Miscellaneous
No weak links
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Congratulations to The Society’s Head of Tastings & Events Ewan Murray for a sterling performance in Wednesday’s episode of the BBC’s The Weakest Link (still available via the Beeb’s iPlayer for those that missed it).
Correct spelling, detailed knowledge of ladies’ hair styling, lightning mental arithmetic and sagacious ‘banking’ saw Ewan scoop the winnings. He describes host Anne Robinson (aka the ‘Queen of Mean’) as ‘lovely, and not at all like her on-screen persona’; we’re not sure what Anne made of Ewan however after he likened her on the show to ‘a New World riesling – fragrant but with a streak of acidity’ or a mature red Burgundy that ‘is still fruity but beginning to show its age’!
Ewan says he will be donating a proportion of his winnings to World Vision’s work in Lideta, Ethiopia, and spending the remainder on a treat for the family.
Changes to Delivery Services, Including a New ‘Name-the-Day’ Option
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In the wake of last December’s snow, our bi-annual review of delivery carriers took a sharper focus than usual as we set ourselves the additional challenge of beefing up our contingency arrangements. We have talked to all ten national parcel networks and several regionals. As a result, we will be adding a fourth carrier (enhancing our ability to switch volume between networks when things go wrong) and changing the way we exchange information with our three existing providers.
As part of this we have been able to improve our 5-10 day delivery promise for wine delivered by carriers to four working days (with plans to reduce to three soon).
Members can also choose a ‘name-the-day’ service from carriers, which costs £3 for weekdays or £10 for weekends. A new evening/weekend service for deliveries inside the M25 is also available.
These services, as well as our next day delivery service, are now charged per order, rather than per case. You can visit the Delivery Options section of our website for more information.
Whilst the above concerns mainly deliveries via carriers (YODEL, Fedex etc) following our commercial reviews with them, most of our members continue to select to have their deliveries from the local Wine Society van, and we are planning improvements to this service too.
Peter Styne
Head of Operations
Keeping Greece Afloat!
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Bragging about one’s holidays might seem a little tasteless, though they were exceedingly good. So this is not going to be a tale of sun, sand and… but rather of wine and of one particular grape variety: moschofilero.
Finding good white wine in Greece was never easy. Most was often dull or oxidised; beer was usually the only viable answer to quench a thirst. That perception is now out of date. Whatever the shortcomings of the Greek economy, there is a sense of real pride in Greece which is evident in the quality of the wines. Even humble jug wines (sometimes made from saavatiano or vilano grapes) are lovely but, for me, pride and place goes to the moschofilero.
This is often a pink coloured grape and is planted mainly on Peloponnese and produces a light and fragrant wine that has some similarity to muscat but not as pungent and more delicate. Curiously for a variety that is native of Greece, it does not tolerate excessive heat which is why it is often planted at altitude such as among the high mountains of the Peloponnese.
Back to the holiday: The scene is on board a ferry outward bound from Piraeus where the service in the restaurant is perfect and where the chief steward is dressed in navy whites. The food was excellent, tzatziki, squid, grilled meats and a decent salad, and all washed down with a refreshing moschofilero 2010 from Skouras. Heaven!
Click here to view The Society’s ‘Discover Greece’ offer.
Marcel Orford-Williams
A rewarding week for The Society
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It was a great honour to receive on behalf of our members and The Society the National Retailer of the Year award at the Decanter World Wine Awards presentation dinner at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden on Wednesday (pictured right with judge Anthony Rose). Being rushed off straight away afterwards to do a video-interview was a bit unexpected though! You can see it here.
Following so closely on the heels of our successes at Tuesday evening’s International Wine Challenge (IWC) Awards (see Ewan’s earlier blog entry), it has proved to be a wonderfully rewarding week for The Society. The IWC had also voted The Society the Wine Merchant and Wine Club of the year, as well as the Specialist Merchant for both Alsace and Chile.
In their citations, the judges recognised nearly every part of the business from the range and quality of our wines to the excellent levels of service provided to members and the recent innovations that we have introduced. At the heart of our success, I believe, lies our mutuality which allows us to focus on member satisfaction and quality rather than on the financial returns required for external shareholders. These awards are a testament to the hard work of our buyers and staff and I offer my congratulations to all concerned.
I was particularly pleased to see that we won, for the fourth consecutive year, the Specialist Merchant Award for Alsace. Congratulations to buyer Marcel Orford-Williams for once again ensuring members have the pick of Alsace’s wines to choose from.
This is also the fourth time that the IWC judges have voted our Chilean range the country’s finest. But rather than resting on his laurels, buyer Toby Morrhall is constantly refining and improving the range and unearthing new wines for us all to enjoy, just as he has done each year since first championing these wines.
In Decanter’s report of the awards they questioned whether: “The ‘committee of gentlemen’ who met in the Albert hall in 1874 to set up a co-operative … would recognise their offspring in this victor.” I like to think that while they may find our ever-evolving website, our new iPhone app and state-of-the-art warehouse a tad confusing, they would find our ethos of the uppermost integrity and commitment to outstanding quality and fair pricing entirely recognisable.
