Tag Archives: New Zealand Marlborough Pinot Noir

Idle Eye 122 : The Cider Inside

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According to the internet, I may or may not have alcoholic neuropathy. Not the fully-fledged bumping into walls/khazi-bound variety, you’ll no doubt be pleased to learn, but there is some evidence of a tingly leg thing going on after an exceptionally enjoyable bottle of Pinot. Gruelling news, particularly as I am halfway through the arduous task of reducing a bottle mountain of barely palatable filth, bequeathed to me by my late father, in order to reclaim some kitchen shelf real estate. So, in the greater interest of my failing health and with a small nod to genuine altruism, I have decided to give away one of said bottles to any reader who can be arsed to ask for it. Yes, like a competition.

But which one? You are most certainly not having the 1982 Taylors port, and I wouldn’t wish a 2011 Vina Primera white rioja on anyone with a pulse, not even the ISIS vintners. I did, however, find a dusty old thing lurking at the bottom of the pile which, on closer inspection, turned out to be an ageing bottle of Merrydown cider, its blackened cork still wedged in tenaciously at the neck. A thrilling discovery by anyone’s standards, so much so I proffered this information to Merrydown themselves, along with a photograph and a discreet enquiry as to its age. And quick as a flash, I received an email from an equally excited Emma Vanderplank at customer relations, informing me that according to their archive, it probably dates from 1952. Or 1955. Or 1962. Whichever one, it’s proper old: Small wonder Dad laid it down.

So there’s the provenance, but what of the value? To this end, I delved deep into the guts of several online auction houses specialising in the sale and distribution of historic orchard fruit-based alcoholic beverages, and it turns out our little friend ticks all the boxes (matured in cellar/label still legible/stored outside mandatory fifty mile exclusion zone of anyone with a Somerset postcode etc…) And if I’ve got my sums right, it’s almost certainly worth between six and eight quid, give or take a few pennies (allowing for market variables and fluctuation thereof). Bearing in mind that you pay considerably more for the tat sold in convenience stores that doesn’t even have the patina of age, I would suggest to you this is a gift horse not worth looking into the mouth of. Not even a furtive glance from the other side of the paddock. To say nothing of its accruing potential if you so choose to lay it down for another fifty years. I must be mad, me.

Here’s the deal: I’ll post the photograph on the Idle Eye Facebook page (over there, on the right). You tell me why you want it (in the comments below). The winner will be selected by me, subject to bribes. You give me your address, I send it to you at my not inconsiderable expense, along with a picture of a hamster (UK applicants only – Not this time, Johnny Foreigner). Now, what are you waiting for?

Idle Eye 98 : The Disease of Kings

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Once again, the heralding in of another year walks hand in hand with the health and fitness websites falling over themselves to help us improve our bedroom skills. Quite why anyone wishes to get down and dirty in this particular field (at a time when one’s most basic of motor skills are generally in question) is anyone’s guess, but there you have it. And besides, any cursory glance at the headlines would suggest the exact opposite is more appropriate if you happen to be hirsute, silver-topped and off the telly in the 70s.

As for myself, I have attempted to keep my galloping libido at bay with industrial quantities of NZ Marlborough Pinot Noir and a spattering of domestic chores which offer the minimum potential for sexual confusion (it is no coincidence that the more enthusiastic power tool adopter also enjoys wearing those front-weighted accessory belts). And it seems to be working: I’ve yet to have a pop at a Woman’s Hour announcer live on air, elope to France with a teenager or spend any longer than is absolutely necessary in the small room with a copy of Vogue. In fact, the only discernible improvement in the bedroom at present is a new bookshelf – I’m doing my bit.

Imagine my dismay then, when I switched on R4 only to discover that the onerous regime I have responsibly maintained will almost certainly give me gout. Yep, gout! It’s the latest shock malady to do the rounds, brought on by copious consumption of red wine, a diet rich in purines and the utter rejection of Catholicism as sole legitimate sovereign. And apparently it’s heading my way if I fail to rein in my eating and drinking habits. But I’m getting mixed messages here:

Do they want me to strut about like Cock o’ the South, terrifying the ladies of London as they run for cover? Or do I willingly infect myself with the disease of kings in order to prevent such a horror? What are my options? Will I remain handsome? How do goats make cheese?

Fortunately for everyone, the BMJ has found if not a solution, a patch. It seems that a liberal intake of cherries can reduce the risk of gout attacks by up to 35%. Which is a relief. Only thing is, they also enhance the production of dopamine which means I’ll have to be kept indoors, probably under lock and key, until my ardour is sufficiently dampened. It’s a vicious circle:

You rut too much therefore you drink too much therefore you get the gout therefore you eat the cherries therefore you rut too much.

