Samples

Apologies for what has been, even by my standards, an extended absence. I accidentally opened a restaurant. Yes, I was drunk when I said I was going to get involved. Yes, I did swear I'd never work in restaurants again. And yes, I'm loving it.
So, Peckham Bazaar, my new venture, is built around the cooking of my friend and now business partner John Gionleka; Albanian by birth and possessed of a deep love and affinity for all things Balkan and near Eastern. This has influenced the cooking in a profound way, so we're now serving a weekly changing menu of Balkan and near Eastern accented dishes cooked mostly on an open charcoal grill. So now we get to wine. Obviously, as it's a place I'm running, I get to decide what wines we're going to be serving, and with this in mind I decided to match John's influences and focus (read restrict) my wines on the Eastern Mediterranean (with occasional forays inland). So, this has meant that I'm now in the process of trying to learn as much as possible in as short a time as possible about Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, Turkey, Israel, Bulgaria and the Lebanon. I'll be honest, it's fucking brilliant. It reminds me of starting out with wine, poring over maps of France and Spain, trying to mentally place regions and tastes within a somewhat empty conceptual map of the territory. So, yes, I'm back at that again, scouring maps (printed off from Jancis, obvs.) of Greece looking for Drama, Pangeon (surely Pangeon is like VDT and applicable everywhere?) and all the other previously overlooked regions.
Any way I digress. I was going to write about the best word in the English language. Sample. Obviously, if you're an haematologist, or work in genitourinary medicine you may have different views regarding samples, but I fucking love them. They make their way home with me, clinking in my bag like musical triangles of joy, each one possessed of the potential to wow, each one something I've almost certainly not tasted before, and, each one carrying with them a faint glow of left over hope from the merchant for whom they're really vinous lures, each one a different line with which to tempt me, the fish (I like to think I'm a noble brown trout), to bite.

To whit; I'm back tasting things properly again, I'm writing notes, I'm reading books, I'm sticking maps on my wall (actually a cast iron guarantee that I'll never actually look at said map again) and generally throwing myself wholeheartedly at the task of putting together the most awesome Eastern Mediterranean wine list in Peckham.

p.s. I intend to follow this with pieces on producers, their wines and other more prosaic issues.
p.p.s I may also rant about people with children not spending anywhere near enough money in my restaurant whilst torturing my hangover strained mental capacities.