Sybaritica

It's been a long time coming...see, my lurve and I enjoy a yearly indulgence in cases of wine from Laithwaites and Virgin, cos it works out cheaper. OK, maybe not. But it pretty much guarantees value for money which is like being cheaper only more fun, not least because if you find yourself with some evil brew, you merely say so and it gets replaced free of charge. Some of these are random whites, random reds, luxury options of both, bin ends and of course, newly discovered treasures.

We kept promising ourselves that we'd save the labels off the wine bottles we wanted to replenish, because so many of these brands/vineyards are obscure. We never reckoned to the ferocity with which said labels are adhered to the bottles. No amount of soaking works, in fact nothing works, short of the power of prayer. I admit we never got that far. No, we ended up with a forlorn queue of empty bottles whose names/makers/vineyards we wanted to remember. In the end, the only winner was the recycling bin.

Things got worse when we moved down to London. Shortly after our exodus, two big boxes full of wines arrived. One was full of ordinary nice wines, the other full of rather posh and lovely ones. Of course, I didn't know this, so I just emptied both into random wine racks, with the result that every wine drinking event is something of a lottery, and we still have no way of recording the wines we want to repeat.

Until now. Time to make use of my journal!

Last night we had a lovely white, Mas Des Bourettes 2007 Vine de Pays d'Oc, Patrick Lesec Selections, whatever the latter means. Having no nose for wine at all, I can only quote its reputation for rich peachiness from the web. Personally, we just find it round and delicious, as opposed to the Chilean white Agustinoz 2008 Sauvignon Blanc, which, being sharp and dry, may not have benefited from the accompaniment of salt and vinegar crisps. There was also a South African De Meye 2005 Shiraz which may or may not have been lovely, I can't remember...