ‘Clos La Neore’
A clear greenish white with rich goosberry on the nose, herbality and citrus all combined in one little steely sip. Massive concentraion of purity of fruit. Finishing with almondy richness and a chamomile lingeringness. One of the lunchers thought that it could be a Riesling. As it was my bottle, I had to shed the light on one of the world’s, without a doubt, greatest Sauvignon Blanc.
The last dinner, just before Christmas Eve, threw us all into the lap of Burgundy, and that was also a great treat as it concentrated on the house whites from A&P De Villaine and was then followed by a geographical tasting of Nuits Saint Georges all from the domaine of Robert Chevillon.
2019 Robert Chevillon’s Nuits St.Georges 1er Cru ‘Les Chaignots’
A lot of fresh violets lept out of the glass here with almost kirsch like opulence. Georgeously soft tannins, a little berry-spice and persistent. Delicious!
‘Take up your glass,
the wine of youth this night is fermenting in the veins of God!’ Messi Beaucoup (2022)