Newsletter No. 21: 14^th December 2005                                            

As the UK winter deepens, small mammals of the mouse variety find ingress into the house. A colony of them finds something immensely attractive in the waste pipe of our dishwasher and concerted nibbling instigates a minor flood. A pair of Little Nippers subsequently instigates a swift and slightly brutal reduction in their population and a telephone call is placed to a man handy with a spanner.

All this seems slightly at odds with the normal beneficent sentiments of the season, but we would like to take this opportunity to wish all Bowes Wine clients a very happy, relaxing and wine-centric Christmas.

In this issue….

»  Winter Drinking Wines

»  Bin End Offer – January 2006

»  Italian Offer – closing soon

»  Wine of the Week

Winter Drinking Wines

Those of you still requiring additional stocks of hooch for the purposes of celebration over the festive season, do get your orders in soon. The cut-off date for deliveries outside the M25 is Friday morning (16th December) of this week, Tuesday morning (20th) for those inside. We cannot guarantee that orders received after this time will be delivered in time for Christmas.

Turkey and goose are meats with which one can either drink red or white wine, but some care is required in selecting vinous accompaniment nevertheless. Reds shouldn't be too heavy. Here are our particular recommendations for Christmas drinking:

2003 Bourgogne Rouge, Rebourgeon-Mure £102 inc VAT

The picture of elegance and a very proper burgundy from a source in Pommard. Being from such a ripe vintage, this is drinking superbly already.

2003 Saumur-Champigny, Clos des Cordeliers £99 inc. VAT

Bowes Wine would usually recommend that one avoid the red wines of the Loire Valley, the exception being the ripest vintages, as here. Pinot Noir-sized, this has softened and is utterly delicious.

2004 Petit Chablis, Domaine Millet £102 inc. VAT

Proper Chablis should be mineral and austere: a good match for oysters or something cooked in a creamy sauce. This Petit Chablis, from a top-notch vintage, is full of Chablis character, but has an additional richness, avoiding austerity and making this an ideal aperitif that's excellent on the table too.

2003 Encruzado Branco, Quinta dos Roques £117 inc. VAT

We have several clients who have become fixated on this stuff. Is it the best white wine of Portugal? We could argue into the night, but one can find aromas and flavours of lemon and tangerine and peach woven around well-worked wisps of savoury oak.

And when one feels that one's senses are in need of pepping up and the batteries require recharging, the 2004 Roero Arneis Camestri from Marco Porello (£96 inc. VAT) would blow across one's taste buds like an Arctic wind cutting through the torpid air of a matador's changing room.

» Click here to read the Drinking Wine Offer in full

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Bin End Offer – January 2006

Over the time since Bowes Wine's inception, we have been buying in wine when necessary to secure the stock and, quite naturally, we have been left with small numbers of cases unsold.

The time has now come for an early spring clean of the contents of the Bowes Wine Company Account at Octavian and, to make this an especially attractive option, we will be slashing prices.

The main focus of this sale will be 2003 and 2004 claret, as well as 2003 burgundy. The offer will be launched on 1st January and will be running for a limited period only. If anyone has a particular interest in securing bargains from these regions/vintages, let us know and I would be happy to email across a copy of the offer in advance of the sale. It'll be a case of first come, first served, so do act quickly to secure anything to which you take a shine. Many of the wines are available as single cases only and will offer exceptional value for money!

This is an opportunity for Bowes Wine clients to take advantage of our desire to minimise stock holdings…but don't be fooled into thinking that this is dud stuff that no one wanted in the first place! There will be exceptional wines on this list; wines that would be welcome in the portfolios of even the pickiest collector.

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Italian Offer – closing soon…

This is closing on the last day of the month. It has sold well and so it should. Most reassuringly, it has sold best at our tastings, when those attending have had a chance to sample the wines. There are fabulous examples thereon, both of the classic wines of Italy and some of the more modern interpretations. (Anyone wanting the former, look no further than the Vino Nobile, which we tasted the again the other evening and, once again, were stunned by. And something more modern? The Girolamo is a complex, scintillating Merlot from central Tuscany.)

If anyone still has to order and would like to add a case or two of these wines to their portfolio, do let us know. These wines will NOT be available after 31^st December.

» Click here to go to the Italian Offer

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Wine of the Week

Actually enjoyed rather more than a week ago and a very kind production from the cellar of a Hong Kong-based client. For someone to hand you a glass of champagne is an act always worthy of gratitude. If it's not quite up to sniff, no matter, it still comes laden with good wishes for joy, frivolity and a suggestion that the good times should, as is their wont in these situations, be about to roll.

When that glass is 1985 R.D. Bollinger the rolling takes on a whole new aspect, possibly one more usually associated with chasing truckles of cheese down an impossibly acute hillside in Gloucestershire.

How come fermented grape juice can smell so determinedly of the yeastiest, freshest bread? How can it spread out across the palate in a wave of cream-textured loveliness and sink past one's taste buds like the ripple in a lightly toasted silk flag waving lazily under the influence of picaresque summer breezes? I don't know, but sometimes - those glorious times when wine is at its most majestic and great - it does. A reminder, then, that life is never so short as when there is insufficient champagne contained therein.

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