Confessions of a Wino

England were playing India at Trentbridge so I thought I’d pop along with my mate Alan.  We spent the first half of the day waiting to see if any play was possible.  Even though we were in the ground, the only news was coming from the BBC website via my mobile phone.  By lunch we were fed up waiting so went outside to find a place to eat.

On Radcliffe Road we found a Greek-Cypriot eaterie – Pappas.  Founded by the fantastically named couple Christodoulos and Carol Papachristodoulou, surely this was going to be authentic and it was.

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I am so impressed with WordPress – it is the platform for both my blogs.  But I may have stepped over the line in my loyal devotion, because I am the new, and proud, owner of a WordPress T-Shirt.

I now have two real concerns about wearing it.

1. The only people who will recognise the logo will be geeks, and I will look like one myself.  Do I have to stop shaving?  Should I start wearing sandals (and socks)?  What do I do if I get approached and asked an awkward question?
2. As a Manchester City fan, the colour red (Man United) is anathema to me.  What if people think I am a Man United supporting geek?  Come on guys, can we please have a blue T-Shirt next????

As I write this, I am listening to BBC6 Music.  It’s a digital radio station that I am tuned in to through my TV.  My TV is a Sony Bravia 26″ LCD.  I’ve never seen worse software on a digital TV.  It is so poor I am thinking of buying a Sky box just to get usable software (but I am not thinking of buying a new TV by the way, or subscribing to Sky for that matter).

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La Bocana is a great waterfront bar just at the entrance to the harbour so you can watch all the idiots powerboating in and out, in what Jeffo calls their “penis extensions”.

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Have you checked out the Wine Life Today website?

I found it recently and thought it was a great idea.  If you have ever heard of Digg, you are probably a bit techie.  Nonetheless, I’ll press on.  Digg is a news aggregation and bookmarking website that allows users to vote for (Digg) the best stories and these get promoted onto the front page so they get a better chance of being read by busy folk.  But Digg is really aimed at geeks so if you look for softer categories like wine and food for example, you will not find them.  So someone had the great idea of a Digg for wine and decided to call it Wine Life Today, only instead of Digging, you Toast the news item.

Now there are two other differences between Digg and Wine Life Today.

1.  Digg is well used and Wine Life Today is not – the most toasted post I could find only had 10 supporters.  The top Digg article had 41,619 – hmmmm.

2.  Digg has a good algorithm and WLT is totally rubbish.  It looks like any post of any age will make it onto the front page with only 4 Toasts.  Today there is a post three days old with 5 toasts that is above a three day old post with ten toasts.

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Dr Thaksin sent me a text message (at his expense) with a personal invite to meet him in Albert Square after the Man City game against Valencia.

Man City invites a European team over at the start of every season for the “Thomas Cook” trophy.  Some would say that this is the only chance we get to watch any European football and I have sympathy with that view.  Valencia were the opponents on this occasion.

City lined up in a 4-4-2 formation, a welcome change to the dire 4-5-1 inspired home performances of last season that resulted in only 10 goals all season.  However, even as pre-season friendlies go, this turned out to be amongst the most non-eventful.

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Ah! Well a day! What evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.

If you are a regular reader you will recall my previous disappointments with wines from Costco.  The Costco philosophy is to stack it really high and sell it really cheap, but, and here’s the thing, they stick to one brand per similar item (to maximise buying power) and generally make it an upmarket quality product.  When you translate that to wine you typically get good name wines in bad years.

 

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Cacophony.  That’s the only word to describe the number and range of restaurants on Charlotte Street.  This bustling part of London seems to be the very epicentre of eating out.  I was dining with someone who knew the area and we agreed on Italian so he suggested Bertorelli’s which I learnt had been founded by the Bertorelli family some 90 years ago.

So I was, frankly, bloody annoyed to find that Chez Gérard Group now owned the restaurant and had turned it into yet another one of their chains.  I’ve always considered Chez Gérard to be high on price and low on quality and you may remember my Livebait experience…  I find most chains, in any case, are a triumph of formula over inspiration, of laziness over perspiration.

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I read an interesting piece in the Times this week about the super high price of Bordeaux 2006.  Leave it alone.  It’s all been purchased by far eastern investors who are going to lose their money anyway.

Stick to 2005 and (as I keep saying) the cheaper marques.  For example Château Reignac de Tizac, Bordeaux Superieur.

The initial aroma was of iron rust.  A mineral, earthy and “muddy” wine.  Flavours of root vegatable perhaps beetroot, carrot, swede (turnip).  Some spicy peppery notes of watercress?

Not a particularly delicate wine and not one I would drink on its own, but went very well with chargrilled lamb.  You know that meat and veg go together well!

OK so not the most glowing review and not the best 2005 Bordeaux I have yet tasted, but I would still recommend that you try it.  This one came from the  Wine Society at a paltry £5.25.

Above all I urge you to try any cheap 2005 Bordeaux you can find from wherever you buy your wine and leave 2006 to the “investors”.

Raymond Burr was considered by some to be a TV genius.  Robert T. Ironside was super-attorney, Perry Mason’s succesor (in his acting career).  Personally I much preferred cigar slugging Columbo.

Talking of American trash, I’ve had to add a new category for this post which shows how much wine I drink from the world’s only remaining super-power.  I have had bad experiences of US wine in the past, perhaps based on the cheap end of the Gallo range, so I didn’t have high hopes from this one:

Ironstone Vineyards 2004 Chardonnay/Viognier  from California retails at about £7 a bottle. Surely £6 of that must be shipping costs and £1 duty (or is that vice versa) so exactly how much is spent on the wine?

I was astounded by the quality.  Uncle Sam, I apologise, even if you are bald (and especially if you are listening in via spyware or remote listening device).  A gorgeous smell of gooseberries led to flavours of pear slices in yoghurt.  Fresh fruit salad and natural yoghurt is such a great breakfast starter (as long as it’s followed by bacon and poached eggs).  Much superior to taking a cyanide pill.