A spritzer in a can – like fish in a barrel?

To my mind, the white wine spritzer is a perfectly dignified drink. Yes, it diminishes the wine – but it certainly enhances the water. 

There are occasions on which you have to watch the old alcohol intake, and for many of us, soft drinks are simply too sweet and cloying, whether on their own or – certainly – with a meal. A white wine with a bit of a whack in its flavour, diluted with sparkling water and served over ice, is a pleasant, crisp refreshing drink.

And then, I discovered an entire section in my supermarket dedicated to premixed drinks in cans – including this Echo Falls spritzer. Handy, or what? Well, as it turns out – what?

The real benefit of pre-mixed drinks surely lies in cocktails which require a dash of this, or a touch of that. This – and, if it comes to it, that – being an ingredient of which you never drink enough to justify purchasing an entire bottle. 

But a spritzer is hardly a creation for which you need one of those chaps calling themselves a “mixologist”, the qualifications for which seem to involve a crippling weight of pretension and a haircut like Nick Grimshaw. A spritzer only has two ingredients – wine and water – and surely if you possess sufficient intelligence and energy to raise a glass to your lips, you could be arsed to mix those together?

It seems not. According to a chap from a rival canned spritzer, Tres Spritzy,  who I met at the London International Wine Fair, it is the ready-mixed aspect which is the big selling point. They are designed to be “handy”, a term which is rapidly becoming a modern euphemism for “a bit crap”.

(It had been suggested to me that it might be the portability of the can which is key here, and that people might want to take it to events like festivals. Unfortunately, a lot of events actually ban cans, on the strong likelihood that you might want to “port” a missile at someone.)

It’s clear where this can’s target market lies, given the fact that it declares its calorie content per serving on the front, in significantly larger type than the alcohol level. Like most men, I neither know nor wish to know the calories in a drink. They fall into that category of figures surrounding drinks, including units of alcohol and cost, an ignorance of which is bliss.

And I’m sorry to say this, but the can also looks disturbingly like a feminine deodorant. This is a confusion I could imagine leading to unpleasant results for a lady, the lesser of which would be a mouthful of Femfresh.

In case you think I’m jumping to conclusions, look at the Echo Falls website, where it’s clear that the entire brand is aimed at women. I mean yes, I’ve had what their home page describes as “unscripted moments”, and only one of them involved a subsequent visit to the dry cleaners. 

But if I imagine “a chance meeting with a mate”, I don’t, as a bloke, envisage it “turning into a giggly night of girlie reminiscing.” Not with Big Richard from Stamford Bridge. There is a clear if unstated assumption that drinkers of Echo Falls will be women. Well, more Falls them.

The first surprise is that this spritzer is pink. An expert might know that White Zinfandel is, in fact, a rosé wine– the purchaser of a supermarket spritz in a can will probably not. No-one to whom I have shown the can, stating “Spritz with White Zinfandel”, expected a pink drink.

The second surprise is the level of effervescence; not the gentle spritz of a mineral water, nor the “sparkle” described on the can, but rather the more explosive quality of a Coca-Cola. This does nothing positive for the drink, although it might lift the aforementioned missile qualities up to weapons-grade.

Finally, there is the flavour. CJ once had the misfortune to drink White Zinfandel and legendarily declared that it made his teeth squirm. And this is not just a violently effervescent, cloyingly sweet White Zinfandel – oh, no. It is an “aromatised wine product cocktail” (sic); its bubblegum flavour has actually been somehow boosted. Until we have it: a spritzer, whose major attraction for adults is that it can replace sickly sweet fizzy drinks, engineered to replicate… a sickly sweet fizzy drink.

Still, at least it’s “handy”.

PK

Apéritif Day - Lillet Rosé

Well this is timely. Did you know that today, May 16th, is National Apéritif Day, here in the UK? In the US, it's National Piercing Day (I'm not making this up), and in Malaysia it's National Teachers' Day, but it's already Apéritif Day where I am, and it's only ten o'clock in the morning.

