Confessions of a Wino

What happened to global warming?  I write this on Sunday morning in Manchester, and it’s another rainy July day.  We’ve just had the coldest June since 1999, but we are still smiling.  Dunkirk spirit eh?

Although it is cold and wet, I sense that we have had much less rain than last year’s “summer”, the one that kept every reservoir in Britain at mid winter levels, and hosepipe bans a fond memory of childhood days.

We Brits are famous for talking about the weather too much, but our islands are prone to such regular and rapid changes, that it actually makes interesting conversation.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
The sun has got his hat on, shout hip, hip, hooray!

Literary references all, proving my case that weather is interesting because of its variety and inherently unexpected nature.  In that sense perhaps it is a lot like wine, another subject I talk about too much.

I was so impressed by Landelia Malbec that it is still recommended on my favourites page.  Recently, I went back to the Virgin website to top up my stocks but the cupboard was bare.  However, my search threw up another wine by Landelia, this one a Cab Sauv from 2005.

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The gardening season is upon us and this year I am so organised, I had my lawn mower serviced early to beat the rush.  Now it’s just a matter of being organised enough to be at home on one of the rare days that it doesn’t rain, so I can mow the lawn.

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.

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