Thursday, 5 June 2008

Wine tasting

It's very late and I shouldn't be blogging at this hour, but Mr A's away and I've just come back from a great evening. It was a wine tasting event, held at a health spa salon boutique in town, hosted by a great charity called NCT (National Childbirth Trust) and featuring local wine supplier SH Jones.

Having no children, I have no personal experience of NCT, but at least four people I know rate it very highly so that's good enough for me. The NCT contact on this occasion was Sophie who lives round the corner, and she'd taken me to one of these wine tastings before and it was excellent. So I left a message on her phone during the day asking what the arrangements were for this evening, and didn't get any reply, so I turned up on her doorstep. She'd forgotten all about it, and didn't have any childcare, so she couldn't actually go. We couldn't find a stand-in for her ticket, either.

I'm not entirely comfortable among the trappings of health spa treatment places, with their endless plinky plonky nondescript piped music and the threat of depilation round every corner. I need all the hair I've got: it's cold in this country. So I tried to ignore all the mirrors and creams and stuff, and concentrated on the booze.

SH Jones was uncredited in yesterday's list as part of no.19: local shops (independent). We tasted one sparkling wine/champagne, three whites, one rosé and two reds (I haven't got the names because I gave Sophie the sheet with the details). They were very nice, especially the red that came one before last, at £3.99 a bottle. I talked to a couple who were planning a holiday in France, I didn't win anything in the raffle, and staggered home in a very good mood.

I really like living here.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ooh I like wine tasting! We go to France quite often and usually go winetasting in the area where we're staying. We usually end up with better wine than you find in the shops here, at a very reasonable price. :)

aims said...

I'm amazed that you can even do this post after all that tasting! What fun! We drove through Napa Valley on our last holiday, but The Man wouldn't go for any tasting. I was bummed.

Uncle Dick Madeley said...

You're clearly a drunken old souse but we love you all the same. I personally love to get drunk and stagger around the neighbourhood shouting at anybody that gets in my way. We should do it together sometime. You could hold the bottles while I chuck bricks at passing cars.

travelling, but not in love said...

Sounds like a very pleasant evening.

When my brother and wife were pregnant first time round they went to a NCT meeting and were so horrified by the video of childbirth they were shown that they never returned!

Uncle Dick Madeley said...

Dear Lola, can I take this opportunity to apologise for the rudeness of my earlier post? Judy has been onto me all night telling that I'd let myself down. She is of course right. As a gentleman, I should have offered to hold the bottles while you throw the bricks.

Anna said...

Did you actually drink the wine or it was this professional stuff of spitting after tasting?

PS: I came to your blog by random, but I enjoyed it.

Lola said...

Well, I have to say, a girl couldn't hope for a better set of comments. My familiar blog friends, giving that bit more information to complement the post, a new visitor and... Dick.

Anna: thanks for dropping by! We were guided by a professional, who told us there are five S's: swirl, sight, sniff and slurp, but there are options for the fifth S. He provided buckets, but given that we were there for the fun of it he said there's no harm in swallowing. So we took full advantage.