Monday:
So
Monday is a day without
booze.
Only tea, coffee or water. I go to bed feeling pointlessly virtuous.
Tuesday:
This continues into Tuesday morning. Normally I get up after a
drink-free day complaining piously to my wife that what do you know
but that I actually feel slightly more hungover than when I've been
drinking? What a paradox! Today, though, I actually feel slightly
brighter than usual. I don't know if this is a good thing or not. A
charming email arrives from Luca Turin, one of the geniuses behind
Perfumes:The A - Z Guide.
I realise that I forgot to mention, in my original rant, an advert
for Tom Ford's Noir
Extreme
fragrance for men, found in an in-flight magazine and containing this
imperishable garbage: 'An amber-drenched, woody oriental fragrance
with a tantalising and delectable heart, Noir Extreme captures the
aspect of the man who relishes in immoderation and dares to be
extraordinary.' I am also so overwhelmed by the need not to lose face
with Dr. Turin that it takes me a further two days to craft an
intelligible reply.
Today's
wine: Estevez Chilean Sauvignon Blanc, one of the whites I acquired
from Aldi a couple of weeks ago. Not bad for £4.89, but not quite as
terrific as the Freeman's Bay Sauvignon Blanc with which I started,
the Chilean stuff revealing just a bit too much Listerine in the
finish. And in the start. Next time drink the cheaper stuff first, I
remind myself.
Wednesday:
Aldi send an email, asking me to rate their wines. Cunningly, I send
them a link to the piece in which I enthused about their service,
their products, their prices. Within half an hour they have replied,
informing me that my review does not meet their criteria. Idiots.
Today's
wine: beer, in a pub.
Thursday:
The
morning is largely spent reading and re-reading PK's latest post,
marvelling at his wit, envying his sagacity, falling into a stupor of
admiration at his use of the word oenological.
How does
he do it?
Today's
wine: I end up in a wine bar, where the drink being consumed is a
Picpoul de Pinet Sel et Sable, chosen by my fellow-drinker, a person
who knows his way around a wine list. It looks a bit top dollar, but
off we go anyway. After a quarter of an hour we're running our
tongues around our teeth like old men at a dog track, and it seems
that the apparently impeccable Picpoul is a bit wild with its
acidity. I don't know who first coined the phrase Wine
IS red
(last time I heard it, it was being attributed to Pete Townsend) but
I'm starting to worry. Is it an age-related thing, this nervousness
which increasingly attends the white?
Friday:
A friend who claims to have a friend who used to deal in reclaimed
wine (I can't remember if I've mentioned this before), reveals that this
friend-of-a-friend doesn't much want to talk to me about his moody
wine past, for any number of reasons. A shame, since the way this
wine reclamation business was painted to me, it sounded pretty
fabulous: the guy in question used to collect bulk wines from
concerns that could no longer use it - SNCF in France, for instance,
who might have a load of time-expired rosé
in waxed cartons - which the guy would load into his van before
driving it back to England, unloading it in a lock-up under some
railway arches in London and re-bottling it as Fruity Red or Crisp
White or indeed Floral Rosé and supplying it to, among others,
Oddbins in one of their previous incarnations. I'll never know how
much truth there is or was in any of it. I suppose I could keep
repeating the story until someone either corroborates it or issues a
writ for defamation.
Today's
wine: still apprehensive about whites, I leave the
Chilean stuff to rot a day longer in the fridge, and get out a
flash-looking bottle of 2011 Chianti Classico which must have come
from somewhere, once. It's disgusting, tasting like the bottom of a
desk drawer, including spilled ink and human dust. What's the point
of the little paper collar round the neck, complete with immense
serial number and QR code, or the little black cockerel, if they
don't denote some kind of quality? Why am I even asking this? I've
drunk a ton of foul Italian wines, mostly with paper collars and the
full bureaucratic imprimatur.
All I ever learn is that I am incapable of ever learning.
Saturday:
I
take my watch to the jeweller's for a new battery, and am told it
will need a full service, costing £200.
Today's
wine: beer + immense Thai meal, partly to get over the watch shock.
Sunday:
Two
wines are still current at home - the now-senile Chilean white and
the bastard Chianti. I eventually get outside the white and take a
swig of the Chianti, on the off-chance that it might have had a
complete personality re-think. It hasn't, and I end the day actively
looking
forward
to a Monday of abstention. My week in wine: it's
come to this.
CJ
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