Chat-en-Oeuf........

No I didn't spell it wrong!

This is definitely Chat-en-Oeuf not Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the expensive stuff. A clever play on words don't you think?

I am not a wine connoisseur, but I know what I like and I like this.


I have had the expensive wines and whilst, yes, they are lovely, to be honest for the amount we and our friends drink I'd have to take out a second mortgage to buy anything over a fiver a bottle! We have drunk our way through gallons of wine over the years, some good, some bad but I don't think we've ever paid more than £10 for a bottle and that would have been a special occasion. Oh I tell a lie! We paid £85 for a bottle of champagne in the Maldives on New Year's Eve 1999! Well it was the Millenium and we were a captive market so we didn't have a choice!

We once went wine tasting in the Hunter Valley in Australia. What a day that turned out to be! Another story!

I get annoyed at the prices restaurants charge for wine, especially when the £12 bottle they bring to your table is the £6 bottle you've seen that very afternoon on the supermarket shelf! I don't understand how they can justify that, if they just charged a couple of pound extra that wouldn't be too bad, but double the price is just not on.

We were recently given two bottles of wine by my FIL. He said he'd tell us where he got them from after we'd given him our verdict on them. They were both the same, red and very, very fruity, 10% proof and apparently guaranteed not to give you a hangover. Well that was like a red rag to a bull so we had to drink both bottles in one go just to test the theory. He was right, we didn't have a hangover, we woke up bright as buttons. He then revealed that they had cost him £14 a bottle. Well they were very nice, but to be honest I wouldn't have paid more than £6 a bottle for them 'cos at £14 you'd want to know you'd had a drink wouldn't you?

Thankfully our local supermarkets always have deals on whereby you can pick up a bottle of Pinot Grigio or a Rioja at half it's usual price - usually £5 instead of £10. They also do what they call a 'Good French Wine' (mind you they're hardly likely to say 'Crap French Wine' are they) marketed under their own name which tastes remarkably like Pinot Grigio - I love this one but unfortunately if I drink too much white wine I get heartburn so I tend to stick to red. I can hear you saying "Well don't drink so much!"

So you see I don't believe you have to spend a fortune to drink good wine, you just have to know what you like and where to look, there's plenty of reasonably priced wines about so there's no need to be a wine snob!

My knee
Friday 4th May
Feels good today. Have introduced new exercise into my regime - squats - well little ones!