Carte blanche to buy Pinot Noir

IWAS hoping they’d vote to delay Brexit, not because I’m a remoaner but because it’ll give me more time to stockpile wine and coffee.

The news this week, well random tweet, suggesting we might run out of the two things that make life worth living thanks to Brexit has left me somewhat shaken.

So much so, I could do with a drink to calm my nerves, assuming I can still find one on the shelves after an outbreak of Brexit inspired panic buying. This is project fear people and it has me worried.

When it comes to coffee, I go to bed at night thinking about my morning hit. The morning din of the burr grinder heralds a new day which I wouldn’t fancy facing if I didn’t have my daily fix. It’s a noise, mind you, no one else seems to enjoy for reasons I have yet to fathom.

I’d sooner give up meat than coffee. That first sip, the slurp as you inhale the aroma then the flavoursome brew, lord, I just don’t know where I’d be without it. Committed quite possibly.

The same goes for wine, though it’s like a kind of other side of the same coin which is the currency needed to pay for life with a smile. The steeply ascending pleasure curve that comes with a glass of decent vino, that melting away of the week’s stress with each sip (within Government guidelines of course) cannot be underestimated.

Hopefully, it’s all lies and you won’t need an income like Jacob Rees-mogg to afford a wee bottle of a weekend come the end of the year, or when ever we fall off the cliff.

To steady my nerves at this potentially catastrophic turn of events, I poured a glass of Chilean Pinot Noir. That aroma of forest floor, the brambly fruit, the underlying slate minerality and all with a delicate, floral, violet I’d say, touch is what makes Pinot such a universally admired grape. There’s a kind of animal hide thing going on too

sometimes, which is the kind of description that might well do more harm than tariffs. But, I like it. It’s an earthiness, a flavour profile that’s way more than fruit that makes Pinot Noir a drink you can’t help but ponder.

It’s a grape nearly as difficult to get right as an orderly Brexit, but when the climate’s right, the terroir’s right and the producer knows what they’re at it can be sublime.

Try one of these, and if I were you I’d get a few bottles in.