I don't really drink but if i did.....

Every job has it's little benefits, it's little bonuses that make it special. Wine tasting day is without a doubt my favourite day. Saying that, I'm not sure a busy Friday is the best day for it. I was just clearing up from lunch when the Glorious leader appeared looking like Edward Glasseshands with a smile on his face. One of the wine reps had arrived and had brought a half dozen bottles of very lovely wine with him for sampling. The restaurant was abandoned......like a child on holiday.

Here are the highlights....

1. Lois Grüner Veltliner - at about 11% it wasn't this Austrian number that did the damage. This is light, as dry as comedian Steven Wright, and as refreshing as a politician telling the truth. The bottle is hideous though, it appears lime green with a modern minimalist label. Very "cool" I'm lead to believe. I like wine labels with castles and chateaus etc....Beautiful wine, get it in til ye as they say on the banks of the Danube. You should be able to get this for about £6 to £8 and twice that in a restaurant.....(Waiters don't come cheap) (Actually they do...)


2. Weingut Burger Donaghadee Riesling Classic 2004 - when tasting wines you are meant to take a mouthful, roll it round your mouth and absorb it's flavours and aromas and what have you. You aren't meant to go back to the bottle 3 or 4 times and knock it down your neck like there is no tonight let alone no tomorrow. But this was just so beautiful it was hard not to. It has an Irish heritage as the name suggests. The lady who owns the vineyard moved to Germany from Donaghadee naming part of her new enterprise after her home town. I love little stories like that. The label has a picture of Donaghadee harbour. It's drier than you might expect and has hints of citrus and apples. It's just beautiful on it's own or, if you have to eat, with light salads. You should be able to get this for under a tenner and for what it's worth I recommend it highly.


3. 2006 Noble Dragon Shandong - As the name suggests this isn't French, hell it's not even European or American or from Australia or South America, it's Chinese. Say what? Oh yes it's from China. As one wag put it yesterday, "Them Chinese will make anything!" But if we all drop out preconceived ideas you will actually find that these wines are comparable with anything else in it's price range from anywhere in the world. The red is spicy and dry and to be honest it was a bit of a shock at first. There are lots of flavours going on in your mouth. It's blended from Cabernet Sauvignon and Syra as well as some of the local grape Dragon's eye. Good with peppery and spicy food, as you might expect. Once you get over the whole, "it's from China" thing you can really appreciate this. It's available for about £10.00, well worth a try.


4. Godolphin Shiraz - if this wine was a boxer it would fight in the heavy weight division. Good grief it packs a punch. You would be madder than a bag of badgers to drink this without food. And by food I mean a cow, a whole cow at that. It has a strong blackcurrant and licorice flavours, it doesn't do "hints" of anything, it's far to hard for that. My god it's good. But it comes with a price tag to match. Expect to pay £30 or more in a restaurant and about half that off the shelf. Well worth every penny......

There were others too, well there might have been others I don't know. I'm sure there was more. What I do know is that Friday night at work was more fun than normal. I wasn't pished but was very merry. Then I got a headache and wasn't so merry. And it was the first busy Friday night of the year so far! Where was the wine when I was struggling to make the night go in? Eh? Where was it when I was counting forks just for the bloody hell of it?

We tried about a half dozen wines after lunch then about a dozen or so at 4pm. I'm not bulit for this. Roll on the next wine list change! Yippee! All Fridays should be like that!

In other news it appears I'm not being sold into white slavery or being romanced by the Supreme leader. We are up for another award and he has asked me to join him in facing the interview panel. Which is nice........I can't say I'm not disappointed, I hoped he was taking me shopping.....