You’d think someone in a lab coat would have culled the problem at source, wouldn’t you? Or that a Cupertino pre-teen would have an app for it by now. But until they do, I shall continue to drink the good fight in the interests of science and common decency. And my feet can sort themselves out when the time comes.

Idle Eye 92 : The Blue Pill

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Regular readers of the filth I throw up every week will almost certainly have my little ruses down by now. Bung my father into the tags and up go the hits, regular as clockwork. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, and you can rest assured I shall be milking this remarkable stroke of luck until it dries up. Thanks for your understanding.

This being the case, let’s trawl back over the last seven days. I went to Wales with my youngest sibling Emma, if for no better reason than to muster some undeserved interest from your good selves, but actually to sort some shit out. Yes, we administered the estate in a manner appropriate to those thrust unwittingly into a position of responsibility. And yes, we said and did stuff that sounded good and proper to those not in the know. But the truth of the matter is that we, like so many others in a similar spot, winged it. Never more so than when, after an exhausting day of admin and delegation, we discovered a sealed bag from the hospital on the kitchen table which contained a well-worn wallet begging for attention. Yes, like in the Grudge. I looked at Emma. Emma looked at me. Open it, she seemed to go, although she probably actually said it and I pretended she didn’t for dramatic effect. So I opened it.

It contained a plethora of post-it notes and business cards, too disturbing to go into here (I shall be scarred for life, remember where you read it first). But amongst these was a small, quadrilateral blue pill which requires no further explanation, especially not to you lot. Needless to say, it was effectively useless to my sister and so, squaring up to my role as responsible eldest, I agreed to take it home for research purposes. It had been a long day and I wanted nothing more than a quick shower and an early night, so without a second thought I necked the confounded thing, washing it down with 75cls of a 2009 New Zealand Marlborough Pinot Noir, and waited for the dawn to rise. Dad may have been many things but a realist he was not, and this was to be my legacy.

I awoke in a state of shock. My bedclothes lay all around (and above) me, and as I peered inside the tent I had inadvertently made, I realised that my father had not entirely gone. That there was a message he was sending me from the beyond to take with me through the years I have left. That the blue pill I had nonchalantly swallowed was perhaps a bridge across the void, the Michelangelo touch that traverses this world and the next. And how he would have been proud of me, raising the game by writing all the bollocks I do, the very thing he loosely encouraged without ever really knowing where it would end up. But it ends up here. Dad, I hope you’re listening…

 

Idle Eye 88 : The Indignity of Labour

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Every year at around this time, I am thrown into a state of physical and mental inertia by a small metal box that lives on my desk. Any freelancers reading this will inherently understand what I’m on about here because, if they’re honest, so are they. I’m talking, of course, about doing the annual accounts. It is a vile task that cannot be ignored, cannot be sexed up and involves the same kind of soulless, repetitive labour previously employed in the Soviet gulags. It throws up a brutal mirror to the fact that your year wasn’t exactly peppered with exotic pursuits and devil-may-care decision making, and the foolscap brown envelope brimful with countless train tickets to the same destination never fails to rub salt into the wound.

Accountants are no fools: They know what you’re like, which is why they give you that October deadline when everyone knows the suits don’t want your meagre offerings until the end of January. So, eventually, you cover your living room floor (immaculately vacuumed several times previous as a diversion tactic) in tatty slivers of paper, pouring over them with increasingly powerful reading glasses for the date that rubbed off months ago in your wallet. And when you’ve finally got the little bastards into some kind of shape and downed a conciliatory bottle of NZ Marlborough Pinot Noir, you remember that the worst is yet to come and you are now in no fit state to take it on: The spreadsheet.

No-one in their right mind likes spreadsheets. They are the embodiment of every value you ever despised (and made you go into that badly paid but wildly creative job you somehow manage to hold down) in the first place. Spreadsheets suck the will to live from every orifice you have that still works. And they were almost certainly invented by Amon Goeth to drag mankind down into a well of despair and hopelessness. So, you are now caught in a classic Catch-22: In order to tackle the final hurdle it is imperative that you unscrew another bottle but the minute you do, that mañana moment will be upon you and you will see, with perfect clarity, the futility of your intended endeavour and that all those receipts from Oddbins & Majestic that you shredded yesterday could probably have been seen as a legitimate business expense. Oh the irony!