Thank you for your continued support.
Sarah Evans
Chairman
Top of the Medal Table
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The International Wine Challenge Awards Dinner, often referred to as the ‘wine Oscars’, took place last night at the Hilton Park Lane. The esteemed panel of judges includes Tim Atkin MW, Oz Clarke, Sam Harrop MW, Charles Metcalfe and Derek Smedley MW.
Buyer Marcel Orford-Williams, supply chain manager Thom Cleary and I were there on behalf of The Society, and I suppose we should have suspected something was afoot when we saw that we were seated at the same table as the aforementioned Oz, Charles and Derek . Earlier in the evening we had been presented with the awards for Specialist Merchant of the Year for Alsace and for Chile (both for the fourth time).
During the main presentations we were delighted to become Wine Club of the Year for the second time. What came totally out of the blue, however, was the award for Merchant of The Year – the very top merchant award of the evening. We are thrilled. This is the second time that The Society has won this award (the last time being in 2005).
Here is what the judges said about The Society:
Wine Club of the Year – “Founded in 1874, the Wine Society has stood the test of time in terms of quality and service. Their wine list features great wines on every page and the team are actively involved in events and activities. Their decision to drop their margins and reinvest previous year’s profits back in to the club is commendable. The Society’s specialist buying team is a great credit to them.”
Merchant of the Year – “In a fluctuating market, The Wine Society has consolidated its position. They do everything well, from entry point own label to offering some of the best wines in the world. Their storage facilities in Stevenage are state-of-the-art, and have recently been expanded. Their offerings range from wines sold En Primeur to great mature vintages, cellared in that wonderful warehouse. They sell over 600,000 cases a year to 110,000 clients. Their wine-list is diverse and well-researched. The Wine Society is gloriously traditional but right up to date – a proper, authentic wine merchant.”
The full list of award winners can be found by clicking here. Well done to all of our colleagues in the wine trade who won an award.
As Marcel and I went up to collect the award, the music playing was the Black Eyed Peas: “I gotta feelin’ that tonight’s gonna be a good night …” Well, it certainly was!
Ewan Murray
Head of Tastings, Events & PR
English Wine is Local Hero Across the (Cheese) Board
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Finding a wine able to complement a range of different cheeses can be a challenge. Some outspoken gastronomic experts even deem it an impossibility given the sheer scope of flavours and textures on offer.
Most cheese falls into one of five or six family groups: goat and sheep’s milk cheese, hard or cheddared cheese, bloomy cheeses (camembert and brie), washed rind cheeses (epoisses, munster etc) and blue-veined cheese.
Generally speaking, certain styles of wine will work better with each of these groups, but a good cheese board will probably include examples from all of them. So how do you find a wine that can cope with a strong, salty cheddar, a pungent goat’s cheese and a ripe camembert? This was the challenge we set ourselves when choosing wines for our special Christmas cheese and wine cases.
The line-up of cheeses included representatives from both sides of the Channel. In the French corner, we had:
Brillat Savarin – a triple-cream, soft cheese, made with unpasteurised cow’s milk with a deep, earthy and salty flavour.
La Graine de Vosges – a washed-rind cow’s milk cheese; pungent but with an unctuous, creamy and earthy flavour.
Vacherin Mont d’Or – a seasonal cow’s milk cheese made on the Swiss border shaped in cloth-lined moulds then encircled with a strip of spruce bark and washed with brine for at least three weeks. The spruce imparts a resinous flavour to the pale interior of the cheese which becomes almost liquid as it matures.
Bleu de Chevre Cendre – an unusual ashed and soft blue goat’s milk cheese made from the milk of Alpine dairy goats.
… and in the British corner were:
Cornish Smuggler – a hard cow’s cheese with lovely acidity and creamy texture and a soft red veining through the cheese.
Sharpham Brie – soft, unpasteurised, full-flavoured almost fruity creamy brie.
Ragstone – creamy, pronounced flavoured goat’s cheese from Herefordshire.
Golden Cenarth – award-winning washed-rind organic cow’s milk cheese from west Wales Its smooth interior texture in contrast with its interesting, sweet rind.
We tried a raft of different bottles with the cheeses (the idea was to choose French wines to go with the French cheeses) but as the tasting went on, one wine seemed to bring out the best in all of the cheeses, French or British again and again…
Midsummer Hill took on all comers...
Yet another feather in the cap of a wine that’s been a patriotic Society favourite for some time now, so I thought I’d share the news. Should you wish to try it and indeed other English wines besides, The Society is currently running an offer enabling members to do just that!
Joanna Goodman
SocietyNews Editor
Forgotten Bottles That Hit The Spot
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Cellaring modestly-priced bottles can reap great rewards...
How best to tackle the tricky subject at home? Lucky for me – and I should know better! – admission of guilt came with unexpectedly delicious glasses of wine.
