Confessions of a Wino

I am deeply unfashionable by nature, and may be the last wino on the planet who still finds Cloudy Bay a good slurp and even (gasp), value for money!

Over the last few years, I’ve been experimenting with drinking it at different stages of youth.  I have just opened a 2007 and discovered a wrinkly old fella.  Tastes flat and tired,- no zing or spring in its step.  Notes of cardboard, straw and sour lemon.

Conversely I find baby Cloudy Bay, on release, a bit uninspiring.  Almost too fresh and grassy.

So I have concluded that my favourite time to drink this Kiwi standard is about 12-18 months after release where I find the classic cats’ piss, gooseberries and lots of fresh zingy grapefruit.

Has anyone tried this with other Kiwi Sauvignon Blancs?

I spend far too much of what economists laughingly call my “disposable” income on wine.  I also buy more shoes than I can reasonably polish.  I like to think of it as keeping in touch with my feminine side.

Imagine my delight then, when I discovered that Oliver Sweeney has been bought out of administration!  I haven’t purchased a pair for a couple of years (but still own numerous), so maybe I am in some small way responsible for their near demise.  Mind you my temporary desertion of my favourite footwear brand was not purely for economic reasons.  I thought the designs lost their way.  Brands are about consistency of product, not advertising.  Any clever agency can get you to try a product once but loyalty is expressed in repeat sales and recommendations, which only come from over-delivery of the promise.

You could consider wines to be micro brands and I was not that impressed by the product quality of a 2008 Mahi Pinot Noir.  Will the Sauvignon Blanc resole my trust, or leave me with a hole in my shoe?

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Yet another strange thought troubled my grey matter when I smelt Momo – more cats’ piss than Dog Point!  And that is a compliment.

It is really zingy with balance provided by honeyed apples and pears.  If you like your Sauvignon Blancs tartier than Bet Lynch, you will love this.

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I could fall in love with Jane Hunter,
I have never met her, she might be a munter,
But if I could turn back the callous hands of time,
Her success, her money and wines would be mine.

After all, if her wines are a personification of her true self, then surely she must be gorgeous, tasty, exciting, full-bodied and just a little tarty (in a nice discreet way)?

But, probably, I would not ask her to hurry the wines to my cellar because, having tried her Sauvignon Blanc for the last few vintages, I think it tastes much better after a year or more of ageing.  I know this flouts convention, that NZ Sauvignon Blancs should be drunk within a year.

There is much competition amongst Kiwi winemakers these days.  Since the success of Cloudy Bay, ten thousand maniac (give or take a few thousand) imitators have gradually eroded the price of Marlborough gooseberry cat-pissers.  I got my 2009 Hunter’s from the Wine Society (£10.50) at barely a gnat’s fart more than the price of the 2006 (£9.95).

The 2009 is a bit two dimensional.  Gooseberry and sugar.  It is zingy but bland, if that is not too much of an oenological oxymoron.

Nonetheless, from previous experience, I suggest you buy a few bottles and lay them down for, oh I don’t know, twelve to twenty four months and I am sure you will see massive improvement.

Looking for alcohol to numb the pain of having to watch Strictly Come Dancing, I tangoed across to my wine rack to find something easy drinking, fruity and cheap, like Craig Breville-Toaster

I found this Côtes de Thongue from the Wine Society at a mere £4.95.  Made in the increasingly popular South of France, a region that most wine merchants are pushing as recession friendly gluggers, this stands out as something more sincere.  Cheaper than a budgie’s twitter, but tastier than a topless bird on a St Tropez beach, this smells and tastes of two childhood sweets:  Pear drops and pineapple cubes.  Don’t expect fine wine at this price but I’ve tasted many uglier wines at double the Roubles.  And as for Strictly – is it still on?????

As if it wasn’t hard enough already (no pun intended), blokes everywhere are giving up hope of ever getting another blowjob.

Before Americanisation, I used to think that “head” was the foam on a pint of beer.  As a mature Wino, I now I fully realise that it is the bubbles on top of a Bellini.  And I love a Bellini.

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At some point in your life, birthdays stop being beacons shining light on a promising future and instead become lamp posts illuminating yesterday’s gloomy streets.  A time to look back longingly at your youth and wonder what might have happened if you hadn’t bought that Ford Escort with the faulty brakes, or kissed that fat bird with dentures behind the bike sheds at school.

But the lacerations eventually healed and I was able once again to enjoy eating the sweets of my generation without the nightmare of that mousetrap snog to haunt my tongue.

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Buying an iPhone is a bit like getting married to Pamela Anderson and then finding out she’s done a porno.  Almost everything is exquisite, near perfect, round, supple and enticing.  But you quickly start finding out that a few assumptions you made were wrong, and everyone knew but you.

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Amongst the longest wine names you can find on a bottle belong to Concha y Toro…

Concha y Toro Winemaker’s Lot 9T Sauvignon Blanc Lo Ovalle Vineyard D.O. Casablanca Valley by Ignacio Recabarren 2007 is all the information you get on the front of the bottle.  There is a little more info on the back but it’s all claptrap by the Wine Society who charge £6.95 for an odd shaped bottle of this Chilean white wine.

Actually, the wine is super value for money and would give many a NZ Sauvignon a run for its honey, although this one was more grass, gooseberry, grapefruit and red cherryade.  The only thing missing is a good dose of cat’s piss (yes, just one this time).

Once again – Concha y Toro proves itself to be one of the big wine brands to trust.

Under pressure from my peers at work to get a push email device, I quickly rejected the Samsung Omnia and, less readily, the Nokia N96, so that left me with a technological fruit cocktail to contend with:  Apple or Blackberry.

I’ve been a Nokia man since I switched from an ancient Ericsson in the early 1990s.  I was an early adopter of mobile phones on account of working in a disaster planning role.  Oh how we laughed in those early days as we ate in a curry house in Bingley enduring super slow service.  I had an idea.  I pulled out my brick shaped device, telephoned the restaurant and ordered the bill to much guffawing from other customers.  Doesn’t sound so stupid nowadays but phones then were primitive, and I was the only person in the resto, possibly in the whole village, that had such a bulge in my pants.

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