I'm hoping my lovely wife Jill, set to return from a few days away in France with a friend of ours, doesn't read this. Because it's all about being selfish. OK, maybe not exactly selfish, but self-indulgent - there's at least a finely honed Sabatier knife's-width between the two...
The bottom line is this - which are the bottles I'd like to share with as few people as possible? I know, I know, enjoying wine is all about generosity - I've read those pieces, I've even written some of them. They usually involve a road-to-Emmaus type passage in which the author describes being given a thimbleful of Chateau Latour on his thirteenth birthday/at his first tutorial/just after snorting coke off a gullible groupie's navel before a gig at [insert venue of your choice]. Afterwards, wine suddenly made sense - cue misty images and harp music.
But we don't live on clouds permanently. And tonight, I'm rather glad that there's only me to enjoy what's left of the 1988 Chateau L'Evangile from Pomerol. It's a very good chateau, but not the best, ditto for vintage, but this weekend, it's been a joy to behold - I would have offered Alex (aged 6) a sip, but it would have clashed with his fish fingers and corn on the cob. So I was left alone to bathe in its suave, cedary beauty, its confident yet never brash fruit and its relaxed but not supine structure.
Jill would probably have enjoyed it, but not as much as I have. And so my darling, sorry you're married to such a selfish, sorry, self-indulgent wine snob, I'll leave some of your favourite elixir (usually Grenache but riper Pinots also do the biz) for you the next time I go away. I'm off now to warm the bed for your return...
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