Confessions of a Wino

I am bored of talking about water, never mind drinking it.  Still or sparkling?  Bottle or tap?  Caledonian Spring or Corporation Pop?  Yawn.

In any case my detox has been a complete waste of time in many respects.  After 12 days of punishing exercise, no alcohol and, ahem, minimal caffeine (see below) I have finally lost a solitary, lonesome pound from my chunky Christmas frame.

So to celebrate I have now stopped banging on about detox and focussed energies on writing up some old notes.

It’s a bit like Audrey II, the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors.  My liver is taunting me to feed it some alcohol.  But whilst resisting the siren songs of Bacchus is the easy bit of my new year detox, my lily-livered response to caffeine addiction has been unmitigated capitulation.  Early foreplay with Earl Grey has now escalated to full frontal intercourse with Ceylon Orange Pekoe, through Queen Anne and even onto (gasp) sturdy robust Assam, the foundation of builders’ tea, in which well brewed cups, a teaspoon can stand as erect and proud as a pleasure dome on the road to Xanadu.  Rogering my central nervous system senseless.  Mmmmm feels good.

So whilst I have no contemporary wine experiences to write about, perhaps I ought to catch up with some old notes from 2009.  Yes, I’ll do that right now.  Oh hang on, I have to exercise first.

Day seven of my lamentable detox effort.  No alcohol has cursed my veins, but the no-caffeine promise has been all too frequently punctured by warm, friendly, lovable mugs of Earl Grey.

Having been snowed in most of the week, tonight I am waiting for the F Word final on Channel 4.  It’s a shame that Manchester’s Sweet Mandarin was eliminated in the semi.  Further shame that Evuna didn’t make it through the heats, if only for its super wine list.  Good luck to The Pheasant - looks favourite to win.

Appearing on the F Word, I hear, are fellow bloggers Oliver Thring and Helen Graves, and Douglas Blyde.  All good reads.  Will they be dancing a Gay Gordon?

Christmas day.  Partridge on the menu.  Well it has to be more exciting than turkey, and we don’t even own a pear tree.

Searching for a wine match, I figured a mature Grand Cru Burgundy should fit the bill.  This Domaine Armand Rousseau Charmes-Chambertin is way beyond the top end of my normal wine budget at about £90 per bottle but it IS Christmas so I am happy to splash out.  Is it worth the huge wonga though?  In a single word, erm, not on your bastard nellie.  I would rather have a threesome with two multi-tongued Ood than fork out the price of a brace of afternoon teas at The Ritz to end up with a limp biscuit.

Last time I tried this wine, there was a hint of cabbage on the nose, this time too.  Fortunately, the taste is a bit more refined:  Quince jelly with some orange blossom, but still a bit tart really.  I can think of a large number of Pinot Noirs from Burgundy and New Zealand, for example, that would blow the socks off this wine at about 20% of the price.

Merry Christmas, anyway.  I am going back to my Fortnum & Mason 2000 vintage champagne which is very moreish and goes very well with Dr Who (David Tennant) and the Master (John Simm).  Will the Master Race take over the world?  Not on your bastard nellie!  Can’t wait for the NY Day episode!

It’s Christmas Eve and I am enjoying some rump.  But that is enough about the wife.

I dug out a 2005 St. Emilion that looked like it might go with a bit of bully.

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The prevailing wealth of rich winter spices is a constant reminder that we are less than a stock market “correction” away from Christmas.  I love seasonal spicy tea blends but this year’s Fortnum & Mason was a bit of a dog compared to last year’s Harvey Nichols’ hot stock.

The wine equivalent may well be Château D’Aiguilhe 2005, Côtes de Castillon.  This Merlot dominated Bordeaux blend is spicier than an investment banker’s underpants the morning after splashing the year end bonus on a (high class) Indian meal.

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Blimey!  I didn’t mean to start World War III with my cast aside comment that Mark Hughes might not be the right manager for Man City.  Even though I regularly tell anyone who will listen that I never approved of his appointment in the first place, even I, the Bathsheba Everdene to Mr Hughes’ Gabriel Oak, acknowledged that the least worst option was to give him more time to prove himself.  Instead the Man City hierarchy (and I smell the ruthlessly inept Garry Cook behind this one) make us look fools again, executing a manager change with the dexterity, care and good intentions of Fred West laying a new patio.

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I’ve held my tongue with remarkable virtue on the subject of Man City this season.  Although I never favoured Mark Hughes’ appointment, neither do I support chopping and changing every five minutes.  So I have been inclined to give him more time.  After tonight’s abject 3-0 defeat at Spurs, I admit my patience is being stretched like a City banker’s tax return.

More time is something I ought to devote to US wines, largely ignored on this site – only 14 of Big Sam’s offerings ever receiving the courtesy of a mention.  So here is a little redress.

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An attempt to impress the mother in law almost ended in failure.  Having tried to book places under the direction of Marco Pierre White and Richard Corrigan (and others) only to be told there was no room at the inn, we were suspicious that the Westbury could easily accommodate us at 8pm on a Saturday evening.  We shouldn’t have worried.  Wilde has the atmosphere of a posh but modern grill with the service of a well dressed regiment of polite bombardiers from nations far and wide and including an occasional Irish accent.  The food is as good as I’ve eaten in Dublin and, yes, I have tried Eddie Rocket’s.

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I am Legend.  Well, not so much me as Will Smith.  Yes, I’ve just watched the film about the British scientist who inadvertently cures cancer with a virus that mutates into a killer strand that genocidinates the humans of the world (and for the purposes of the film, the World is New York).  One American male and a dog are the sole survivors charged with finding a cure.  I thought I could guess the ending but actually it finished rather suddenly, which was a shame as the plot was hugely promising and I was just starting to crap myself.

The last time I was genuinely scared at a horror movie was a David Cronenberg double bill of Rabid and Shivers at the Manchester Odeon in 1979.

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