How do I know this? Because Apéritif manufacturers Lillet have declared it so. Neither PK nor myself are going to get snotty about this appropriation of an entire 24 hours in mid-May, not least because last week we attended a little cocktail festival in the bar of the Brasserie Zédel (in the heart of London's bustling West End) where many delicious drinks were confected, all of them using Lillet in some combination - in a nod, as it happens, to James Bond, a Lillet fan. And yes, the whole event was so delicious it would be churlish and perverse to say otherwise.

Lillet itself, the classic apéritif tout court is also extremely likeable, perhaps not the red, a bit Christmas Puddingy, but the rosé - fresh, citrussy, astringent, nicely finessed - is worth shelling out for. On instruction, I went home and added a dash of it to some sparkling white - an Undurraga Brut from Chile - which wasn't a totally harmonious creation, the Undurraga having a touch of gravel about it, the occasional tartness of the Lillet making for something of a tangle, but the principle was sound. Prosecco, yes, might have kept the Lillet in better order, but still.

All that said, a hint of nervousness creeps in at the idea of a Day. I mean, it's worth a try, but National Apéritif Day isn't a day to focus consciousness on an emergent or already-well-established practice or concept; it's a day to try and drag something back from the lip of the grave before it disappears completely. This is not expressing a trend or desire, this is attempting to stay the cold hand of Fate.

Because however lovely and multifarious French apéritifs may be, they're stuck with at least two cultural difficulties: they belong to the wrong generation; and they often contain more than a whiff of provincial France, with all its touchiness, inconvenience, and regional amour-propre. 

It's your parents (or, charitably, the Mad Men crowd) who used to get stuck into the Dubonnet and Noilly Prat (as, indeed, they got stuck into the Campari and the Cinzano), not least because the demotic wine revolution hadn't yet happened, there was a higher tolerance of sweet & sticky, and everyone seems to have been plastered half the time, anyway.

Equally, there are slightly too many products to get your head round; all of them marked by some potent local characteristic - guaranteeing on the one hand a certain delirious otherness (especially when you drink them in context, on-site, on a warm evening), but on the other, generating a ton of complexity when you get back home and try and remember what was different about them in the first place. Byrrh, Suze, Pommeau, Dubonnet, Pineau des Charentes, Salers, Lillet, Bonal, Saint-Raphael - to say nothing of pastis (when I want my gums disinfected, I'll make an appointment) - are all good, sometimes great, in their ways, apart from the pastis, but (a) in London, on a wet February night? and (b) when the alternative is, say, a plain-dealing, no-nasty-surprises whisky & soda? And this is just when you're on your own. You know very well that if people come round, and pre-meal you start gesturing towards some obscure wine-based beverage infused with wild gentian, the act will reek of nothing less than a pathetic desperation to seem different.

Nevertheless. In the spirit, no pun intended, of National Apéritif Day, I shall slightly preciously and self-consciously fix myself an evening apéritif (Lillet? Noilly Prat? Punt e Mes?), before getting stuck into my usual special-offer grog, and see how the rest of the day pans out. Assuming it does pan out and I don't, as a consequence of my unfamiliar pre-drink drink, simply fall asleep at eight-thirty. Santé!

CJ

Austerity, wine and toad-in-the-hole

Here we are then, an austerity supper for these challenging times. A good old, bog-standard toad-in-the-hole. And a wine to match.

You might argue that in times of austerity, it is perfectly possible to give up wine altogether, and drink water with your meals. In which case I can only ask – have you been talking to my wife?

In our e-book, Wining & Dining, I quote the American writer Adam Gopnik, who said “Dinner with water is dinner for prisoners.” Despite all of this cost-cutting palaver, there must, as CJ says, be wine, and it mustn’t be so foul that it makes your armpits prickle.

So if we are going to adjust our wining and dining to the economic climate, then perhaps we should look first at the assumptions of the wine merchants. Because frankly, it’s no good going on pretending that we are all scarfing down game, lobster, truffles and foie gras. We need to be eating things like sausages, stews and toad-in-the-hole. And we need the wines to match.

When we were told that a glass of wine was our ticket to a sophisticated lifestyle, you can see why the wine trade wanted to associate their product with high living and lavish dishes. But if they want us to treat wine as an everyday drink, then it needs to be matched with everyday food. There is no point in telling us that it goes with Downton-style banquets, or Masterchef “fayne dayning”.

