The Friday 5 #139
What to buy from Majestic, my new winelist, dips and dunking and news of the next tastings.
Life was supposed to slow down once I gave up the Guardian but it seems to be busier than ever.
I spent three days hurtling around London this week, including drinking Georgian wine at a Japanese restaurant, trying out my favourite AF drink brand Botivo’s new collab with Ottolenghi, going to the book launch of my friend Judy Joo’s new Korean cookbook K Quick and attending the launch of a Filipino pop-up at ‘my’ hotel The Pilgrm (or rather the hotel where I’m the Wine-Writer-in-Residence. My best job ever!)
As the hotel doesn’t have a restaurant as such (the pop-up which is called Luto will be in their bar/lounge in the evenings from Wednesday to Saturday for the next 3 months) we went for a short wine list, all of which - except the champagne - is available by the glass.
(I liked the idea you could take a bottle of champagne up to your room but there’s a gorgeously summery Austrian sparkling rosé if you just want a glass of fizz!)
Talking of fizz I thought we might make pet nat (pétillant naturel) and other less common sparkling wines the subject of the next online tasting as there have been quite a few unusual bottles at the spring tastings this year.
Sunday evening seems to be a popular time - hopefully most of you are back from the weekend by then - so I’ve gone for 7pm BST on June 8th for the next one and the same time on July 6th for the one after that which will be all about orange wine. (Grappling with wine lists was another suggested topic but I thought we might leave that till the autumn.)
Other subjects this week:
I’ve done a big round-up of the best buys at Majestic
The snack you need to head to Fortnums for
A salad you could - and should - eat with your hands
How to jazz up a dip (Note - it’s all about plates rather than bowls these days)
And yet another delicious thing to do with asparagus
Oh, and if you’re a paid subscriber and missed it you might enjoy my article on Living Together Apart which has resonated with a lot of you.
I can heartily recommend it. LAT, that is, rather than the article though that too 😉
What to buy from Majestic right now