Sunday's tipple

Sunday's tipple was another red from Waitrose, taken with an English shoulder of lamb, foreign to the extent of shoving some slivers of garlic under the skin before starting the roast. Served with boiled rice and boiled cabbage.

The (red) wine was fine and was described as a Gigondas from Blason du Rhône, with the bottler, EMB84037T, going to the bother of getting the first bit stamped on the bottle. It is not just Waitrose that sell the stuff so it is not an invention of the Waitrose marketing people, but even Google failed to find more than a suggestion from a wine shop that the brand was owned by some middle man - négociant as they say in France - who bought up his raw materials from all over. So what we ought to have is a reliable blended product. With the bit that is not very reliable being the choice of wine that Waitrose happen to carry on any particular day.

Google also turned up the wine web site at reference 1, but not a blason in sight.

The lamb was fine too, doing Sunday, Monday and half of today, Tuesday. Where by half I mean that there was not really enough, so we took what there was with a green salad after a spot of lentil and bacon soup. All very good.

And despite the ample lunch on Sunday we still managed Scrabble later in the afternoon, with our joint score just breaking the 500 barrier. A while now since we made 550. And there was probably a modest amount of cheating in getting to the 500, cheating in the form of checking whether a word was in the dictionary before the event rather than after the event. BH very tolerant in such matters, unlike FIL, who was a stickler for his understanding of the rules. He liked to win.

PS: I will be glad when this hot spell is over - having now learned why people in southern Europe conk out for most of the afternoon. When it certainly seems to be hottest here in Epsom. When it not so clever that my study windows face south and west and catch whatever sun is going.

Reference 1: https://vinous.com/articles/2016-gigondas-a-slam-dunk-aug-2018.