Berry Bros & Rudd are arguably England’s poshest wine merchants. They not only sell wines to match with foie gras, they sell the foie gras itself. Yet they are surprisingly egalitarian in their food and wine matching proposals. You can find cottage pie, meatballs, Irish stew and fishcakes on their pairing list, along with the more predictable wild boar, partridge and lobster.

But others inadvertently reveal their true colours. Waitrose, for example, prickle when they are described as a “middle-class” supermarket, and proudly proclaim their brand price matching against Tesco. Yet they undo it all, by jauntily suggesting of an £8.99 carmenere that you “Try it with roast goose”.

And Majestic Wine still offers more pairings for game (22 wines) than for sausages (12), surely an inaccurate reflection of their hard-strapped customers’ eating habits. 

(Out of sheer mischief, I therefore put “horse” into Majestic’s search box. It actually came back with Sassaiolo Rosso Piceno Superiore. Bizarrely, it’s because this wine was supposedly used by Hannibal to rub down his cavalry horses, to give them new vigour. That is presumably some kind of recommendation. Next week in the wine tasting, Vick’s Vapour Rub.)

Tesco themselves match their wines to a game-free diet, probably more representative of their clientele – beef, chicken, lamb, pork, fish and, er… curry. They do have the grace to admit that “Generally wines do not go well with hot, spicy dishes as the heat affects your taste buds” – before proceeding to recommend a couple. 

But we are heading down a rocky road; it’s but a short step from curries to takeaway doner kebabs and layby burgers. Are we really to recommend wines to accompany dishes from the low-rent category? “A nice spicy red which could mask the flavour of a dubious processed meat lasagne”? 

“A crisp rosé which will bring out the best in any Pot Noodle”?

No, far better to stick with traditional British austerity dishes. Like toad-in-the-hole, that combination of meat and Yorkshire pudding, described in an 1861 recipe as employing “bits and pieces of any kind of meat, which are to be had cheapest at night when the day's sale is over." 

Nowadays, you don’t have to wait for the night, you just visit the supermarket, where you get your “bits and pieces of any kind of meat” like it or not. Sausages are typical; an anatomy lesson in a skin.

The last time I cooked this, I bemoaned the fact that  such “bog-standard” dishes rarely featured in merchants’ tasting notes. Then some nice people got in touch from Tanner’s, an independent merchant, to say that they recommended their house Merlot, Pays d’Oc  specifically for toad-in-the-hole, and that despite my misgivings about merlot, they would like me to try a bottle. It is surprisingly easy to persuade us to try wines – merchants, PRs and winemakers please note – and a bottle of the 2011 duly arrived the next day, conveniently not when I was in the toilet. 

And jolly good it was, too. Silky and succulent, with a bit of a finish raising it above run-of-the-mill merlot. And yes, its smooth juiciness does indeed balance the spiciness of a Cumberland sausage. I would say it’s a nicely upholstered sofa of a wine – soft and comfortable if unremarkable. Tanner’s themselves are honest enough to describe it as “a nursery-slope vino”. It certainly won’t frighten any horse. 

This is what we need – wine which is recommended for dishes we actually eat. It cost £7.40 a bottle, but drinks like a couple of quid more. And think how much the toad-in-the-hole has saved over a Waitrose roast goose.

PK

Tanker Wine - More Ventoux

So I'm having a drink with a pal who is normally something of a genius when it comes to original and creative thinking, and the pal says, this is what Sediment needs: We need to acquire a small tanker, or bowser, drive it down to the South of France, fill it full of rough red wine, the sort that retails down there at 50p a litre, drive it all the way back to England, turn up at one of the many Farmers' Markets you find in and around London, and sell the contents of the bowser at 50p a litre + transport costs, piping it into the customers' own receptacles through a petrol hose, like that Ventoux I bought all those years ago.

'It can't fail,' he says. 'It is one hundred per cent guaranteed success.'

As ideas go, I reply, this is less terrible than his other idea of building a novelty bubble car in the shape of an inverted Paris wine goblet, and driving it through the vineyards of Burgundy as a promotional tool, but only just.

