So, after a couple of years barely related preambles, shaggy dog stories, niche pop culture references and even occasionally some talk of beer the time has come to say goodbye from The Good Spirits Wine & Beer. Thanks for allowing us (me, mainly) to ramble on. Sorry for using the word ‘mouthfeel’ on occasion and for leaning rather too heavily on ‘tropical’ as a descriptor, I should have had a thesaurus to hand more often.
I would imagine that many of you reading this (if indeed there are many of you reading it at all) haven’t noticed, but this column is written by different people at different times.
So, here we are. Nestled in that hazy, overstuffed period between Christmas and New Year, feeling a little sleepy, barely able to move. As physical movement is far beyond the realms of possibility the only exercise I can consider is a quick run back through memories of the year in beer. Now, none of us in the shop are great users of apps or detailed databases to keep on top of what we have been drinking - I’m more likely to come home with a pocket full of crumpled receipts with tasting notes on the back – so you’ll have to forgive any glaring omissions. Feel free to let me know if you feel like I have unduly forgotten something.
Whether you’re looking for a gift to impress, something to share with loved ones, or you just have a little more time to yourself over the festive season in which to enjoy some extra beer, hopefully you’ll find something suitable in the five bigger bottles below.
At this time of year we’re probably asked more than ever where our Whisky is, and the answer is ‘just around the corner and down the second set of stairs’…
You may be surprised to read this, but occasionally I actually have a plan, stock permitting, for what beers I want to take a look at in the weeks ahead, and I fear that between next week and the turn of the new year both my mind and yours will be caught in an increasingly festive fug. So, before that inevitable onslaught I thought I would take this opportunity to simply suggest some tasty things without any specific agenda. Lets both enjoy this moment while it lasts.
Sometimes I spend hours labouring over a suitable preamble on which to hang my round up of five favourites for the week and other times I find myself so overly effusive in my tasting notes that I barely leave myself a chance to say hello. This week definitely falls into the latter camp so without further ado I give you four firm favourites and a short but thoroughly enjoyable detour into Cider country.
I was keen to see some fireworks on Sunday night, but as a southsider I didn’t fancy the traipse to Glasgow Green, so instead chose to climb to the top of Queen's Park for good view across the city. That meant that, as well as the supposed main event I also got to see various smaller shows from back gardens and – the star of the evening for me and almost everyone else up next to the flagpole – a series of smaller but very much perfectly formed explosions from a local pyrotechnician.
For those of you who have been taking part in ‘Sober October’, well done and welcome back. For the rest of you, hello again and welcome to yet another exciting edition of ‘Wright’s Wide World Of Wondrous… Beers’, as absolutely nobody is calling it. Do you know how long I tried to think of a suitably alliterative word for ‘beers’ there? Far too long, I can tell you. If only I was talking about wine, then the whole thing might catch on.
As is undoubtedly clear by now I spend a great deal of time considering the best possible beers to showcase every week and then spend an age – sometimes upwards of a minute – nailing my review so as to give you the best possible insight into why they are worthy of your time. This week however I found myself positively paralysed with choice over just one small piece of the puzzle and that was the photograph up there. Now, I can’t pretend that the photo itself is my handiwork, I have far more talented colleagues who take care of that and make sure that it’s in focus and that labels are all round the right way, but I do have to decide on the order that they should go in and this week I really struggled with something which was both pleasing to the eye and roughly the order I would suggest that you drink them in if you happened to like the sound of every single one. In the end I decided to slightly eschew aesthetics, I hope you can forgive me.
