Confessions of a Wino

I have just arrived back in the UK after a short sojourn in the north of Italy.  Driving home from the airport, a Tesco visit was necessary to restock mundane stuff like orange juice and milk, and meaningless luxuries like food.  But I couldn’t resist checking out the wine shelves for few essentials.

In Italy I tried to sample a few local wines, Piemonte being the nearest wine region.  I had a couple of bottles of Grignolino, for example, the common feature of which was a slightly unpleasant salty after taste.  I know what you are thinking ladies - let’s go no further.

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I’m always on the lookout for a bargain but I have had my fingers burnt a few times when trying to shave a few pennies off my sparkling wine budget.  The closest I have come to success is Freixenet Cava (although some maintain that this is only good for washing the dog).  Freixenet retails at less than £6 at places like Costco and Tesco which I think is a bargain….until I spotted an Italian mare at less than a fiver on Tesco’s sparkling shelves!

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My first experience of buying from the Virgin Wines auction site left me with a case of total tosh to distribute discretely amongst my sorry mates.

But I bravely (some would say foolishly) tried again and this time things look more promising.  This one came from a case of All White Delights and I successfully bid less than £50 including delivery!

I am a fan of Argie wines - Malbec and Torrontés are my favourites.  The Colibri was typical of other Torrontés I have tried with lime, kiwi and rich apricot flavours.  Simple and unpretentious, I like it.

The insipid colour was paler than an albino’s bikini line, but it is a lively, zingy and decent (but cheaper) alternative to Sauvignon Blancs.  It ticks all the boxes for me.

If you were thinking of inviting me to a party in the near future, you might want to think again.

I’ve been experimenting with Virgin Wines and, having built up a bit of a credit in my Virgin Wine Bank, I thought it would be fun to try and spend some of my ill-gotten gains on the auction part of the site.  In concept, it’s brilliant, but as with all auctions, caveat emptor applies, in other words, make sure you know what you are buying…..

In a head-rush, I read about the Marqués de Valencia Gran Reserva 2001 and thought it looked a nice Rioja.  Voted wine of the year 2007 by Virgin members, the retail price was advised as £95.88 per case.  For a Gran Reserva this seemed cheap so I quickly placed a bid of about £65 and an hour later had won the case for less than £50.  That’s cheap for any wine.  When it arrived I understood why.

On opening it smelt a bit odd.  Where is the familiar vanilla/oak?  Why does it taste of petrol?

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Do you ever wonder why people insist that Sauvignon Blanc smells like “cat’s piss on a gooseberry bush”?  Exactly how many people have smelt a gooseberry bush, never mind one that a cat has pissed on?  What sort of cat was it?  Was it in season?  Male or female?  What had the cat eaten and drunk?  What variety of gooseberry?  Was the bush flowering or in fruit (or neither)?

I’ve just got in from a motorway traffic jam and I’m astonished by the exercises my brain races through while the car idles.

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As I sit here contemplating a meaningless friendly against France (meaningless since Signor McClaren failed to qualify England for the 2008 European Championships) I thought I would tip a nod to our new head coach by sampling a bottle of Carpallo.  Now Sr Capello is Italian, whereas this wine is Spanish.  Sr. Capello is a heavyweight, and this wine is a lightweight.  Sr. Capello is serious, whereas my comparison to a wine named Carpallo is inane and trite.  Then again, Sr. Capello has picked David Beckham in the squad which is a bit of a laugh and not exactly building for the future is it?  My final comparison is that Condes Carpallo is dirt cheap, whereas Sr. Capello is very very expensive indeed.  Which one delivers the best value?

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I’ve been most impressed by nearly all the Wine Society’s own brand wines.  Then I saw this bottle by “Hand of God” which seems to be ripping off the Wine Society’s brand - I had to investigate.

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Our money pit has had a leak for years.  It’s not pleasant when water pours in to two of the bedrooms.  It’s also expensive, and many ££££s have left the bank account trying to find a fix.  We are making a final bid to cure the leak with a swimming pool like construction that has involved rebuilding most of the flat roof above the bedrooms.  We use this roof as a balcony, half open and half conservatory.  It’s a beautiful feature of the house and worth trying to improve no matter the cost, and no matter that the beautiful travertine floor must be ripped out.

Meanwhile in my wine rack, Argie wine keeps getting better and better and it is far from costly.  This is the third one I have tried by the hand of Susana Balbo, under the Faldeos Nevados brand which, as far as I can tell, is exclusive to the Wine Society in the UK.

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A quiet Italian restaurant in Manchester.  Maybe not the best place to expose one’s ignorance.  I mean, how could I possibly confuse a tacky MTV reality show, with a beautiful lake in the north of Italy?

If, like me, you are over 40, and approaching the early stages of senile dementia, you already know where I am going (although you probably won’t remember by the time I reach the end of this sentence).

So for the record, the Lugana wine region is on the southern shores of Lake Garda, and I would also like to say that….er hang on I’ve forgotten again, where did I park my car?

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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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