Weekend Wines

While in London last weekend I treated my Daughter to a slap up meal at Noble Rot in Bloomsbury (Lambs Conduit St) we were kind of celebrating her completion of a Law conversion course that she's been doing over the last 9 months, her last exam was last Thursday so she was ready to let her hair down a bit! 

We had a really nice long chat and catch up (she has a new boyfriend she was keen to tell me about!) We also had some great food and wine too, classic French bistro style dishes and a bottle from the Maconnais region of Burgundy from one of my favourite producers Verget (more on them here) It was a great wine, crisp green fruits, buttery, nutty, smooth and a nice clean finish, it went down a treat with the splendid pork chop that I ordered. This wine was the old vine (vieilles vignes) version of the appellation, and at only a 2X markup was pretty good VFM for a London restaurant, well done Noble Rot!

Interestingly I noticed that Verget seems to be using screw tops on many of their wines these days, makes complete sense, these aren't wines that need to be aged hugely, a few years at the most and are intended to be drunk fresh and young (compared to other Burgundies) and so the screw cap is probably a superior closure. If this example was typical of the final product then I thoroughly approve!

Very Sensible

Had one of these a couple of weekends ago, it's a new beer from Elusive with some crazy new fangled hops from NZ, very tasty I must say and I like the way Elusive targets a lot of their ales these days between 4 and 5% ABV, all very sensible!

King Kernel

As I was in London last weekend I took the opportunity to pop into the Kernel Taproom in Bermondsey. I always enjoy going over there, it's a bit of a walk but well worth it for the choice on offer. I snapped a picture of the menu for that day (Friday), it's unlikely that you'd find more variety at such high quality levels anywhere else in the country, let alone London, even before you start poking around in their awesome bottle stash! I opted for 2/3rd's of the Simcoe Pale Ale and delicious it was, like so many of the Kernel beers totally balanced and with flavour oozing out of every sip, I could have stayed for several more but had a dinner date with my Daughter in town, maybe next time!

London Stories

I was in London this weekend and finding myself at a loose end I went for a little walk around Southwark. I came across this wall mural in Coin Street, it's a nice image of Anthony Bourdain, food writer and broadcaster (now dead) an interesting tribute to the man, not sure why it's where it is though (clearly some Googling required!), not exactly a prominent street..

Weekend Wink

Nice one from Matt in the Telegraph

Dream dinner parties..

Who are your dream dinner party guests? It's a question often asked at, you guessed it, dinner parties! The choices aren't normally restricted so you can choose anyone alive or dead, it's a bit of a cliche but interesting (in good company), it tells you quite a lot about the person answering and what interests them. For example if the people chosen are all sports heros or perhaps if they are authority figures (like HRH) , famous authors or even famous scientists, some people go broad and some go niche, its something that's hard to predict, hence the amusement I suppose. 

Personally I wouldn't choose anyone in the picture above, for me it would be more about the quality of the conversation and/or debate (and a decent plonk of course!) Maybe people like Bertrand Russell and Christopher Hitchens on philosophy, Newton and Maxwell on science, and for historical colour, Marcus Aurelius and Alexander TG, but of course this list changes on a regular basis, usually every time the question is raised! 

One of the best (modern) jokes on this subject that I've seen recently is someone being asked this question in an interview, and his reply was a gem, he said, "Nigel Farage" followed by a pause and then the word "dead", a sign of the time perhaps.

Friday Smirk

The lad's discussing how religions (particularly Islam) are divisive, that they certainly are, they wouldn't have any power over people if they weren't.