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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The wine bar in the lower ground floor of F & M Foodhall on Piccadilly is so cool, and I’m not talking about the ambient temperature.  Staffed by a range of nationalities with a variety of experiences in wine.  Our Polish waiter, Artur Zarzycki “vaz early on hiz vine joornee” but seemed to know plenty despite his claimed one year of experience.  And he almost knew how to operate a camera!

Queuing outside F & M on a Sunday at midday (the bloody shop opened late by about 2 minutes 30 seconds), because we had an hour to kill before our reservation at St Alban (more anon).  So, as all the restaurants and cafes in F & M were being refurbished, we dashed down to the wine bar “1707″ where, for £23.90 (inc. service) we got to try a fantastic range of wines.  Who says the posh shops are expensive?

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Somewhere roughly east of the Eden Project in Cornwall you may stumble across Newquay and Watergate Bay.  Here you will find another highly commendable charity establishment.  Fifteen Cornwall is Jamie Oliver’s project to give young (and often disadvantaged) young people the opportunity to make something of their lives, by learning how to cook very very expensive food.

As it was the first anniversary of the opening of Fifteen Cornwall and this marked the graduation of the first batch of trainees we thought it would be rude to turn down the opportunity to try the highly popular place.  OK then it wasn’t exactly a personal invite from Jamie but it was nice to be there.

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Although I generally disapprove of pre-selected cases, I do subscribe to the President’s Cellar from Sunday Times Wine Club which pings me 6 bottles every 6 months at about £20 per bottle.

It does force me to explore wines that I would not otherwise choose and you probably know that I am not the greatest fan of Australian wine.

This bottle of Tamar Ridge Pinot Noir 2002 came to me a few years ago from Tasmania, via the President’s Cellar and was getting to drinking up time.  So I opened it.

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When I turned 18 we did a sort of lad’s rite of passage thing.  Some guys did sickly things like inhaling a whole cigar.  Others did amateur self harm (but not on Iggy Pop’s scale).

The idea I most admired was the guy who ate a whole pot of jam.  This doesn’t sound very rock and roll does it?!  But have you ever tried it?  The first spoonful is delicious but by the time you are half way through the jar, it is getting sickly to the point of making you gip.  In that sense it’s a bit like drinking an Aussie Shiraz.

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