Easter Extravaganza: Listen to your Heart... especially if it's asking for Wine and Chocolate

“We now live in a culture that values transmission, we speak, we post, we react and we perform.”
 

Apparently what happens is that both speaker and listener begin to sync. We start to feel the depth of another person’s experience as we watch their face, hear their tone, and take in their words. The speaker feels heard and received. But, interestingly, the listener feels grounded too.

You maybe feeling this is all a bit warm and fluffy… Andrew going off on one of his wishy washy, liberal, granola eating, tree hugging  meanders, and of course there’s truth in that. However, one of my reasons for quoting Mrs Samuel on multiple occasions, is that over the last three years or so I’ve had it drummed into me by a scientist friend, the importance of  statements based on fact not conjecture or just gut reaction. Samuel's reasoning is not based purely on what sounds right, but on actual science and research, so she usually quotes her sources which these days I find reassuring. Don’t ask me how they measure this, but apparently the brain begins to create neural pathways of reward and of safety, when listening or being listened to!

So, I’d be curious to know whether, like me, this resonates with your own experience, either of being the one listened to, or of being the one who truly listens.

Over to my colleague Andi Healey for your further edification.

Wine and chocolate.

Two of life's great pleasures, which, in the wrong combination, can actively ruin each other. Pair the wrong wine with a bar of dark chocolate and you'll end up with something that tastes of metal, bitterness, and regret. 

Get it right, though, and the effect is genuinely greater than the sum of its parts.

Easter is the one time of year most of us have serious chocolate in the house — hollow eggs, filled eggs, truffles, the works — so it's worth thinking about what to open alongside it. This guide covers the fundamentals, the best matches for dark, milk, and white chocolate, the UK brands worth knowing, and which glass to use for each pairing. Because, obviously, that matters too.

Back to Andrew again
Well, Andi, that was an impressively well researched piece, and one that taught me all sorts of things I either didn’t know or had never really stopped to think about.

In our house, Easter eggs tend to be treated less as treasured seasonal artefacts and more as a breakfast item. Most are gone by lunchtime.

Which means that if we are to take any of this remotely seriously, and naturally, I feel that we should, we shall clearly need to double up on the Easter egg front.

One for breakfast. One for lunch. Possibly a reserve one for supper. All, of course, in the interests of proper comparative tasting and rigorous domestic research.

I trust you have a pleasant and peaceful weekend, filled with chocolate and wine..

Warm regards,

Andrew