A little something from the end of last summer:
At Midnight on June 21st 2007 I vowed never ever to drink another bottle of Cote du Rhone. This alcoholic epiphany came to me just outside the village of Cucuron and the image is still clear in my head:
There I am bouncing along in the back of a convertible car belting out the last few verses of “In the Navy” thinking I am quite possibly the funniest man alive. My pregnant wife is driving and already there is a vague sense of foreboding penetrating the misty veil of inebriation.
Next to me is my father-in-law, who yes, just happened to have served in the Navy. He’s singing along half-heartedly but really he is wondering just why his son-in-law has the presumption to be ridiculing his military service.
Of course it’s not my fault. The evening had started convivially with a couple of kirs in a small café in La Tour D’Aigue. As the alcohol flowed so did the bonhomie, the evening gradually became more raucous and my father in law and I ordered a bottle of Gigondas to accompany our main course.
Neither of us looked at the alcohol percentage until it was too late, a whopping great 15.5%, it was practically a fortified wine. The effect was not so much to loosen my tongue as to unravel it and lasso it around a near by tree, handily forming a noose for me to hang myself with later after my bawdy rendition.
“where can you find pleasure, search the world for treasure…In the Navy!”
And so there you have it, the reason I now only get a pair of socks in the post at Christmas time rather than the crate of vintage wine which used to arrive.
This year, at the behest of my wife, I decided it was time to mend the bridges, and invite my father in law on a wine tour of the Cote du Rhone. I was determined that no matter how much I consumed there would be no repeat karaoke performance.
There was also a serious purpose to the trip. When the new world started making stronger and stronger wines, I dismissed the idea as an alcopop fad. While it lasted, there would be little or no effect on my cellar, oaked Chardonnays and syrupy shiraz have only ever been used for one thing at our house - cooking.
Then horror of horrors French winemakers started copying their antipodean friends and before you could pin a tail on a Wombat it was impossible to get a Cote du Rhone under 13.5%. Most were north of 14.5%. Fine wines that I used to enjoy drinking, Vacqueyras, Gigondas, Chateauneuf du Pape, I suddenly found unpalatable.
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