Shortieweb

It's 9am. I'm sitting in front of the rad with a cuppa char, courtesy of all you wonderful guys that brought it over, and my feet are bloody freezing cold! The weather caster is telling me it is 14 degs outside. It is not! I suppose that it is around 3 or 4 degs but it has a real chilli realfeel this morning and I'm not used to it.
We are now in the middle of what is our winter and can expect some cold snaps, but it was T-Shirt warm in the sun yesterday afternoon, but the warmth doesn't last long this time of year.
We had the first meeting of the Village Wine Wobblers Club Thursday. Not a massive turn out, but the first ones never are. The main thing is that the core of the members in the area turned up, but never mind that, what a laugh. It was exactly what it should have been. Plenty of banter, laughing and of course! wine tasting. It surprised me, the quality of the wines and I've been trying them for some years, but obviously some of the locals have been keeping these delights for themselves. This event seemed to encourage the proud owners to show off their special tipples and we sure appreciate that. It was a great effort by landlord Nick of Scandals who hosted the first tasting and made a great effort supplying at least 5 Village wines from different sources. A few other wines were provided by members themselves. We ask host bar owners to charge a corkage of 1 euro a glass for each glass of wine provided by our members. Well! they must make something. Our first host was in agreement.
We are no experts and there was no sniffing the glasses, swilling in the mouth and spitting this stuff into a bucket!! we just gulped the stuff down! We can honestly say, on this day there was not one bad wine albeit, some better than others.

These two wines were my favourite of the afternoon, but we haven't held the scoring yet so it is only my opinion at this point. On the left,  TREE TOPPLER would be the wine I could enjoy anytime! and lots of it. Medium strength for a village wine, I would estimate around 14% but goes down really well. The wine got it's name from Vasilli the brewer. He had had a little wine refreshment whilst picking his Olives (as you do) and fell out of the tree as a result! A beautiful Rose wine and the colour makes you want to drink it never mind the flavour. Next, on the right is PHILLIPO'S WINTER WARMER, supplied by the owner of Domi. A really heavy Levco but when you taste it, what a surprise! it has a warmth brought to the glass with the flavours of Cloves and Cinamon, it's fantastic, however, it is one of those drinks that 1 or 2 would satisfy before moving on to another, or even just as a nightcap.

For me the best red of the day, and an excellent red it was, again a medium strength, was given to Lesley by the people living behing them at Zante Gardens and so adopted the name LESLEY'S REAR (You can imagine the cracks about drinking this one! Ohh! there goes another!! Cracks!! AAHH) but the couple of bottles supplied of this were polished very efficiently and a drink that you could session upon. On the right, WHOLE LOTTA ROSE. Really nice chilled wine, ideal for a summers day again medium strength, but quite a light flavour.
We also tried a Rose that thought it was a Red called CONFUSED we drank it warm but next time out we decided to try it chilled although it is a really dark Rose. The strongest of the afternoon was a deep Red, PANIOTTI'S PARAFINALIA. You could smell the strength as soon as Nick opened the bottle!! If you like it strong this is the one for you. I would call it a sipping wine. Medium sweet -  dry and packed with flavour, wouldn't like to guess the strength of this.
Amongst others we had a red called PORK PIE EYED quite dry but smooth, the only white of the afternoon, and last but no way least, LOVELY JUBBLY Med - dry, fruity white, not your average village plonk.
As you can imagine it was quite a boozy afternoon and as we want it, all kept in great spirit, each afternoon should just be a friendly, merry gathering.
Next year we are going to try to encourage Brits to brew some real ales for the tasting of! If you live here and are interested, I can source most, if not all of the ingredients so let me know. I featured this week my real ginger beer, coming in at around 4% but only brought a taster so we kept drinking it in shots. I will bring enough for everyone to have a glassful next time as it went down really well.

The rest is a blur!! No seriously we finished off the afternoon, by then the evening by going to Katastari for a takeout Gyros. Now I'm not a fan of Gyros. Don't get me wrong, I like the elements of it, I love the meat, I like Chips, don't mind the bread and like the salad, but for some reason I don't like it all together, especially smothered in Tzatziki.
I had a life changing experience getting a takeout Gyros from THE VILLAGE, owned by Giannis Baco. STUNNING!!. The best Gyros meat I have ever tasted, real homemade chips and just the right amount of Tzatziki so as not to kill all the other flavours. I'll be back. You must try it!
Whilst on the subject, Giannis rival Taverna in Katastari has new owners. The family of Mario the Gas Guy now owns this place. It was always good here but I have to say, eaten there twice now, food, absolutley lovely and great value for money. We will be having a wine tasting there soon, so come along and kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

Anyway, if you are about, listen in on the radion today and say hi on the chatroom. i'm on every Saturday 2pm - 4pm Greek time 12 - 2pm UK time. See you then.
(Just click on the Island FM page to the left then click the big red button to listen)

Shortie.xx