Just seen this on the BBC News site: pensioner told, no ID, no wine

My reaction was: 'Oh for heaven's sake, whatever next'

My wife's reaction was 'bloody hell, I should look that good at 68!"

Headlines today make grim reading for our industry: six pubs in the UK closing a day, alcohol sales down by eight percent, brewers posting profits warnings..... Even in our little market town (pop: 10,000) we've already lost a wine bar and a pub, along with a major retail chain shop and 3 estate agents. Suddenly it's getting VERY close to home.

So it's not surprising to read the official figures: beer sales in pubs were down in the last three months of 2008 by nearly 10% on the same period the year before. That's a whopping 1.4 million fewer pints. Not a headache for the consumers, but a huge one for the pub owners and let's not forget the poor old Treasury who must be missing all that tax.

If my friends are anything to go by, staying in is the new going out. Why drink at an expensive pub when you can enjoy yourself at home, with friends and family, for a fraction of the cost? And now that we're all a bit more wine-savvy, who doesn't baulk at paying what we know to be way, way over the odds for a bottle of average wine with a meal out? Last week-end I spotted a bottle of Bellefontaine Chardonnay that we sell for £5.50 marked up to £15.99 in Center Parcs of all places. 

 We're all more careful with the cash (see Victoria Moore's Saturday Guardian article on recession-itis), and while we're saving a small fortune by staying in and drinking (expect a slew of Sunday paper articles about how to give the perfect dinner party!) or by cutting down on the booze, spare a thought for the cost of our miserliness as pub after pub closes, changing our villages, towns and cities forever.

So, I'm off to do my bit for the credit crunch by booking a table at our local pub. Fantastic food and great service - and good value for money. And then I'm going to aid the local economy further by buying some great local beer (Best Mates and West Berks) to drink at home.

A pretty lazy Sunday - well, lazy in that I wasn't rushing around out and about. Teenagers were both at work (Ha, now that has to be funny in itself!) and wife was snoozing in front of the TV having just presented the breaky programme for the radio station where she works.

Anyway, I was pretty active in terms of an afternoon spent catching up with stuff online, including all those interesting things Google Reader picked up for me during last few days that I haven't had a chance to read until now. If you don't already follow them, two (other!) wine blogs worth reading and book-marking are Ryan and Gabriela Opaz's Catavino and Joe Robert's 1winedude - but there are heaps of great wine blogs being written by passionate people - why not have a look next time you have a few minutes online? There is a good list of great wine blogs here: 100 Top Wine Blogs. Aim for 2009 - to get S4W's blog into that list!

A house to myself; and no need to feel guilty about work as it's Sunday. Spent some fun time catching up with people I follow on Twitter - follow me there if you like http://twitter.com/AndrewChapman. In fact, Twitter has been getting some great press of late. Robert McIntosh over at The Wine Conversation, another very good and highly recommended wine blogger, was featured on the BBC's Working Lunch (@declancurry and @workinglunch in Twitter-speak), and Jonathan Ross, a new Twitter convert (@wossy) interviewed Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) about his Twittering's on his first show back after his ban. Plus a piece in The Guardian recently.

... and before I knew it it was time to put the roast chicken in and get a move on with supper. Which gave me time to try a couple of Sherry's while messing about in the kitchen

First up, a chilled Fino... Fino Marismeno from Bodegas Sanchez Romate. Chilled Fino is sooo under-rated. This one is zingy, dry, salty, tangy - such good value for quality compared to wine. Its dryness and almondy, citrus-like/salty edge make it a great aperitif. Fino needs to be drunk fresh, and preferably, if you have enough people in the house to consume it, in one go - just like you would a table wine

Next up was Oloroso del Puerto from Gutierrez Colosia. I've been a big fan of this producer since visiting them afew years back. The Bodega is on the banks of Guadalete rive, next to the Atlantic - I'm sure you can detect a distinct salty tang on in all their Sherry's, even the Oloroso and Amontillado. War, rich, nutty but with a good zip of acidity/saltyness this works as an aperitif, but also is quite foodie too - a really versatile wine. Dry, but with a wonderful lingering after-taste.

A splash went into toe Chicken roasting pan to deglaze it and we had THE best chicken gravy in ages - as voted by teen2, the gravy and roast potato connoisseur of our house!

 Too bad tomorrow is Monday....

Over the Christmas holidays (boy, does THAT seem like a long time ago now!) I bought a few different beers to try (I like good beer/ale almost as much as I like wine... just differently!). I thought I'd post my tasting comments here over the next few days.

