Food & Wine Russian Roulette

My dinner cost nothing last night. Well, it cost me a pound. I was working late, got home at nine, realised that I hadn't eaten and so I got a pizza out of the freezer that I had bought from Tesco when I saw it in the reduced bin. I also had a can of "French Red Wine" that one of my colleagues had bought from Tesco as a 'gift' for me.

The wine claimed to be "specially selected for its light approachable style, this soft & fruity red will complement almost any occasion" and best before April 2009. The occasion was I had nothing else to drink and had forgotten to bring some juice home so I pulled the ringpull and poured. It was bubblegummy. A lot of confected cherries and a bit like watered down Ribena. The palate is darker and the taste is cherry bubblegum, vanilla ice cream and Cadbury's chocolate flake! It is no more (and I'm being generous) than a 4/10 wine, but it improved the Pizza, which was rubbish. The overly sweet tomato sauce an the plastic cheese was masked by the wine, which at least made my dinner edible!

Moral of the story - go shopping.

By Peter Wood with 2 comments

X Rated Petrus?

Is this the same as this? If the leaked proposals for new French laws are anything to go by, alcohol websites will have to adhere to the same laws as pornography websites. This proposed law, lead by Professor Antoine Louvaris, considers any alcohol advertising, even on the internet, to be a threat to children. France already has the Evin law of 1991 which prohibits the advertising of alcohol on television and cinemas, including sports sponsorship, and has a message that alcohol abuse is dangerous to your health on any legal adverts. These proposed laws would restrict the hours a wine website is allowed to be online, which would draw it in line with pornography sites.

I grant you, in Britain we have a government that appears to blame the wine industry for everything wrong in the UK that is alcohol related, whether it is the trade's fault or not, but to put it on a par with pornography is absurd. I could even understand (though not agree with) this movement if it was aimed at a particular category of alcoholic drink (alcopops or spirits for example) but to consider a bottle of Petrus on the internet as bad as a Max Mosley-esque spanking session is absurd.

By Peter Wood with No comments

Six of the best? Lidl

A new column, which unusually for this website, gives a degree of customer advice! Here we are going to rate six bottles of wine from a wine retailer. There are a few rules to this, all of which aim to make sure we do the customer and the retailer justice.
1. The wines have to contain words on the label that even the most extreme wine novice has probably heard of. Words like Cabernet Sauvignon, Rioja, Bordeaux, Jacobs Creek, Penfolds are the sort of thing that have to be on the label.
2. There have to be an equal number of reds and whites, so if there is an appealing looking sparkling wine, we have to have only 2 red, 2 white, 1 fizzy and something else.
3. Where possible, we will get someone with bugger all wine knowledge to venture into the retailer to buy these, just to keep things fair.
4. The total cost of all six bottles cannot exceed thirty pounds.

We will give marks out of ten for each wine, and bonus points for them performing well above their price point. If a bottle of plonk costs three quid and tastes like it should be a fiver, it beats a wine that costs and is worth a fiver. Not very scientific but we don’t give a stuff….

First up, the supermarket that sells Sauerkraut, Lidl. Known for its famous brands, or rather lack of them, Lidl isn’t the sort of place that wine lovers would go to buy their weekly booze. But with new shops appearing all over the place, this is a retailer that cannot be ignored. Many people buy their weekly groceries at Lidl stores, and, as the specialist wine merchants can testify, supermarkets are a major threat as they offer the convenience of buying wine with your Spaghetti hoops and toilet cleaner.

The first thing you notice is that Lidl’s wine selection is totally rubbish. Yes, there may be stack upon stack of bottles, but without a single brand name, this is not the sort of place you can go and find a producer you are familiar with. It’s all been imported, probably via Germany, specifically for Lidl and more than likely bottled at the same depot regardless of it’s country of origin. I’m not objecting to the bulk shipping of wine in tanks, I’ve drunk perfectly acceptable UK bottled wines for under a fiver and so where the stuff is pumped into a bottle really doesn’t bother me. But there are wines in Lidl’s range that proudly proclaim “Vinted and Bottled in…” and it appears that they are using this statement to imply quality and provenance, which is a bit concerning.

