Confessions of a Wino

Forget the preamble.  This Corbières is the most interesting and, frankly, gorgeous wine I have tried in ages.

I found it at Laithwaites (although it was sadly out of stock at time of writing).  I cannot remember the price, but it was definitely not expensive.  I fear that it is absolutely necessary to stick to the 2003 due to the freaky hot summer that year.  It killed several hundred French people so one can only imagine the effect it had on shrivelling (er….I mean concentrating) the grapes, and this wine is an amalgamation of several.

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Funky.  The French don’t do funky well.  So Café Le Brummels must be owned by a Belgian then.  Did you spot the Belgian beer influences in the photo?

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Was Lausanne really so boring?  We must have thought so, because our only full day there was spent in Evian, courtesy of the excellent and frequent ferry service across Lac Léman.  We were looking for the Riveraine Café for lunch, a place we had visited several years ago and enjoyed many a French laugh (he haw he haw he haw) with the owners.  Sadly the place had closed down.

Searching along the lake front for another resto proved fruitless.  It being October already, the saison de tourisme was already over.  Fortunately, even locals need to eat, so there were some places open on the Rue Nationale (main street).  Le Muratore took my fancy because it actually had customers - always a promising sign.

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What a great sporting weekend.  The English winning at cricket (handsomely defeating India), and promptly, but not all that convincingly, despatching the USA at rugby in the World Cup.  Even the hapless Steve McClaren had his moment in the sun sending the Israeli football team packing having thrice, without reply, rubbed their noses in the excrement of their sloppy defence.

But the résultat du jour was on Friday.  The French were humbled by Argentina in the opening game of the Rugby Union World Cup - a triumph of gritty Malbec over refined claret?  So in my own personal campaign to cheer up the old wine nation I nipped down to a British supermarket (Tesco) and bought some French produce - a can o’ wine to be precise.

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I have never been to the Ritz.  This maybe because I can’t afford it, or it could equally be because, to enjoy the Ritz fayre, I would have to bypass The Wolseley, right next door at 160 Piccadilly.  This is something I have not yet achieved.

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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 did once manage to get some sort of degree from Leeds University Business School which is not exactly the Ivy League.  Still it stood me in good stead for being comprehensible - occasionally.  Sadly this was not true when I visited The Ivy with the wife.

Being in the West End we opened with a quick glass at the Cork & Bottle on Cranbourn Street and swiftly moved on to the surprisingly quiet location next to the St Martin’s Theatre where The Mousetrap has been playing since 1436:

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I’ve just been watching one of my favourite TV programmes, Grand Designs.  Every episode is a tale of hope and of human triumph in the face of considerable adversity.  Best of all it shows that if you have a big plan it is always ten times more difficult to deliver than your worst possible estimate.

Kevin McCloud looks on and commentates in his laconic and smug, but laid back and highly entertaining style.  The thing about “reality” TV is that we can all sit back and smile with the expert, at how dumb the subjects are for not realising that they needed building regs approval for the step they are replacing with one that is 1.5 inches lower than the incumbent broken one.  Meanwhile we are led to believe that the whole project is in jeopardy as a result.

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