I recently visited Vivat Bacchus in Farringdon with a colleague.  We sampled two sweet wines – one white, one red – both bonkers.  Sadly the white tasted of wallpaper paste and the red of cherry lips soaked in meths.  And Vivat Bacchus tried to double tip me.  I hate it when service is already added to the bill and then the credit card machine offers me the “opportunity” to add another tip, presumably going straight into the long pockets of short-handed management.  A chilled Valpolicella on the same visit was dreamy, but this is not enough to entice me to visit either branch of Vivat Bacchus again.

I have tried many superb Tokaji dessert wines, almost all of which were not particularly Dizzee Rascal, but nonetheless tasted sweeter than an Armand van Helden megamix.

This Királyudvar was dry and, in a sense, that made it madder than a Tory/Liberal conspiracy.  But mad can be loveable.  It can be intelligent.  It can command respect.  This is the Vivienne Westwood of wines.

I can’t claim that I know whether she tastes of honey and meringue, but, like this wine, I could think of 10,000 worse dinner partners.

I got mine from the Wine Society for £18, so not cheap, but if you want quality like Westwood, then you have to be prepared to pay.  I enjoyed mine with a pork chop with mustard, garlic and thyme.

The conference is in Logroño, which is a bloody good reason to visit in its own right, being at the heart of La Rioja.  But my flight is to Bilbao, home of the world famous Guggenheim Museum, and I booked the wrong flight back, leaving me zero time to visit.  And you know how difficult/expensive it is to change a flight with QuEasyjet.

Furthermore, my flight out is from Stansted at 7:15am which means I have to leave home at 3am to get to the airport – at least the roads will be quiet!

I sense that the travel travails will be well worth the effort for what looks like a great event.

I was going to talk about this Romanian Pinot Grigio “from Transylvania”, but like a lot of PG it is rather ordinary.  For the record it tasted a bit of grilled tomato with herbs.  La Cittadella came from the Sunday Times Wine Club in a ”Crisp Refreshing Whites” mixed case for about £60.  I suppose I shouldn’t have opened a bottle of Cloudy Bay next, which did kind of eclipse this poor Dracula juice.

Meanwhile a big fangs to Rob, Gabriella and Ryan for the hard work organising the conference and I look forward to seeing everyone there.

Reading, Berkshire, is an oenological corner of the UK that has cornered the market in bizarre Pinot Noirs including this one, courtesy of the Sunday Times Wine Club and via Reading from a far away corner of Europe known as Moldova.  Described as “Burgundy rivalling” by the STWC, I am not sure which corners of Burgundy they are talking about – presumably the darkest and dingiest ones.  There is a warning on the page that provides a clue.

Dark ruby colour (much deeper than Burgundy!)

The wine is dark because it tastes like prunes, which to me is a metaphor for, and stark reminder of the cheap Chilean wines of the 1980s.  Fortunately there is a little more to it than that – nutmeg, cloves and other Xmas spices combining with vanilla pods and just a smidgen of strawberry hidden away in a corner at the back.  Once aired the wine was marginally better than I originally gave it credit for.  At £5.83 it’s probably fairly priced although that is a £3 saving on the normal price, apparently.

You can’t expect legendary wines from a mixed case at £69.99.  This wine does fight its corner before collapsing in a heap and losing.  I think we will see STWC quickly add this to mixed cases randomly until out of stock.

While I stare glumly out of the window at another English horizontal monsoon, I console myself by sampling eastern European wine.  But making decent Pinot Noir is about as Herculean a task as predicting which raindrop will win the race to the bottom of the pane.

This Romanian immigrant was part of the 2006 wine trade and smuggled in via a Sunday Times Wine Club mixed case “pure pinot noir” in exchange for a £69.99 ransom.  Not in the exorbitant price category then.

A rich aroma of cherries and wood smoke, perhaps some tarragon - nice.  Strong flavour of bitter dark cherries rotting in a compost heap – not so nice.  Long finish, because it is quite tannic and leaves a stale and bitter taste in the mouth.  Just a few peccadilloes short of wine impeccability.

The Romanians might need to try an easier grape than Pinot Noir if they want to score and, although just about drinkable, I can’t see why this wine justifies a price of £6.08 per bottle.