Finding words that the biggest wine novice would recognise, is not hard. Everything in Lidl has the keywords emblazoned across the label. Bordeaux Sec, Rioja, Shiraz and, of course, Hock are all there staring you in the face. But without staff member who knows anything about wine, you are playing Russian Roulette with your money. So, like the champion of consumer advice that we are (?), we have risked the full chamber of the Lidl gun and tried six wines

2006 Pinot Grigio Delle Venezie - £3.28 (Italy)
With 12% alcohol, and a clear, sunshine yellow colour it looks promising. Not a lot of booze and quite a pretty colour. Then you dunk your nose in the glass to find it has a beautiful bouquet of rotten oranges! It really is bad, with petroleum coming through and then there is this really awful palate of confected banana, bitter orange and a truly horrible finish and way too much alcohol. Then after the finish starts to die down, the alcohol comes back and assaults you, like a bully coming back to give you one last kicking as you lie on the floor with a black eye and a bloody lip. This is so so bad. Points – 2/10

2006 Chablis, Thomas de Ribens - £5.48 (France)
Pretty closed nose, with a touch of lemon zest and a lot of minerally aromas. This is nasty. Palate is fat, oily and bitter with a vastly zesty lemon juice flavour with the seeds and pith thrown in. This is as close to Chablis as Morocco is to Singapore. Fortunately not that much alcohol. Forgetting the fact is apparently a Chablis, this isn’t even a good Chardonnay. It’s rubbish.
Points - 3.5/10

2006 Wine of Australia Chardonnay - £3.99 (Australia)
So sweet with buttery oak and a sort of mango-come-passionfruit-come-pine-resin aroma. There is nothing but fat, overripe fruit and a peppery bitterness. Far too much alcohol too. It is just nasty.
Points - 3/10

2006 Spring Valley Cabernet Sauvignon - £2.84 (South Africa)
This wine only costs £1.08. After the VAT and duty has been taken off, it leaves £1.08 for the production, bottle, label, shipping, profit margin for the producer, and the costs and profit margin for Lidl. Its confected, with a bubblegummy cherry and just a touch of earthy leaf aromas. The palate is dry, stoney fruit with a wallop of leafy dryness and spice. The palate isn’t bad, the nose is though and it spoils it.
Points – 4/10 for the wine, becoming 5/10 for value. Would be 6 or 7/10 if the nose wasn’t so bad.

2006 Wines of Australia Shiraz - £3.99 (Australia)
Sweet jam, a touch of rosemary and Cola flavoured bubblegum. The palate is soft, then confected bramble and a dose of white pepper and a bit bitter Surprisingly decent. I can’t write anything really bad about it, but I can’t write anything good either. It’s a nothing wine.
Points – 4/10

2001 Cepa Lebrel Reserva Rioja - £4.49 (Spain)
A Reserva Rioja for under a fiver? It is totally crap. Terrible oak and ripe strawberry with a strange coconut aroma and half a can of Mr Sheen furniture polish. The palate is nothing but oak, dry and really really awful.
Points 2.5/10

So really, Lidl are providing their customers with rubbish wine. The best was the cheapest, and gained extra points for being the cheapest, making it the clear winner. But what astonished me was how undrinkable the majority of these wines were. You might as well buy some fruit juice and a bottle of vodka as these wines had so much alcohol coming through. There are good wines for under a fiver, you just cannot get them at Lidl!

Total Points – 20/60
Originally posted November 2007
New 'Six of the Best' will start in August 2008

By Peter Wood with 9 comments

Stuck in the middle - Vintage Champagne, the only cheap fizz?

Since I was in my early teens I have always wanted to own a Lotus. Kids my age were hankering after Ferraris and McLaren F1’s, or at the other end of the spectrum, a Vauxhall Nova with a huge stereo in it and Burberry seat covers, I wanted one of Hethel’s finest. It wasn’t the coolest car on the road, and it certainly wasn’t as exotic or fast as a Ferrari and I didn’t care if it had a stereo in it or not. The reason I wanted a Lotus was that it performed well, come rain or shine, you could drive it to the limit and really enjoy yourself. A Ferrari in the wet was too powerful and a Nova just wouldn’t handle at all well as it was tail heavy due to the weight the Halfords bodykit. Well, that’s what I read anyway. I was a teenager and was too young to drive, but that was what the hundreds of magazines and books I’d read told me and who was I to argue.