Unexpectedly because both had been stored, albeit in tip-top conditions, beyond their published drink dates, but also because both were modest wines.
With an excuse found to open a bottle of each within days, it was a relief and a pleasure to find just how good they still are.
The Society’s Exhibition Côtes du Rhône 2001 in magnum is fully mature, but silky and healthy; perhaps not an improvement on its recent past but nevertheless a thoroughly enjoyable drink. Moreish and delicious was the conclusion on Château Pey La Tour Reserve 2003. We often refer to this admirable property as a model estate. Their 2003 provides the proof!
A combination of learning to love wine with French friends who drank good but simple, and lack of the sort of cash that allowed me to buy grand names, means I have had great pleasure over the years from cellaring inexpensive bottles. Choose carefully and you start to understand the potential pleasure and satisfaction in laying wines down.
But I would recommend that you follow the Society’s advice on drink dates, and do as I say not as I do!
Joanna Locke MW
Designing An App For The Society
Posted by: | CommentsAs you may be aware, The Society recently launched its first iPhone® application. The app is free to download and available to both members and non-members. You can download it from iTunes, or read more about specific features here.
We wanted to produce an app that made the main benefits of The Society available in a more portable and convenient format. We recognised that members may want to place orders whilst on the move or simply that doing so via their mobile phone may be easier than firing up their computer. To ensure ordering is as smooth as possible, we have also integrated the checkout stages into the app, meaning that transactions can be completed without being redirected to a website.
However we also wanted to enable greater access to useful information to benefit and inform wine choices in whatever situation people find themselves in – whether a need to find out about a region seen on a wine label or the convenience of checking a vintage guide in a restaurant. This information is available to non-members who download the app too.
Thanks to everyone who has let us know their thoughts on the app and what we can do to improve the service. Please keep your feedback coming: just leave us a comment, e-mail us or leave us a note via Twitter or Facebook. One of the main things we have been hearing is that members would appreciate an Android version of the app. We would like to reassure these members that we are working on this and a version is planned soon, along with various other developments.
Nicky Brown
Head of Digital Marketing
Return of the City Break?
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A quick trip to Portugal recently brought back fond memories of long weekends spent enjoying a delicious mix of good food and wine, local culture and sunshine in some of Europe’s great cities.
In my case these were before parenthood, many even in those romantic days before marriage (though I must admit to a wonderful birthday treat earlier this summer, with husband and daughter, of a weekend in Dorset built around a lovely meal at 2009 Masterchef winner, Matt Follas’ restaurant The Wild Garlic at Beaminster – well worth a visit, even if you don’t eat garlic!).
Perhaps City Breaks are still in fashion for some, and, with our twelve-year-old about to start learning Spanish, and already an enthusiastic menu explorer, they may be about to start again for us too.
On my recent visit to Portugal, with a charming group of wine merchants from across the country, we started in Porto, which would make a wonderful short break destination. We stayed in the lovely, traditional surroundings of the Hotel Infante Sagres and feasted late nearby, at the Cafe Vitoria, which was still buzzing as we left, on local specialities including salt cod and divine olives.
The main station, with its stunning ceramic tiles that are everywhere in Portugal (pictured right) was just a stone’s throw away, and from there we took surely one of the most picturesque train journeys in the world, up the Douro valley (there’s a charming old rattling option without air-conditioning for the more adventurous or budget conscious too). Once there, you could opt for a river trip, or stay in one of an increasing number of luxury hotels or charming old quintas.
We had work to do, of course, but I stayed for the first time at Chanceleiros, a delightful place, with beautiful views, and excellent (optional) informal supper on the terrace. My room would adapt to make a family room for those travelling with younger children. The pool was an added bonus on a hot weekend even by Douro standards. And of course you can visit, as we did, staggeringly beautiful wine country. Niepoort’s striking new winery looks out over the Tedo River where it flows into the Douro (pictured left).
Up here, remember that many visits will be by appointment only. Back in Vila Nova da Gaia, you can stroll along the river and visit old Port lodges which are well geared up for visitors. Or just take in the local colour and seductive cooking smells – with local wine, of course.
Joanna Locke MW
Portugal Buyer
Picture Blog: Wildlife at Vergelegen
Posted by: | CommentsFurther to my note on premium Stellenbosch estate Vergelegen’s work on biodiversity in their vineyards, I thought readers might like a look at a few photos (the majority of which were snapped at night by CCTV), kindly supplied by Andre van Rensburg.
The rare Cape Genet
An endangered Cape Rain Frog (also known as the 'Headless Frog').
Honey Badgers
Arguably the pièce de résistance is the spotting of a number of Cape Leopards. These animals are notoriously shy, despite their uniquely beautiful markings. It’s the latter which allows confident identification by a trained eye. The biggest is known as Sebastian, and I’m assured by Andre that the name doesn’t change with each customer visited. I’ll leave members to decide how apt the name is for such a handsome beast!
Joanna Locke MW
South Africa Buyer
