Last week of January eh? Bit of a grim time all things considered - what seems to be endless gray days, all that let's-get-back-to business after the festive season workload, the collapse of our cricketeers down under (I think I know what the next 'An Apology' column in the Eye might say), the lack of interesting food around (the new season blood oranges is about the best I can look forward too) and, for some of us, the prospect of another week without the comfort of a nice glass of wine as we complete the January detox.
I've relaxed my previous total January ban a bit this year, as I explained last week, but for those of you still grimly hanging on, there is one reason to rejoice - it's a great time to buy wine for when you can drink again.
While prices seems to be rising everywhere, as my wine recommendations in the Independent on Sunday this week illustrate, there are plentiful bargains for wine drinkers out there, whether it is about big reds to warm the body and soul or cheapish whites for midweek meals and whether you are shopping in your local supermarket or online.
Here is the column: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-carchelo-jumilla-2009-champteloup-chardonnay-vin-de-pays-du-val-de-loire-2009-rockbare-tinder-box-mclaren-vale-shiraz-2008-2188854.html
These are not, I should stress, wines that fall into that category of almost permanently discounted, big brand labels, that sometimes dominate the supermarket shelves. Those wines are wines which are often rarely worth the full price of £7 or £9 or whatever; their real worth is at £4.99. These wines are, I hope, genuine bargains as dealers clear their shelves to make way for new bottles.
So, stock up the wine cellar, stoke up the fire, experiment with some new casserole recipes, (Tonight I'm going for mixed game - a big thank you to The Wild Meat Company - with mushrooms, chestnuts and parsley dumplings), and take comfort in another warming mouthful of a big red. Or just admire that bargain bottle and tick off another January day.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
New Year, new wine column
So, yes. Um. Where were we? I see that the last post I wrote here was in November 2009. Er, been a bit busy since, what with the teaching and writing and so forth.
Not that I suspect people were hanging around for my every word, but for those regular readers – my old friend Lottie, my mother and that strange chap who keeps sending emails in capitalised green - huge apologies for not keeping you up to date with details of my amazing life, astonishing meals cooked and eaten, fantastic adventures in wine etc.
Sorry you’ve missed out on hearing about that wonderful tasting of Spanish wines and foods, the terrific (well, I think so) meals that I cooked for a couple of dinner parties, the fascinating time I had exploring Morocco with my sons, a birthday weekend of vodka, caviar and borscht (thanks, Lena) the incredible once-in-a-lifetime displays of woodland fungi last autumn that had me scrambling around in the leaf litter for hours, my agonies searching for the right Christmas Eve meal and my utter joy at finding a raclette grill in Lidl, for just £14.99. Sorry, but I’ve just been far too busy just, er, doing all that. Any anyway, Tweeting has replaced blogging, hasn’t it? No one, surely, has time to blog anymore. I certainly have not. Blogging, is, in fact, just a bit last decade. And I don’t even have time to Tweet.
Therefore, it is time, obviously, to revive my blog. For several reasons. This weekend saw the end of my annual New Year detox – this time ten days without a drink, although I will stay off the booze on weekdays until the end of the month – and the publication of the first of my little wine recommendations column in the Independent on Sunday New Review. It is part of a revamp of the Review, which, since its inception, has been by far and away the best written and best designed Sunday supplement among the national newspapers. And I am honoured to be writing for it. So what better way to celebrate the column with a few glasses of decent wine: a fine Australian white and a robust South African red. And very nice they were too.
The Wines of the Week column is a simple idea – just three recommendations for wines to buy in the forthcoming week – something for Sunday lunch (or Saturday dinner; you get the idea, I am sure, this is one to spend a little on) a bottle for midweek drinking (a more modest proposal, what I call my ‘pizza’n’pasta’ wines) and a bargain buy (which can be anything from a good supermarket discount on a reliable branded wine to a bin end clearance of a pricey claret).
I will not be recommending wines I have not personally tried, neither will I advocate stupidly priced ones, at either end of the scale, or ones which are sold by one wine shop, somewhere in deepest Somerset, that does not do mail order. But I will be hunting down the best wines from among the thousands available from retailers ranging from High Street supermarkets to the very many online outlets.