And the same is happening today with Champagne. Everyone is wanting Dom Perignon and Krug, or at the other end of the spectrum, Moet and Bollinger non vintage. I, on the other hand, am wanting vintage fizz and am enjoying being on my own.

I was reading today on Decanter’s website that “Top champagne prices are going through the roof”. And they are. Krug Special Cuvee and Bollinger RD are well over £100 retail, Louis Roederer’s Cristal is still silly money and Dom Perignon, I discovered today, have made a Jeroboam of the 1995 vintage in Harrods encased in white gold for seven and a half grand. The only special cuvee Champagnes to still be hovering around the £100 mark is Cuvee Sir Winston Churchill from Pol Roger and Taittinger’s Comte de Champagne, and that is likely to change soon.

Then you have non vintage fizz being consumed by normal folk, also known as anyone earning under a million each year. After years hovering around £20 on offer, we have seen a massive hike in price of all non vintage champagne. Without exception all the biggest houses are pricing their basic champagne north of thirty pounds. And you really don’t want to look at the ‘rrp’ that Majestic are saying the Champagne is worth! I grant you, their multibuy ‘deal’ brings the price in line with the market, but that isn’t much use if you don’t want to buy two bottles. Maybe it is the retailer in me, but I really can’t see the merits to the consumer in forcing you to buy twelve bottles of wine if you are only going to offer the same prices that other retailers do for one bottle. I digress…

Because of the price hikes at the top and bottom of the market this leaves the middle ground, and that is vintage champagne. The champagne houses are desperate to sell it, but nobody is buying it and that is BRILLIANT news!

Take Pol Roger. My favourite champagne house has provided me with some of the best champagnes, both young and old, I have ever tried. If you keep it properly, it will age for decades, getting richer and more complex with age. Bollinger Grand Annee always produces long living wines of exceptional quality and Moet & Chandon is coming good again, with very good quality vintages. By ignoring prestige cuvees, you can buy superb vintage champagne (Bollinger excepted) for under fifty quid, and that is before any discount!

As nobody is buying them, the Champagne houses are desperate to clear stocks. The result is that you can, with a little hunting, get vintage champagnes from top producers for well under £40 – barely above the recommended retail price of their non vintage wines. This is where you should be spending your money. You’ll be unlikely to make a fortune in buying vintage champagne, you can still pick up late 1980’s and early 1990’s vintages for a few pounds more than the most recent year, but what you will get is a wine that ages beautifully, and you will save a lot of money at the moment. They may not be the best champagne in the world, Dom Perignon and Cuvee Sir Winston are always better than Moet and Pol Roger vintage wines, but I’d prefer three bottles of Pol 98 than one Sir Winston from the same vintage.

Trust me. Unless you have many gold rings and go by the name of Snoop Daddy, you can’t afford to drink prestige cuvees, so don’t bother saving up for them and souring the internet to find them. Buy vintage wines, they are affordable, cellarable, plentiful and bloody good champagne. I still don’t have the Lotus though.
Bollinger Grande Annee 1999 £54.15 when you buy six (rrp £64.99) Oddbins
Moet & Chandon 2000 £34.94 Drinks Direct
Perrier Jouet 1998 £29.15 when you buy six (rrp £34.99) Oddbins
Pol Roger 1999 £36.99 (rrp £46.99) Luvians Bottleshop
Taittinger 2002 £36.99 when you buy 2 as part of a case of 12 bottles (rrp £55.50) Majestic
Veuve Clicquot 2002 £36.99 when you buy 2 as part of a case of 12 bottles (rrp £55.50) Majestic

By Peter Wood with 2 comments

Food & Wine Russian Roulette

Well thought out food and wine matching is all well and good, but randomly selecting two bottles of wine when you have decided what you are having for dinner is something I like doing. Granted, you run a risk of neither of them working, but you also stand a chance of finding an unlikely success! Sirloin steak, baked potatoes and some steamed veggies was my dinner last night and the two wines that I tried were 2001 Chateau Cissac and 2005 Peachy Canyon Incredible Red Zinfandel. Would they work, would they not?

