A couple of weeks since our last "This week I 'ave been mostly drinking" post, a combination of a busy time online, and the season for the dreaded stock-taking meant that last week was all but forgotten about. Well all it means is that this week I have even more to rabbit on about. February and March generally mean 2 things in the wine world.

Firstly it is trade tasting season with nothing less than a dozen or so events to try to attend over about a 1 month period (oh the stress!). Shop manager Kieran has been doing a lot of the honours this year, make sure you follow his tweets @exelkieran, but don't worry next week he will be posting a blog to cover the entire goings on.

Secondly, the end of February always means panic as every merchant starts to panic about the impending doom of the chancellor’s budget and subsequent alcohol duty increases. It is expected that we will have yet another 10-12 pence going to the chancellor, which will make it now in excess of £2 for duty plus 20% VAT. Still fancy that bottle of £4 plonk?!?!?

If that was not enough then 2013-2014 will doubtless see some dramatic price increases. As the harvests throughout Europe were devastated by the wettest season on records, availability and therefore costs have grown substantially all of which will creep through to the final consumer.

Russell Wallace - General Manager - This week I 'ave been mostly drinking cheap wine and fine beer! Yup I am not one for spending a fortune on my tipples every week and last week I just fancied revisiting some old favourites. If you select carefully from family produced wines or high quality co-operatives then you can find some worthwhile wines on a relative budget. My pick of the bunch was a delightful little Tempranillo from Casa Solar on special at the moment for £4.52 (reduced from £6.95). It is a gorgeous medium bodied wine from Castilla straight forward and easy slurping on the sofa, there is a big brother that features 6 months of oak aging too but for the occasion it had to be simple. The new year clearance offers will be ending next week though so stock up now while you can. On the beer front, I am in general more of a larger or a lighter IPA and Blonde beer fan but I wanted to branch out just a little and try something new. On the advice of the good captain Kieran I gave the Sulwath Knockendoch a bash. Officially an Ale, to my mind it was more of an IPA/Blonde (please bear in mind that my beer brain is really very simple) it still had that added hoppiness but nice and cold it was still fresh as a daisy and full of flavour. Went really quite well with a nice beef stew & dumplings (home-made and sadly not a horse DNA in sight, shame as I quite like the old loin of cheval). Perhaps it was something to do with sipping from the bottle, they always say that you taste first with your eyes then your nose then your tongue and with the dark ale still confined to the bottle perhaps that covered up my ale prejudices!

 

Kieran German - Shop Manager - To a friend's for dinner this weekend. Steve is an ultra-marathon runner and among his achievements is the Médoc marathon of 2007. So that helped to narrow down which wine to take round. Though Poujeaux is my favourite, I thought I'd go for another would-be cru-bourgeois exceptionnel and selected Chateau Potensac 2007. Owned by the Délon family, these are the guys who bring us Leoville les cases. Expectations, we can say, were reasonably high.

Not disappointed. Measured red fruit flavours in tandem with very fine, structured tannin which delivered perfectly the pencil-shaving/graphitey flavour I so adore in Médoc wines. This was a pleasure to drink now; but, with such ageing potential at such a value price, I reckon I'll probably get me a case and put it down.