Smart Thinking: Grab another Thresher's Wine Bargain

The Thresher's 40% discount wine offer is back on again - for one week only.

For those of you who missed it first time around, the original incarnation was a scheme dreamt up by Hugh MacLeod and his business partners at Stormhoek Wines. Simple idea: download a pdf voucher, take it into your local branch of Thresher's, get 40% off their entire wine range. Which really adds up if you're stocking up on £15 bottles of Chateau Neuf du Pape as a yuletide treat, I can tell you.

The rest is recent history: the voucher went viral, the media went into a frenzy - although a lot of papers and news progs for some reason insisted on reporting it as an 'error'; presumably they couldn't quite believe that anything doing so much good for all concerned could be planned and deliberate - and Thresher's reported that they'd notched up £15m in additional sales as well as clearing a lot of stock from their warehouse in the process.

And now it's back. As posted by Hugh last night on his gapingvoid blog, for a limited time only in the run up to Easter you can download the new voucher from the Stormhoek website, then march into your local Thresher's and get your 40% off all wines (champagne, sparkling and fortified wines excepted).

Jo and I will be going tonight on the way home from the gym, before they run out of Stormhoek Pinotage 2005, which is bloody marvellous stuff - goes with everything from a chicken shashlik to half a bar of Green & Black's dark & mint (and believe me, we've experimented with a fair few combinations...)

Edit 23.03.07: Did indeed call in to Thresher's on the way home last night. Sidled up to the counter and showed the chap behind the till the new voucher: "Are you taking... these?" I enquired. To which he replied:

"Oh, God, not again..."

Turns out this poor sod still bears the scars of the Xmas frenzy when, so he told me, he ended up holding the fort all-but single handed. "I'm not bloody going through that again..." he muttered as he picked up the phone to ring someone higher-up and check that the horrible rumours were true and that yes, indeed, that bastard MacLeod was about to ruin his life all over again...

I tried to win him over. "Hey, it's only for a week. And didn't Thresher's make an extra £15m in sales last time?"

"Oh, Aye!" this laced with an unspoken, yet quite distinct dose of 'yeah, but guess how much of it ended up in my pocket as a result, and after all the grief that I had to go through...'

His colleague who wandered in from the stock room at that point, seemed more sanguine about the whole thing when challenged about the return of voucher hell "Yeah, there was something about that on the memos for today." But then he tried to persuade me that their usual 'buy two, get one free' was actually a better deal. Immune to my counter-proposal that 33% off wasn't actually better than 40% off, he was on the verge of running through the calculations when I fled with my half dozen bottles of Stormhoek Shiraz (they didn't have the Pinotage, but the Shiraz is gorgeous so I was very happy indeed...)

"You'll need some more of these, I've cleaned the shelf out..." was my parting shot.

"Oh, Aye..."

I wonder. Is it a case of one staff member with a less-than-sunny disposition and bad memories of last time (the vouchers, the horrible vouchers!), or will Hugh's new deal not be quite as well-received by the front-line bottle-slingers as it will by the profit-counters at Head Office? A case of the joy not being spread far enough, goodwill bonus-wise, or just the usual "retail sucks, my job is crap, I wish I was dead" issues that you get almost everywhere..? Should Thresher's spend more time educating their staff on the joys of viral marketing, or should the guys and gals behind the counter just suck it up and get the heck on with it for the Good of the Company and, dammit, because it's their job to sell more wine?

Whatever. I'm six bottles of rather excellent wine at a very reasonable price to the good. My weekend's definitely looking up... :)

March 22, 2007 | Filed Under Drink, Marketing | 8 Comments

Long weekend in Northern Ireland

Jo and I have spent the last three days in the always wonderful company of our very good friends Paul and Marie, as guests in their lovely home on the east coast of Northern Ireland.

The ancient province of Ulster is where you'll find of the most gloriously wild and unspoilt coastland in the UK. The more commonly tourist-trodden Giant's Causeway has been largely tamed, but is still quite literally breath-taking, particularly on a typically wind-swept spring day. Paul and Marie live a fair bit further south, where there are far fewer tourists, which means fewer cars, car-parks, visitor centres and litter-bins to mar the landscape.

They do get an awful lot of rain and wind though, and both Friday and Sunday were typical for the time of year: grey, lowering skies with squalls sweeping in from the Irish Sea and rattling the roof tiles. So we stayed in, enjoyed home-cooked chiken korma, chilli con carne and bacon & mushroom frittata, drank bottled Guinness and the Whitewater Brewery's Belfast Ale (thanks to Ed for the recommendation, Paul and I really enjoyed it), sipped snifters of Laphroig cask strength and played poker and Uno when we weren't whiling away the hours in conversation.

But on Saturday the weather lifted and the sun shone through, so we took the opportunity to go for a trek up along the coast for a couple of miles, following a short section of the Ulster Way. Here are a few snapshots I took with my old and un-fancy Fuji Finepix A203:

That water is a fair bit colder than it looks

They don't call it the Emerald Isle for nothing...

Quite lovely, no?

And of course, our destination was a fantastic country pub, where I enjoyed a remarkably fine sirloin steak (Jo had the lemon sole), washed down by a couple of delicious pints of Guinness. Have you noticed how they always taste better after a decent amount of exercise? Must be the lower guilt-content...

Ahhhh... Northern Ireland. Highly recommended.

March 5, 2007 | Filed Under Drink, Food, Life, Photography | 2 Comments

Blogwatch: Dr Whisky

My mention of good malt whisky in my last post put me in mind of a link I was sent the other week. My Belfast-based pal Ed Ashby - as part of his quite blatant and deliberately evil scheme to give me far more good stuff to read than I could possibly have time for - sent me a link to the blog of a certain Dr Whisky.