Both are available for around ten pounds and are both wines that I've tried before and like. The Cissac has lovely rich fruit, some sour cherry and a little basil and black pepper on the nose. There is also some menthol creeping through as well. A concentrated palate, more sour cherry, leathery tannins and a nice herby flavour with a dusting of cocoa. The finish is a little short and dusty, but this is drinking so well. 8/10

The American wine proclaims itself as the "Incredible Red", and it is a full on oak fest. Juicy cherry and lots of strawberries. Slightly confected nose, a bit of marshmallow, and then lots of raspberry and cranberry juice. The palate is all cranberry, a little cherry bubblegum and quite a bit of alcohol. That softens though, and the finish is chocolatey with just a little confected strawberries on the finish. 7/10

The Cissac went pretty well with the meal. It certainly isn't a 'sit down on the sofa and drink it while watching a movie' wine (despite the fact that I polished off the bottle later). It's herby, slightly leathery character matched well with the caramelised steak juices. The Zinfandel however didn't. It was far too fruity, so soft and totally unbalanced with the food, it needed some depth which it was just lacking. It's not a bad wine, but the confected elements were exaggerated by the savoury elements of the meal making it almost sickly. The oak also clashed terribly with the baked potato. I was once at a champagne dinner and the chef decided to make mashed potato with vanilla seeds through it. The combination of the vanilla oak and the potato reminded me of that.

I had two good wines, that I've had before and enjoyed. When I tasted them before dinner my previous opinions were reiterated. However, paired with my dinner one worked very well, one totally tanked!

By Peter Wood with No comments

Snoqualmie Wines, the old Rocker of Washington

I’ve been watching T in the Park. Not because I actually enjoy music festivals, but because BBC Scotland, in it’s infinite wisdom, decided to delay showing Top Gear for an hour and a half to show the music festival, and it has occurred to me how hopeless a lot of today’s performers are at singing live. Either that, or their CDs are so massively tweaked that the voice playing from your ipod bears no resemblance to the one coming from the botoxed mouth of the singer.

I won’t name names, but there is never the consistency that you get from older artists such as Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney. Even these old rockers can have an off day, but if you look some more modern artists they really can’t sing a song all the way through without going off key. Essentially, the packaging is always glossy and the reality is not.

I like the packaging on Snoqualmie’s wines from Washington state, and that immediately send up a flare. If you visit any supermarket and you will see pretty labels glaring at you, generally adorning a crappy wine, so the fact that I quite liked the labels on these Washington state bottles was not filling me with optimism. These wines have just become available in the UK through Stratford’s Wine Agencies, who have just taken on several producers from the Pacific north west, and I tried them at their recent Edinburgh portfolio tasting.

Ah, the Sauvignon Blanc 2006 this is bound to be crap thought I. I don’t like Californian Sauvignons as a rule, and while I expected Washington wine to be a bit less flabby but I wasn’t expecting much. I am so glad I was wrong.

It was clean, with nice gooseberry fruit on the nose and a pencil lead and asparagus palate. The alcohol was a little hot, but not unpleasantly so, and you got a long, clean finish with very good acidity. I liked this wine a lot. (8/10). A good start for Snoqualmie then.

The 2006 Chardonnay didn’t dissapoint either. Pineapple and pear drops on the nose with boiled pineapple sweets on the palate. A toasty spice, a little bit of cedar creaping through, and warm honey finishing it off. The alcohol was a bit more prominent than on the Sauvignon, but the fatter fuller flavours masked it well. A good clean finish too. 8/10.

