jamie goode's wine blog: Brief wines to cap a sporting weekend

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Brief wines to cap a sporting weekend

Just some brief wine notes this Sunday evening, after an exciting sporting weekend. What is it with sport? I know that it's a non-serious pursuit that acts as a catharsis for us, the masses, to distract us from real life in all its misery, and that serious people shouldn't care about it. But I love sport. I read newspapers from the back page. This weekend has been fantastic: the rugby yesterday was astonishing, and then the football today was brilliant, too. Last season, I'd grown pessimistic about the premiership. It was boring. But this year it's thrilling (unless you are a Spurs fan - I enjoyed taunting one of my Spurs-loving friends today by asking him whether he'd heard the latest rumour - that Jol was going to be replaced by David Pleat...)

Anyway, back to the wine. First, a lovely white. I bought a case of Domenic Torzi's Frost Dodger Eden Valley Riesling 2005 Australia from Bordeaux Index a while back at a good price, and I'll be in no hurry to drink this up. The second bottle I've opened, this is beginning to open out: lime, honey, spice with a hint of reduction that I hope won't grow with time in bottle. It's quite serious for a dry Riesling. Second, the Lynchpin 2005 mentioned below is, on day 3, showing well still, with lovely chalky minerality and some real elegance, which makes me think it's a reasonably ageworthy wine. Finally, Waitrose have brought out a new line of own label wines, and they have a Waitrose Barossa Shiraz Reserve 2005 from St Hallett that's really nice: fruit-focused, with no American oak (just a bit of French), it shows dark, ripe black fruits countered by some plummy bitterness and an almost ginger-like warm spiciness, with the oak very much in the background. It's a solid value (to use an American term) at £7.99.

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2 Comments:

At 1:44 AM, Blogger Paul Tudor said...

There is sport and then there is sport. Rugby union frustrates me, because the rules are so open to interpretation. And there is so much kicking and so many stoppages involved.
Thankfully I live in a country where free flowing rugby is the norm, but the new All Blacks coach is likely to be Robbie Deans, which may put an end to the "glory days" as it were.
Thankfully, too, the stoppages in the England / Australia game were kept to a minimum. It was actually a fast game. I got up in the middle of the night to make brioche for our France / New Zealand breakfast screening and was pleasantly surprised at the excitement of the game. Sadly England never looked capable of scoring a try - they came close to the Aussie tryline twice - but they certainly deserved to win.
As for the other game... Well this is one time I am glad that I am league follower. It was very hard growing up as a league (wing three quarter) and football (left back) player in a country like New Zealand. People here take rugby union far too seriously and were always perturbed when they asked me what position I played and I explained that never played a game of union in my life.
I think my eight year daughter is coming around to my way of thinking. All her schoolmates have been winding themselves up over the All Blacks, but she loves going to league matches, which is unusual in our up market residence in Auckland. And she really understands league tactics - much better than the Warriors coach I reckon (our local league side is the New Zealand Warriors, but I support the St George Dragons in Sydney, which is a long way to go for a home game.)
I have relatives in France and am getting plenty of ribbing and I am now hoping that France will go all the way! Sorry.

 
At 3:47 PM, Blogger Jamie said...

Thanks for the perspective Paul. I certainly hope France don't go all the way.

 

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