This chap - a stout fellow by the name of Sam Simmons - has made it his mission, since the turn of the year, to sample every single one of the bottles in his quite considerably well-stocked liquor cabinet and then report back with tasting notes, thoughts, musings and recommendations for further research, should his audience feel the urge (and who wouldn't..?)

As I type this, he's up to week #8 and bottle #40, with another fortnight's worth to go (apparently someone at the Royal Mile Whisky shop in Edinburgh - well worth a visit, take it from me - spotted his blog and started sending him sample bottles to write about). Ten weeks of drinking whisky twice a day, every weekday, and all to keep his blog readers updated, informed and never more than semi-sober? Now that's what I call dedication to duty! (It's a dirty job, etc.)

But seriously, his tasting notes are well thought-out and readable, without being too heavy on the purple prose descriptions. Furthermore, the good Doctor is also providing a potted history of each single malt or blend he samples, and on the weekends is providing longer essay-style pieces about the history of the whisky industry in Scotland and other relevant topics. Plus he has a good selection of links out to fellow whisky bloggers, whisky shops and whisky lore and know-how.

And he said nice things about the Bunnahabhain 12 y.o. (pictured above-right), which is my personal favourite drinking whisky (as opposed to sipping whisky or slurping whisky, and definitely as opposed to mixing whisky).

Top blogging!

February 26, 2007 | Filed Under Drink | 4 Comments

Still free on January 6th…

Looks like the cynical bastards at the F.A. were merely dangling the possibility of a reprieve for Bury FC in order to escape the pre-Xmas bad publicity after all.

Bury FC Ah, well. We made the blunder, now we've got to take it on the chin. Although it looks like if you do make an honest mistake, then doing the decent thing - 'fessing up and apologising - doesn't hold any water with the bureaucratic types. So let this be a lesson to everyone: next time you think you might get away with a mistake you've made, don't tell! Honesty is punishable! Lie, cheat and steal like everyone else, it's the only way forward... apparently.

What, bitter? Me?

In other news: have just about finished off the last of the Yuletide leftovers, so it's back on the health regime as of Monday. Luckily I already joined a gym last November and have been a few times since, so when I get back down there next week the staff might recognise me and not smirk quite so much.

Oh, and this year's Xmas dinner for two was a triumph, if I do say so myself. Thanks to a set of cooking instructions I found on a website somewhere, the turkey didn't come out dry as the Antarctic(*) and tasting like an old cardboard box, and the assorted roast veggies were done to a 't'.

The seasonal TV highlight for me was definitely the QI Xmas Special (and I also received a copy of QI: The Book of General Ignorance [Amazon] from Jo, which was most welcome, and most enlightening, too). Dracula kinda sucked (sorry, couldn't resist), but The Ruby in the Smoke was watchable, and The Hogfather was quite jolly.

I've solved my coffee-machine quandary - for the short-term at least - with the purchase of a Russell Hobbes filter machine for the not-so bank-breaking price of £17.49, from good old Sainsbury's. Oh, and a jar of Illy ground, just in case those beans turn out to have crumbled away to nothing or something...

Also managed to find a bit more reading time than usual; I finished the charmingly disgraceful Vesuvius Club [Amazon] and have now taken the plunge and started in on Before They Are Hanged [Amazon]; I'm about 55 pages in so far and loving it. I'll be writing a couple more book-ish entries this weekend with any luck, once I've put the finishing touches to the brand new Les Edwards and Edward Miller websites, which will be going live on Monday. Speaking of which, best get on, eh?

So, a Happy New Year to everyone, in case I don't post again before then.

(*) Driest place on Earth. No lie. It's in QI: The Book of General Ignorance and everything...

December 29, 2006 | Filed Under Books, Drink, Food, Life, Sport | 2 Comments

Home-brewed coffee: any suggestions..?

Now, I like a good cup of coffee. I've publically admitted before to enjoying a Starbuck's caramel macchiato (scarily artery-hardening though it clearly is) and about the only good thing that I can see about being anywhere near Manchester city centre during this pre-Xmas season of pure shopping hell, is that it gives me a chance to get my hands on their gingerbread latte (no whipped cream, extra shot, thank you very much).

photo by 'mandilee', available from www.sxc.hu Okay, that might not be your idea of 'good' coffee (maybe it's more like 'junk' coffee in your book) but hey... I have a sweet tooth, and sometimes that syrupy sugar rush is all that gets me around the shops and back on the tram without exploding with the sheer loathing of the aforementioned pre-Xmas thing... but that's another blog entry.

Since I started working from home, I've been trying to keep my coffee intake under reasonable control, basically for fear of not being able to sleep at night. And ever since I set up the home office, I've been meaning to get myself a decent yet inexpensive coffee machine; one that brews an espresso or two at a time, so I don't have to drink a whole flask before it goes cold, and one that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I mean, hey, I'm not a coffee-freak or anything, I just want to have a decent brew a couple of times a day, y'know?

So, if you have any suggestions as to a reasonable machine that I can try to get hold of in the January sales (the physical January sales being second on the pure-loathing scale only to the aforementioned pre-Xmas thing, so online options would be most welcome) then please do leave 'em in the comments.

I've already seen a nice-looking hand-grinder from Clipper, and I've still got a jar of Illy beans (generally a smooth roast with a pleasant, not too bitter flavour) that might not be too far past its use-by date yet, so I'm sorted for that side of things. Unless you have any particular accoutrements and / or roast recommendations for me as well.

Ta very much.

November 27, 2006 | Filed Under Drink | 6 Comments