Sadly the Naked Organic Chardonnay was corked so we moved onto the reds and, if I was to criticise at all, it would be with the 2006 Whistlestop Cabernet Merlot. It is a bit stinky, with soft, cheap cherry pie aromas that are initially appealing but put you off pretty quickly. The palate is dark, very liquoricey and a bundle of dark chocolate. It is very tight, dark and bitter. This needs serious time to sort itself out, but with most wines being drunk within a week of being purchased, this could be it’s biggest problem. I’d like to try this after a few more years aging as the finish is nicely balanced and very clean. 6.5/10.

Merlot isn’t my most favourite grape, but this one was impressive. Their 2006 Merlot had loads of soft, juicy fruit. Masses of cherry and a bit of watermelon on the nose. The palate is good, very balanced with lots of sour cherries and blackcurrants. There is a long, dry finish with more of the darkness I got from the Cabernet Merlot, but it is much much better integrated. This is a solid, nice wine at 7.5/10.

Finally a brilliant American Syrah. The 2006 Snoqualmie Syrah is very good. Simple as that. Nice spice, a lot of dark fruit – brambles, marionberries and a dusting of white pepper. It has more of these fruits on the palate, with a noticeable wood influence giving a bit of vanilla, but it works very well. The finish is great, if a little short, but I’ll forgive it that because it is so damn good. 8.5/10

What I haven’t mentioned is the price. Snoqualmie are all under ten pounds and probably under £9 if you hunt around. The ‘Naked’ Range – which I have yet to try – will be between nine and ten pounds and for those of you in America there is a reserve range too. The wines are made by Joy Andersen, one of Washington’s pioneer wine makers, and to produce wines of this quality for under ten pounds is a major achievement. This lady’s wines are the vinous equivalent of Mick Jagger. The packaging is all glossy and appealing, and the live performance is great too.

Unlike Britney Spears….

Snoqualmie Website
Stratford's Wine Agencies Website

By Peter Wood with No comments

Crap of the Week - Wine Buddy wine brewing kit

This crap of the week is available from the Gadget Shop, and allows you to brew your own wine. When I say wine, I really mean alcoholic fruit juice. When I say fruit juice, I really mean powdered fruit extract with yeast added...

All you need to do is add sugar and water and for the price of £19.99 you can make wine in your own kitchen. Each pack gives you six bottles of wine and takes seven days to make. Seems like a hell of a lot of hassle really, when you could go to a supermarket and buy some cheap wine for the same money. It too might be crap, but it is bound to be far better than this rubbish...

By Peter Wood with 1 comment

Diageo robbing angels

Spirits producer Diageo are looking at the merits of shrink wrapping their barrels of whisky. Apparently, the "Angel's Share" from distilleries such as Lagavulin, Glenkinchie and Talisker is costing the world's largest spirits manufacturer up to £1million each year. As a result, they are looking at wrapping the porous oak barrels in cling film to prevent whisky evaporating through the wood. Well they need to do something to help pay for Lewis Hamilton's pay rise...

By Peter Wood with 4 comments

6 Questions with Sir Cliff Richard, Vida Nova Wines

When your peers credit you with being a pioneer in your field, it is perhaps the greatest compliment anyone can receive. Such a comment was made by John Lennon, who said that the song ‘Move It’ was “the first English Rock & Roll song”. The artist performing the song half a century ago, was Cliff Richard.

Now in it’s 50th year, Sir Cliff’s career is perhaps as broad as anyone’s in the entertainment business. Singing every genre from Rock & Roll, through R&B to Reggae, he has acted in films and on stage, has been a television presenter and represented his country in the Eurovision Song Contest.

But here we are interested, not in Cliff Richard the performer, but Cliff Richard the wine buff, owner of Quinta do Moinho and producer of Vida Nova wines. We asked him our half case of questions….

Who or what got you interested in wine?
David Baverstock, the Australian wine-maker from the Barossa Valley, suggested that I might like to plant a vineyard at my quinta in Portugal. I told him I’d just planted figs and he said I had a simple choice: I could produce syrup of figs, or a nice bottle of wine. No contest.... the figs were removed!!

Aside from your own wines, what do you like to drink on a daily basis?
I enjoy flavoured vodkas with tonic water – especially the ‘ruby red’.