So, Friday lunch time, as I was in the office all day sorting horrible paper-work and other domestic bliss items, seemed like a good time to try one of the new beers over lunch. First up, Morrissey Fox Blonde Ale

Home-made Minestrone soup was Thursday's supper (and very good it was - thanks Delia), so what remained from supper the night before filled the post-breakfast void. I'm nor normally a lunch eater when at home, but the weather lately makes you really look forward to something hot and tasty come lunch-time - ooeer, almost a pun there, depending on which of my friends reads this first...

Now, to the beer. It describes itself as a cross between an ale and a lager. I'm not a big lager fan, and certainly not the big commercial brands, although if done well they can be very good - Meantime Brewing make some great lagers, especially in the Pilsner-style, and nearer to home Cotswold Brewery Co. make a very good lager that is an excellent Summer thirst-quencher. 

For me, the beer was quite pale, lager coloured and with a pleasant if not exciting nose - slightly hoppy and a bit floral. On the palate it was surprisingly bitter I thought (other tasters have thought it wishy-washy, or words to that effect) - Pilsner-like, but not quite as balanced or tasty). It was a little laclustre for the very flavoursome, garlicky/tomatoey-ness of the Minestrone.

Morrissey Fox beers is a joint venture between Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey and Chef Richard Fox, and is also available as a cask ale their Pub Ye Olde Punch Bowl in the Yorkshire village of Marton Cum Grafton (what a great name!). The bottled beer is made under license by Marston's I believe, while the cask is made at the micro-brewery at he back of the Pub - and there are reports that the bottled beer and the cask stuff are very different, with the cask beer getting very good reviews and having an altogether better balance/flavour - perhaps worth an expedition to Yorkshire to find out for myself?

All in all I think this bottled version was OK-ish, but not really my cup-of-tea. It did come across as more bitter than a lot of other online reviews found when tasting it on its early realise - so maybe the bottled version recipe has been souped up since then? Bit lacking in flavour for me though, when all is said and don.

The making of this beer was made into a TV programme shown on C4 in the autumn of 2008 "Neil's Risky Business", which I haven't seen yet... sounds like it might be worth a watch.

 More beer reviews to follow...

Monday evening, first day back in the office after the holiday's for me, first day back on the radio at JackFM for Alison... kids back to school, decorations to come down, emails galore to answer. Last night saw more freezing temperatures and even a sprinkling of snow when we woke up. No doubt about it, red wine is needed.

Supper is sausage's and mash (with -5C forecast tonight we need big, tasty food to keep us warm!), and I really must catch up with wines on the tasting bench... so to put 2 ands2 together here tonight we are having what I hope will be a big-ish red from Bordeaux: Chateau Tour de Biot 2006.

It's a straight AC Bordeaux made by Gilles Gremen coming in at a very un-Bordeaux 13.5% alcohol. Quite smooth with nice juicy/ripe fruit. 'Dusty' blackcurrants and a hint of tobacco. Green-edged, but not unripe (more like leafy) fruit on the palate. Easy-going and pretty good. I'm not a huge fan of Bordeaux at this level as I'd prefer something from Spain or the New World at this price point, but this wine manages to do a good job in its class.

Why not write your own review/tasting note for this wine, or others you taste, via Snooth? We have!

Find out more about Snooth, the social networking site for wine.

Goldwater Sauvignon Blanc 2007 (SnoothRank: 4/5)
New Zealand > Marlborough (January 2009)
Intense pineapple nose with hints of pink grapefruit. Fresh and very fruity. Lovely balance on the palate with crisp acidity and bags of tropical ripe fruit - nectarines and pineapple, and just a touch of greeness. Lovely stuff and a great pre-dinner aperitif myRating 0/5

We have set up an account at wine social networking site Snooth, where we can share our tasting notes for wines with you - and you can do the same with us. Hopefully, in due course we will ahve all our wines listed on Snooth and you ca comment on them all there as you taste them.

 See you online at Snooth!

PS, I've also set up a personal account at Snooth under my own name - so you can see what non-surf4wine wines I'm drinking and tasting too!

.... Don't worry, I'm not about to bore you all with my New Year predictions / list of resolutions (but I do promise to be more punctual and better organised in 2009). However, looking at some of my favourite wine blogs over the last couple of days i did find a link on Jamie Goode's blog to the very witty and worth reading 2009 wine-world predictions of Doug Wregg over at Caves de Pyrenes. (See Jamie's 2009 predictions). Both are definitely worth a look.

Actually, one of my aims in 2009 is to take more photographs, and get round to publishing those i take. Hopefully this Blog will benefit, and they will be  be a Surf4Wine Flickr page soon. You can also check out my Facebook page for pics. Anyway, watch this space...