And what I will also do – in recognition of the fact that almost all of us buy wine principally to drink when we eat – is recommended the best kinds of foods for these wines. Indeed, the successful marriage of food and wine is, in my opinion, one of the greatest sensory pleasures available to us. And that is the underlying basis for the column.
In January, of course, the kind of wines to recommend is a bit of a no-brainer. It has got to be big, warming red wines, the kind of bottle to put on the table with the venison stew or baked pasta and then finish off in front of a roaring fire afterwards. But in coming weeks, I’ll be suggesting wines for other occasions – Valentines Day, Fairtrade Fortnight, Easter Weekend and basically any other excuse for an interesting theme I can find. I will also try and post most of them on this blog and perhaps talk about them a little more. Here is the first column: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-terry-kirby-selects-the-best-bottles-to-buy-2182919.html
So, a New Year, a new wine column.
Not that I suspect people were hanging around for my every word, but for those regular readers – my old friend Lottie, my mother and that strange chap who keeps sending emails in capitalised green - huge apologies for not keeping you up to date with details of my amazing life, astonishing meals cooked and eaten, fantastic adventures in wine etc.
Sorry you’ve missed out on hearing about that wonderful tasting of Spanish wines and foods, the terrific (well, I think so) meals that I cooked for a couple of dinner parties, the fascinating time I had exploring Morocco with my sons, a birthday weekend of vodka, caviar and borscht (thanks, Lena) the incredible once-in-a-lifetime displays of woodland fungi last autumn that had me scrambling around in the leaf litter for hours, my agonies searching for the right Christmas Eve meal and my utter joy at finding a raclette grill in Lidl, for just £14.99. Sorry, but I’ve just been far too busy just, er, doing all that. Any anyway, Tweeting has replaced blogging, hasn’t it? No one, surely, has time to blog anymore. I certainly have not. Blogging, is, in fact, just a bit last decade. And I don’t even have time to Tweet.
Therefore, it is time, obviously, to revive my blog. For several reasons. This weekend saw the end of my annual New Year detox – this time ten days without a drink, although I will stay off the booze on weekdays until the end of the month – and the publication of the first of my little wine recommendations column in the Independent on Sunday New Review. It is part of a revamp of the Review, which, since its inception, has been by far and away the best written and best designed Sunday supplement among the national newspapers. And I am honoured to be writing for it. So what better way to celebrate the column with a few glasses of decent wine: a fine Australian white and a robust South African red. And very nice they were too.
The Wines of the Week column is a simple idea – just three recommendations for wines to buy in the forthcoming week – something for Sunday lunch (or Saturday dinner; you get the idea, I am sure, this is one to spend a little on) a bottle for midweek drinking (a more modest proposal, what I call my ‘pizza’n’pasta’ wines) and a bargain buy (which can be anything from a good supermarket discount on a reliable branded wine to a bin end clearance of a pricey claret).
I will not be recommending wines I have not personally tried, neither will I advocate stupidly priced ones, at either end of the scale, or ones which are sold by one wine shop, somewhere in deepest Somerset, that does not do mail order. But I will be hunting down the best wines from among the thousands available from retailers ranging from High Street supermarkets to the very many online outlets.
And what I will also do – in recognition of the fact that almost all of us buy wine principally to drink when we eat – is recommended the best kinds of foods for these wines. Indeed, the successful marriage of food and wine is, in my opinion, one of the greatest sensory pleasures available to us. And that is the underlying basis for the column.
In January, of course, the kind of wines to recommend is a bit of a no-brainer. It has got to be big, warming red wines, the kind of bottle to put on the table with the venison stew or baked pasta and then finish off in front of a roaring fire afterwards. But in coming weeks, I’ll be suggesting wines for other occasions – Valentines Day, Fairtrade Fortnight, Easter Weekend and basically any other excuse for an interesting theme I can find. I will also try and post most of them on this blog and perhaps talk about them a little more. Here is the first column: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/wines-of-the-week-terry-kirby-selects-the-best-bottles-to-buy-2182919.html
So, a New Year, a new wine column.
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