You can email jus@poggioargentiera.com to order.

It’s never been a simple wine , either conceptually or in the making, but we haven’t wobbled from the original idea of a tremendously powerful V8 red, that purrs like a sleeping lion. Quite a lot to fit into a bottle, but we had a shot anyway. The blend of Alicante, a grape we have loved from the start for it’s colour and complexity, Shiraz and Cab.  franc, for it’s filet steak qualities, really does pack a punch.

So thank you, panel of judges, we are chuffed.

Now all we need is to win the Biggest Conker Competition at school…..

The Somerset Wine Tasting Group tasting Poggio Argentiera wines

Once again, we understood the relative obscurity of Maremma outside Italy, but, 50 down, couple of billion ro so to go. It’s a start. And again, little old Lalicante, ooooh don’tcha just love it, gave everyone something memorable with which to round off the evening.

Justine of Poggio Argentiera and Hugh of Somerset Wine Tasting Group

Thanks to Hugh,Bill and all who made us so welcome.

Now then, what mean we by ‘pub’? Brewery chain with 2-for-10 meals, swirly carpet and Kidz Zone Fun Menu? Gastropub with bleached pine tables, seared tuna and frightening brushed chrome light fittings in the loo? Blackboard-infested karaoke/quiz/Sky Sports/Abba tribute band/Tibetan yak pie nite gaff with 2 customers (one deceased).

No, my Lovelies, we mean The George. Even the name of it is as it should be. The George Inn at Croscombe, between Wells and Shepton Mallet, run with love and aplomb by Peter and Veryan Graham. Stone floor, incumbent dog, roaring fires, good beer, local people, big chunks of steak in a pie. THIS is where Tolkien would have sent Hobbits.

Just had a super evening there, where we presented a couple of our wines to some of Peter’s B&B-owning friends,along with Ed Hay from Mendip Bottle, who also presented some of his list. A glugging-good time had by all, I think.

Thanks then, to Peter, for being a model publican – friendly, rooted to the local place, people and produce, and safe…safe because, a publican who undertands that his customers want good, really good, food, beer and wine, in a chunky warm room with no muzak, (and a sleepy dog), is a publican who will still be pulling George the Thirst beer long after all the yaks are extinct.

Quality, as a production target and marketing pick ‘n’ mix term, is about to become passe. Illy coffee no longer claim to make ‘quality’ coffee: now it’s ‘perfect’. That’s great, but they’re going to need a particularly deep thesaurus to dig into when Nescafe start with the same claim. We shall all be rushing out to buy Coffee Next to Godliness. Or maybe not, Godliness being so unfashionable in this country at the moment. Better make it a woolly-minded liberal pc coffee instead.

when I was a teeny-tiny marketeer I was spoon-fed Kotler, the staple diet of any 1980’s Marketing baby. I liked it, and even today am just as partial to the Main Man of Marketing as I am to a Farley’s rusk. And as he says today, ”marketing changes“.  Here at Podge Arge, we make wine. We make it for a variety of reasons, not least because we like to , but mostly, let’s be honest, we make wine to sell it so we can pay the mortgage and buy Farley’s rusks to feed the baby with.

And continuing to be honest, we think honesty pays, that honesty, in this ever increasingly transparent world, is something that people want, and that marketing was, is, and will always be , the creation and the selling of a want, for a profit. Before, people made wine because other people liked drinking it and were happy to pay for it. It wasn’t hard to set a price that the drinker was happy to pay, and which created enough profit for the winemaker to live on. Now, the number of producers, wines, prices, qualities, points of sale, blah , blah, are VAST, and the drinker is overwhelmed. Somewhere in his DNA, his wine gene is crying freedom and wanting to get back to the days when he could get a drop of vino from this chap he knew.

So what we are moving towards is selling honesty: kind of , ‘buy a bottle of honesty and get the wine for free’. This is our philosophy. And this, is where we start….if you’re a blogger, or a wine-siter, (or even if you’re not, ’cause we’re not that pedantic), we want you to to help to make an Honest Wine Guide for Poggio Argentiera. We’re asking you to accept delivery (no catch, we pay) of cellar samples, give them a good glug, and tell us what you think, good or bad.  (Actually, you don;’t even have to tell us what you think, but given that getting your opinion is The Point, we’d really like it if you did). Whatever you think, good or bad, will be published in a review section of the site…because we want your honesty to help other people choose what to buy.

At the mo, this is an Italy only thing, but we have Plans, and anyway, if you are beggingly desperate we might be able to sort something out, even if it’s at a later date. Chin chin.

What’s this all about then? No one really thinks that a healthy meal can be made for 50p (or less)  - providing quality meat or fish with vegetables, pasta, fruit and dairy. How do you feed a 14 year old boy for 68p? Well you can’t. And with the soaring cost of ingredients, it can only get worse, although only marginally, (a bit less turkey-scraping for your money).

When children are in school, the school has a duty to behave in loco parentis. It’s true that many parents fail to do that themselves, and feed their children more of the same when they get home, but the school has to be the arena for change because it has a captive audience. If the children are kept in school at lunchtime and school lunches are mandatory for all, then the scene is set for them to eat what there is. At least they’re getting one decent meal that way, and can’t do lunchbox oneupmanship or mock those on free meals.

My two elder children are fed every day by CAMST, the national kitchens which provide for schools, hospitals and so on. Now it’s difficult to compare UK spend with Italy spend because the logistical set ups are so very different, but suffice to say I spend 5.3 euros on lunch for a primary school child. That’s about 4 pounds. In the UK , the spend to put the meal on the table is about 1.60p. What does 5.3euros get? Well, just taking today as an example, they had pasta with baby clams, sauteed spinach, mozzarella and ham, yogurt, a plum , bread and water. All knocked up in a centralised kitchen, packed into insulated boxes, and whizzed to the school in a little van by a nice lady in a white cap. No, it’s not cheap, yes, I could do a packed lunch for a lot less, but why should I expect it to be cheap, (a sourced, cooked, delivered quality meal for 4 quid!), and aren’t my children being taught proper food lessons here, that plums and spinach aren’t adults’ food or wierd food or yuk food…that food is a democratic, social entity and at lunch time we all sit at the table together and eat the same, and we don’t pick bits out and we don’t put ketchup on it and it’s recognisable as something that once grew. 

Yes, this is a country where mothers have an attack of the vapours if little Luigi hasn’t eaten for two hours (Italian bambini are getting fatter too, but for a different mix of reasons than their northern European counterparts), but the fundamental difference between the UK and Italy is that the UK processes food and Italy simply cooks it. I bet 99% of Italian kids wouldn’t know a Turkey Twizzler if it was choking them, and 99% of British kids think food comes from the freezer or microwave. What children eat matters here – it should matter in the UK. 

It’s funny, in the UK they’re zealously strapped into their car-seats eating monosodium glutamate and in Italy they’re riding on the car roof eating tomato salad.