The Joy of Secs

For me, home and dry is the where and what of white wine drinking. Or ""Chez Nous Et Sec" as my friend Mike Holloway would say. Be it still or sparkling, Sec, Brut, Extra Brut or just Dry (but not Trocken) you can pretty much guarantee that it will go down well at Casa Tebs. And the same goes for the pink stuff too.

Now one of the top maisons in Beaujolais is Louis Jadot and they have been churning out fabulous red and white wines for generations. But being well established doesn't necessarily mean entrenched, and their marketing folk must have been watching the UK wine consumption trends. Since the turn of the millennium, the market here for rosé wine has rocketed. And this week, for the first time, I tried Louis Jadot's rosé beaujolais. And how wonderful it was too. Shame I only bought one bottle. Mind you, at £9 it is probably not in everybody's price range. Nestling up next to it on the same shelf I found a pink Sancerre which was also stunning (though a pound dearer).

The rise in pinks has not been restricted to just the still wines either. Time was that you would only find a pink shampoo in your local supermarket at Christmas whereas my local Tescos now has a section dedicated to pink fizz. The Freixenet vintage is often on offer at £6 which is a total bargain. And not just sparklies either because across the aisle I found Croft Pink Port. Now we always have a bottle of white port in the fridge during the festive season (it actually tastes of Christmas) but once I can establish a reliable source of Croft Pink I can assure you I will have a bottle of that chilling all year round (not one bottle for the whole year you understand). Maybe I will have to resurrect an old adventure...

Twas the year 2000. The new millenium celebrations had died down and the Y2K end of the world scenario had failed to show its ugly head.  It was our first holiday in Sardinia. We had found a fabulous restaurant by the sea shore and were having pre-prandial drinkies by the pool. I asked for a dry sparkling wine and we were duly served a bottle of ice cold Incrocio Manzoni spumante (brut). I was so impressed that I peeled off the label and ordered a second. Our ever-so-attentive head waiter suggested a different one from the same cantina so our second was Verdiso Silver (extra brut) which was also amazing.

Back home I tried to find a supplier for these nectars, but the closest I could find was in Holland. What to do? The obvious - we had to go back to Italy and get more. The little information I could glean from the label was that it came from Northern Italy and the internet yielded nothing (in English anyway - I later found their website in Italian) so I booked a week on Lake Garda. Whilst we toured the lake and had fun our ever-so-attentive hotel owner took my preserved label and made some enquiries. By the end of the week we had an address but insufficient time to visit.

Back home again I wrote to the cantina and arranged a third holiday, this time in Venice (famous for having nearly as many miles of canals as Birmingham) and a tour of the winery (they don't actually do tours normally but the ever-so-attentive general manager said he would take us round himself). It was an amazing state of the science set up - all chrome and pipes and dials and stuff. Finishing the tour I came to the point. "I would like to buy some wine" "Sure, how many bottles?" "Four cases" "Sorry Sir, but we only sell a minimum of a pallet and one pallet holds 800 bottles" "Ah". Well he gave us four bottles for our interest and I went back to Venice and sulked on the Lido for the rest of the week.

Back home yet again, the calculator was out - cost of a pallet of wine plus van hire plus ferry crossings plus diesel. Out of the question. What to do? Buy even more! A specialist wine shipper in Felixstowe had a very reasonable price from Veneto to Northampton for a minimum quantity of 2000 bottles! Woohoo! And friends Rob and Sally (who were with us in Sardinia and wanted some for themselves) had garage space for storage. The rest is history - I managed to sell most and drink the rest (over three years) and only made a small loss overall.

Cheers!

Mikey