What is the best wine you have ever tried?
There have been many wonderful wines but I remember tasting a Brokenwood Graveyard Shiraz (from Australia) for the first time and it was fantastic. I would also have to include a Penfold’s Grange.

Do you have a wine cellar? If so, what is your prized possession?
I don’t have a wine cellar, but any Puligny Montrachet (at least six years old) would be prized!

August 29th is the 50th Anniversary of the release of your first single. What will you be drinking to celebrate?
Cristal Champagne.

Name three people, real or fictional, living or dead, that would make your ideal dinner guests, and what wine (price and age no object) would you drink?
Dr Billy Graham; Ivan Lendl; Elvis Presley. I would serve Petrus!

Vida Nova Wines are available from Waitrose
Vida Nova Wines website
Cliff Richard Official Website

Next 6 Questions with....
Dan Connolly

By Peter Wood with No comments

Lustau Sherries

A lot of people have a misconception about sherry. They think it belongs in two places. Their grandma or a trifle. The misconception that sherry is wrinkly juice is comparable with the misconception that cars are causing glabal warming. Certainly, car emissions are a contributing factor, but the world’s population of cows emits more harmful gas than the world’s cars and governments don’t ask or a ‘bovine tax’, but they quite happily wallop up the price on petrol. These high taxes are supposed to accelerate the development of ‘clean cars’, but it isn’t working. Governments should say “Oil is going to run out, and soon. Pull your finger out and develop Hydrogen cells. Oh, and if you don’t do it, the ozone layer is going to disappear and you are all going to die” I guarantee that within 15 years we would see cost effective Hydrogen powered cars on the road.

Similarly, Grannies may drink sherry, but it is not made for them and them alone. Young people should be drinking this wonderful beverage, but trying to convince them is tricky. Telling them to do it is going to have the same effect as raising petrol prices, which, in simple terms, is sod all! You need to get them drinking it stealthily. You need to fool them into drinking it, and to do it, you need food!

The whole point of sherry is to be eating with it. Everything from an almond, through cured meats, into roasts and with rich puddings, sherry needs food. Hell, even a packet of crisps in a pub would do, but with the right sherry.

Trying some sherries from Lustau proved that we should make more of this wonderful drink, and get pubs and restaurants selling it properly. The main issue is that pubs and restaurants have a crappy bottle of Croft stuck behind the bar, at room temperature and is served like a spirit. It is a wine for crying out loud!

A plate of nuts or with some cold seafood the Lustau Puerto Fino is a light, citrussy smelling sherry with an aroma of rain on hot tarmac smelling sherry. Then you get a yeasty citrussy flavour and there is a little white pepper and peanuts on the palate, and it has super clean acidity. Matured in Puerto de Santa Maria rather than Jerez, this shows a much cleaner fino sherry than the likes of the excellent Tio Pepe from Gonzalez Byass. I prefer this Lustau style, but both are good. 8/10

Lemon zest and then an empty Walkers ready salted crisp packet is what I get on the nose of the Lustau Papirusa Manzanilla. The palate offers up grapefruit pith and lots more salt. It is a good sherry, and, continuing on the finger food theme, salty snacks – pretzels, crisps, salted nuts. It is a touch flabby on the finish however which lets it down. 7.5/10

The Lustau Almacenista Amontillado del Puerto is really good. Honeycomb, quite sweet and chunky with a little fruit pudding, then roast nuts and dried wild mushrooms. A lovely finish, quite clean and with a long, minerally and dry finish. It should go with hard cheeses like Manchego, or maybe even with barbecued chicken. 8.5/10

I love Camembert. The brie like cheese that smells of dirty nappies is fantastic and the Lustau Pada de Gallina Oloroso matches perfectly with it. Bonfire toffee, a bit of burnt lemon and a little rubber on the nose, then a rich, chunky and dried fruit flavour, finished off with caramel and pencil shavings. Wow! 8/10

