Dry Marc-tini

I originally set up this blog as an online aide-memoire and took the view that if anyone else cared to read it that would be lovely, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they didn't, as premier cru burgundy is fairly niche as hobbies go, and me wittering on about whether G gave something a score of 9 out of 10 while I only gave it 8 would be of little interest to anyone except ourselves and perhaps our favourite wine merchant.

However earlier today I was messing about on here and belatedly came across a page which shows me my blog stats, including which posts have been most viewed. I was quite taken aback as the most popular entries have been the two about gin, so much for a blog about burgundy!

Anyway, it's good timing as we did a Wine Society order this week and a bottle of Blackwood's 2007 was amongst the goodies procured. I've alluded to this before but my previous bottle was pre-blog, so I feel it deserves a proper entry and as I've spent the day tidying up and cleaning, I felt I could justify a marc-tini this evening which is like a dry martini but with a smidgeon of finest old marc de bourgogne instead of vermouth.

From the Blackwoods website: "We make Blackwood's Vintage Dry Gin with hand-harvested Shetland botanicals. Local crofters harvest our Shetland botanicals each summer, roughly between June and September (depends when summer comes, and whether it's warm and dry like 2003 or cool and wet and windy like 2005) in proportions that do not disturb the fragile local habitat. We have a sustainable harvesting programme to ensure harmony with Shetland's unspoilt environment. The sustainable sourcing and harvesting was developed with us by Highland Natural Products, FWAG and the Orkney Agronomy College. The plants are brought down to the mainland of Scotland to be gently small-batch distilled. Blackwood's is truly the essence of Shetland, and the world's only handpicked gin."

Gosh, who would have thought there was an Agronomy College on Orkney eh? As for FWAG, that stands for the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, for those of you not up on your agricultural acronyms (um, which included me until I looked it up just now). The whole thing sounds terribly worthy and environmentally-friendly and very much a Good Thing.

I've just found out that, yet again, the Wine Society is a dreadful rip-off, as I paid a yuppie wanker price of £19 for it, but Googling just now has revealed that I could in fact have got it from Majestic for £16. Grrr! This sort of thing seems to happen rather frequently with the Wine Society, which is very irritating as it's supposed to be a co-operative and so one would assume it would be competitive as there should be no profit margin, but no. It's this kind of behaviour that gives socialism a bad name... take note, Red Ed.

Back to the marctini, which is excellent. I don't have the vocab to explain what is so good about the Blackwood's, but I just find it very smooth and harmonious. It's 40% alcohol too, none of your pesky watered-down 37.5% Gordons crap here. It does however come in a strange rather bulbous bottle with a cool picture of a Viking boat on it, which cunningly disguises the fact that it's only 70cl, as was the Sipsmith incidentally.

I'm eating a handful of Waitrose Lucques olives alongside, having had some of G's earlier in the week. I can't claim to be much of an olive expert but these are seriously good and compliment the marctini perfectly. Recommended.