The peregrine falcons nesting on a ledge at the top of Charing Cross Hospital laid three eggs this year but only one hatched, on 27th April. They have little privacy as there are two webcams – one inside their nesting box and one above the ledge.
Their domestic activities are recorded daily on Facebook and the chick is growing up fast. Last year there were three chicks and they fledged in June.
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. The red dot marks where the face masks we bought are made. They cost around £12 each so I haven’t used one yet. Yesterday I went to lunch at a large table outdoors with a friend. This is what we drank (two bottles, since you ask).
Blind tasting I thought it might be an Italian red. Geographically I was close but I would never have known the grape. Jancis Robinson knows more about this than me so over to Jancis.
“Most unusually, this gorgeous Greek red has won consistently enthusiastic tasting notes for every single vintage, from 2011 to 2017, a run of 16.5s out of 20 with 17 for the 2016 and, as you can see above, it’s a great price, in that sweet spot between dirt cheap and priced-to-position-the-brand.
The Thymiopoulos family have been growing Xinomavro, the trademark grape of the highly regarded Náoussa zone in the far north of Greece for generations. Currently in charge of the estate in the southern tip of the zone on the slopes of Mount Vermio, is 40-year-old Apostolos, who, after oenological training in Athens, established the unglamorous winery in 2003. They make a particularly long-lived rosé and more ambitious oaked reds of which the most expensive is called Earth and Sky in English. The full-throated rosé is definitely worth seeking out but the unoaked young-vine red is the bargain.
What I like about this wine is its beguiling (but not simple) raspberry fruit on the nose and front palate and then the way it finishes with a slightly astringent note of cinders. It’s not unlike Nebbiolo in build. Jeunes Vignes clearly has quite a bit of ageing potential although it’s a young(er)-vine cuvée. This, by the way, is one of those reds you could drink with or without food, and I’d serve it relatively cool but not chilled.“
We drank it cool, but on a sunlit Sunday afternoon the second bottle was a little warmer and was not the better for it. To digress, it may be worth pondering why, as our fragile planet warms, England can now make quite good wine but somewhere so prodigiously hot as Greece can start making good wine too. There wasn’t much good Greek wine when I sailed those waters back in the 90s with Cap’n Bill although we did copious tastings. Here’s enough slurp.