The wine of the tasting, and the food match of the tasting, was the Lustau 1989 Anada. This 100% Palomino sherry is strange in that it is made like Port. Instead of being fermented to dryness and then sweetened up, this had fermentation stopped when brandy was added, leaving residual sugar in the wine. It is stunning. A lot of rich honey, a little raisin and prunes. Toffee creeps in on the nose and then the palate is rich, spicy, with lovely dark fruit cake and honey roasted peanuts. This goes superbly with Jamaican Ginger Bread! A perfect food and wine match! 9.5/10

Finally, the sticky Lustau East India. It used to be called Old East India, but apparently the American government asked “How old is old?” and so they dropped the first word. Very sweet, but this wine has the Palomino fermented to dryness, then has the brandy added and then it is sweetened with Pedro Ximenez, resulting in a treacle, liquorice and chocolate fest. Aniseed, lots of ginger and a bit of cough drops and coffee on the palate. It is very good but a bit full on. Chuck this over ice cream and it is great! 8/10.

So I think this proves that sherry can go with food and should be treated as a wine. Go out, buy a bottle of sherry, or a couple of half bottles, and give sherry a go. Just don’t use it to make bloody trifle.

By Peter Wood with No comments

A letter from Margaret Smith, MSP

I received a letter today from MSP Margaret Smith, which went into detail on the Liberal Democrat's policy regarding the raising of the drinking age. I won't write it all out here as it is quite long, but her comments are both thoughtful and addressed the open email I wrote in depth, so I'd like to thank her for doing that.

She also points out, and quite rightly so, that she cannot take any direct action on my behalf, but my own MSP, Iain Smith - Liberal Democrat, North East Fife, may be able to assist me.

I still await his reply.

By Peter Wood with No comments

Top Gear G&T in hot Polar water (hows that for a tabloidesque headline!)

Jeremy 'Powerrrrr' Clarkson and James 'him off Top Gear and that wine programme' May are in a bit of hot water for being caught drinking and driving. It is not that they had gone out for a few beers and were caught doing 110mph on the M1, but because they were considered to have 'glamorised misuse of alcohol'.

In the Top Gear Polar special, Clarkson and May raced co presenter Richard Hammond to the North Pole. Hammond was on a dog sled, whereas the other two were in a modified off road pickup truck. In the episode, Clarkson and May were seen drinking Gin and Tonics whilst driving over the frozen ocean, and there have been complaints to the BBC Trust.

In the programme, Clarkson addresses the viewer to inform them not to write in complaining as there were in international waters and there is no drink drive law. The BBC Trust has said that the footage was "highly irresponsible".

While drinking and driving shouldn't be made light of, come on, it was a joke! It wasn't making alcohol misuse glamorous in the slightest and the fact that the complaint was made after the show was repeated, by some Mary Whitehouse wannabe flicking through satellite channels desperate to find something to moan about, displays that millions of people watched the programme first time round and saw this for what it was - a silly bit of entertainment!

By Peter Wood with No comments

Doh!

For anyone who gets a feed from this website, apologies, I cocked up! I'm putting all my tasting notes online and accidentally posted a load to this blog, rather than the other one I have set up! So it is likely that you have received notification of loads of short tasting notes. Sorry! All of them have been deleted from this blog and once I've typed up five years of notes, I'll put a link from this site to them.

By Peter Wood with No comments

A proper answer from an MSP...

Ross Finnie, Liberal Democrat MSP for the West of Scotland, sent me an email this morning. I'd like to thank him for spending the time to answer the email I sent to all MSP's regaring the proposals to combat alcohol misuse.

Thank you very much indeed for sending me a copy of your email on underage drinking and the misuse of alcohol.  I agree with much of the concerned views that you put forward that would take practical steps to identify underage drinking which would assist either prosecution of underage drinking or off sales who sell drink to underage persons.  I also agree with much of the views that you put forward on Binge Drinking.  As you may be aware, I and my party, the Liberal Democrats, are prepared to support the Government in its attempts to tackle alcohol but we are not prepared to support the simplistic measure of stigmatising all 18/21 years olds.  We believe very firmly that the overwhelming majority of 18/21 year olds who do not mis-use alcohol should be brought on side to be part of the solution and not seen as part of the problem.

Ross Finnie

By Peter Wood with No comments