As I write this, I am painfully aware that we are already halfway through October. It will take me approximately three full days to complete it all and approximately half a case of wine. I could have done it last week when I had a couple of days off but I did hoovering instead. And cleaned the hob. These are the depths of depravity one is prepared to trawl when faced with a more appalling alternative, and it says something profound about the human condition and the indignity of labour. Although I’m not quite sure what…

Idle Eye 75 : The Cost Company

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So anyway, Nibs and I are burning down the M4 at 121mph (on the way back from yet another trip to Wales), when he drops it in that we have to make a slight detour. Oh no, I’m thinking, is it a special lady friend? Or perhaps the steed needs a quick pit stop? Either of which will add a significant portion of gooseberry to my day. But, as it turns out, it was neither. As we approached Reading, the car re-orbited and we snaked our way through faceless, municipal landscaped roundabouts and grounded ourselves at the trolley park of what appeared to be yet another temple of worship to consumer greed. Every hackle that hadn’t already been irreversibly müllered by alcohol immediately rose up, but my fears were shortly to be assuaged: This was different. This was the future.

Have you ever been to one of these places? These vast cathedrals of corrugated aluminium that house your every culinary peccadillo and a few more besides? And for stupid money, as long as you’ve got an outhouse or live inside an Escher print? Well neither had I, but the minute I walked through the door they had me by the balls. For a start, right there in the foyer, they had delicious Apple stuff which had me salivating like a Cupertino campus nerd, but then as we crossed into widescreen an astonishing array of palleted goods, piled as high as the eye can feasibly take in, burst into ocular wonder. Over there on the left were thousands of discounted cases of NZ Marlborough Pinot Noir, and yet there on the right were more triple packs of Calvin Klein underpants than you could shake a stick at.

But this was just for starters: Mountains of Haribo, rivers of tequila and more snout than Strangeways all beckoned with their irresistible charms. And, in case you weren’t yet up to speed, helpful smiley staff clad in red and white were all there to assist with their immaculate speed-of-light timing of which I took full advantage:

‘Hello, could you help? I’m trying to figure out the sheet 2 wipe ratio saving I could make from your Syrian Red Cross Convenience industrial strength loo rolls?’

‘Certainly, Sir! Our statistics, based on an amalgam of the global meridian and the sheet 2 wipe average in your area suggest that you’ll be making a saving of approximately 7.2 pence per go. You have a nice day now.’

These guys were so on it I nearly wept. And, as Nibs and I swept through checkout, laden with a cargo utterly denied to those outside the club, I felt it necessary to fall to my knees and beg my own brother to sign me up. Which, bless him, he did, after making me watch him consume a hot dog and a litre of fizzy pop at £1.45 from the in-store café. Vile but necessary, as them French Resistance chicks would have said.

Idle Eye 57 : The Eyes Have It

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Ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper I’ve been monstrously short-sighted. Of course, when it first happens you are blissfully ignorant of nature’s slight until such time as your mother clocks you barging into furniture or, in my case, not spotting her entering the room when under a chaise longue with a stolen hoard of the stepfather’s Playboys. (Yes, we had a chaise longue. Get over it.) Anyway, shortly afterwards I was given a confidence-busting pair of Elvis Costello’s courtesy of the NHS at the exact same time as things began to drop downstairs. This was obviously unacceptable to a young adult drenched in Hi Karate as it severely compromised my chances with Farrah Fawcett-Majors and made it almost impossible to wear headphones in bed: Something had to give.

Five years later, I was given an appointment with Dr Richards at Guildford Road. And, thanks to the wonders of modern ocular technology, I was eventually able to discard those ridiculous billboards of inadequacy for something far more suitable. Sexy, even. From that moment on no-one would ever know that I couldn’t read the body copy of a cornflakes packet less than a metre from my own face. I had contact lenses, for Christ’s sake! Now I was carnally available. Any time. Anywhere. But sadly, this was not to be. Even Nibs, with whom I shared a bedroom, barely registered acknowledgement and he certainly was not my target market.

Fast forward another thirty years and you discover a man who has not moved on. Those two tiny slivers of translucent plastic are still the vehicle through which I decipher the world, and now they are scratched, world weary and begging for change. So, finally, I have decided to listen. On 2nd March of this the year 2013, some bloke called Mr Patel in Shaftesbury Avenue is going to digitally zap the fuck out of my vile jellies and I shall have my road to Damascus moment at last. Unless he buggers it up, of course, in which case you are reading the fifth last post here. Needless to say, one of my main concerns was how this would compromise my bohemian lifestyle in both the short & long term, but according to the Trevithick Laboratory, it turns out that the sustained intake of New Zealand Marlborough Pinot Noir (2008-2011) appears to protect the mitochondria cells which stop you getting cataracts. Who’d have thunk it?

There is, however, a small bridge between now and then, and we do have the Idle Hour Burns Night ahead of us. Now, I don’t wish to appear presumptuous, but if you do happen to come across someone looking like an outpatient from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, may I ask you to have a small word with Nibs and convince him I’ll be needing a complimentary tipple for medicinal purposes. And if he balks, maybe mention that I’ll be getting a room of my own soon.