The sun finally came out at the weekend (okay, just Saturday). Tooting Bec Lido was glorious. At 12.5 degrees of Celsius, the water was still a bit parky. Parky but do-able. Providing you could manage a length: body temperature could be raised enough to maintain an active non-frozen chicken-like status.
My profoundly unfit status is in the process of changing. Kirsty will not be taking a whale on vacation with her, come August.
By sheer fluke, I 've come across a really amazing Cote Rotie producer. Domaine Levet don't go for single vineyard wines or more modern, blockbuster fruity styles. They seem to be producing a very old style of the Northern Rhone classic.
Winemakers used to concentrate on representing all of their vineyards in the final blends. That way you would have the tannic Cote Brune Syrah blended with, say, softer, more perfumed stuff from the Cote Blonde. Some people believe that this was the truest expression of Cote Rotie terroir.
Commercially, 'old timer' Cote Rotie was not dramatically successful. There was actually more money in growing apricot than grapes for many years around the 1970s. It was not until people like Guigal started making his single vineyard 'icon' wines (so beloved of Robert Parker) that people really started giving the region the attention that it deserved.
The newly found public taste for 'modern' Cote Rotie encouraged many growers to grub up their old uncloned Serine (Syrah) vines and use more productive, fashionable versions of the grape. Gradually, many wine makers got further and further from what the original wines were all about. Finesse, from what I can work out.
There's a UK company called AB Vintners who are selling the Levet wines. They have been kind enough to let me order a bottle each of the two top blends (Maestria and Peroline) when the 2005s arrive. Hurragh!
You're doing some kind of job. It involves a starting and opening ritual. This could be opening/closing a shop, signing in at a school you're working at or maybe just biding time in an office.
There's a whole stack of things that you've done between the signing in/signing out, closing the shop door/opening the shop door or whatever. Nevertheless, your mind tells you that it only seems like ten seconds ago you were just repeating the same action. "Arrgh! My life has become a sequence of repeats. Is this the living equivalent of daytime TV?"
Of course, after a while you start to calm down a bit. You tell yourself that it was just tiredness and that all is not so bad. Two cups of tea and a hug later at home and normal mental service has been resumed; at least temporarily.
It is only when leaving the house on the following day that a stark fact suddenly hits you like a leaden weight wet fish. At six or so strategic points on your journey, you will meet the same people at the same points on your route at the same time that you always do. Oh and how you look forward/resent/despise seeing them. There is only limited contentment to be had in the knowledge that they probably feel the same about you.
