The Wines We Drink!!

One of the internal chat groups at Vinum Fine Wines goes by the name of ‘The Wines We Drink’.

There may be a slight misconception that employees of a fine wine trading house such as Vinum are normally found to be sipping Salon, mainlining Mouton or larging it up on Leroy. This is not exactly the case. Sure, we get to taste a decent amount of the good stuff, but as for drinking this calibre of wine on a regular basis, forget about it – hence the title of the group.

It’s a place where we share our more interesting wine drinking experiences and have a bit of fun, as after all, life is not just about being the very best wine merchants in the world, ALL of the time! There are plenty of jokes about cans of Fosters with Chris Kelly and various references to Aldi’s finest range, or is that Tesco’s?

Anyway, the group had been quiet recently but then our in-house MW (Master of Wine), Matthew Hemming MW, posted! When the MW posts (especially about something we can afford) we sit up and take notice. It was Roberto Conterno’s Gattinara ’17. His words were: “this was absolutely banging last night. Really beautiful, pure and dusky fruit with powdery / chalky tannin. No rush but drinking really well.” Then he said something about screwing up the curry (do MWs really drink Nebbiolo with Rendang??).

This prompted a reply from CEO Lee Crymble to say the ’20 was drinking beautifully the other night.

This is all good intel!

Since then, we’ve had a couple more; one from Miles Davis with some double mags of Segla ’14, provided for a birthday party that were particularly well received (after appearing a little tight on opening) and punching well above their (cost) weight.

And two top rated Oregon wines, Tony Cody enjoyed with a client – not strictly abiding by the rules of the group (although none were ever discussed).

All elegance and a crazy Chambolle-esque nose from the impressive Antica Terra 2019 “Ceras”.

And 2016 VGW chardonnay showed extremely well too – has aged beautifully, again very elegant and balanced. A superb US pair!

We will keep you posted on other wines we drink, from time to time, and maybe some lager tips too!

Team Vinum

P.S. Matthew the MW also goes by the name of red_wine_baron on Insta, so look out for him there!