'No, no,' he says, 'you're not seeing the full potential. Just think, the customer brings a plastic bottle, or flagon, to the Farmers' Market, and gets it filled up with authentic cheap red wine at an authentic price. How desirable is that? Maybe by a guy wearing a stripy vest and a beret.'

On a spectrum of terribleness, in fact, I would put it on a par with PK's now-discarded plan to launch the Sediment Roadshow, a kind of rock'n'roll wine tour ('Hallo, Oswestry!') in which PK and I charge an audience money to drink taster samples of bad wine, which we then disparage from the stage, amid bright lights and possibly dry ice. It has taken me a year to convince PK that I would rather eat loft insulation than submit to such an ordeal, but just writing it down, now, will probably set him off again.

'All you do,' continues the pal, 'is buy the stuff in sufficient quantity. You can't lose.'

I point out that the moment the bowser crosses the Channel, it will attract an eye-watering level of duty, which will instantaneously wipe out the bargain-basement advantage the grog originally enjoyed. Assuming, that is, it's survived the 700-mile drive, swilling about in a stainless steel container like the contents of a readymix cement truck.

He wrinkles his brow, as another insight comes in to land. 'No, you don't want a metal tanker. You want an actual oak wine vat, a really huge one, with Sediment painted on the side, attached to the back of the truck. People are going to queue up. The moment they see the huge vat, with the Frenchman in the vest. You could hire a Frenchman, a real one.'

But the staves of the barrel will move as the thing bounces over potholes, and the wine will leak out, and the Frenchman will be quite expensive in his own right, I say, not knowing why I'm even trying to rebut the concept - which seems to have acquired a life of its own, a Golem idea which cannot be killed.

'And the petrol hose coming out of it.'

There must be something about wine itself - some profound sense that it is not, still, quite culturally routine enough to be simply taken or left, used or not used, that draws the twitching hand of novelty towards it. I cannot believe that anyone would direct the same energetic whimsicality to grapefruit juice, say, or potatoes. Wine is still, at base, such an alien thing that it needs crazy repackaging, or off-the-wall tasting encounters, or special train journeys through wine-producing regions, or madcap stunts at Farmers' Markets, just to break through the otherness of it all.

But there it is. My fortune is going to be made by a huge, mobile barrel of undrinkable and overpriced red wine with a spreading puddle beneath it, served through a petrol hose by a comedy Frenchman, into washed-out 2-litre Coke bottles, and bought by people who can readily afford good, drinkable wines, properly presented in glass bottles with labels.

'If you can't see it,' he says, 'you're mad.'

CJ

The worst wine I have ever drunk – Leyda Reserva Syrah 2011

I am aware of King Lear’s statement, that "The worst is not, So long as we can say, 'This is the worst' ". Nevertheless. This is the worst wine I have ever drunk.

It started, like so many things in life, well enough. I got an e-mail from a merchant about Leyda Reserva Syrah 2011, which declared, “It has attracted wildly enthusiastic journalistic praise...   at the price it seemed almost too good to be true.” 
That price was £8.75 a bottle.

But I happened to know that it was on offer at Majestic, not only for less, but with a further temporary reduction because it came from Chile. So, of course, I bought some, with an unattractive feeling of smugness at having somehow outsmarted someone.

Now, I must confess to a growing disillusionment with Majestic. It’s become so big that the bulk in which they have to buy in order to supply every branch seems to mitigate against the little, quirky discovery. The piled boxes begin to have the feel of a calculated marketing gimmick, rather than an illustration of their lack of frippery.

And we all now realise that the actual price of a wine is the reduced, “buy two” price. Less, of course, those cyclical geographic discounts – 20% off all Chilean wine that particular month, because… well, because it’s Chile’s turn. The following month it’s somewhere else. Anyone who pays the full, single bottle price is a mug. But I, I had my bargain…

And then, one Saturday night, I tasted the wine.

How low can one sink? Well, the bar on Sediment has always been set lower than a dachsund’s undercarriage.

But this has a taste I can only describe as reminiscent of the disinterred. I have known it said of wines that they have something of the farmyard about them; here, that something is silage.

It is absurdly, intensely blackcurrant, with this pervasive rotting taste and odour. Oh, and it has the consistency of catarrh.

It was repellent. I put it on a shelf and, like a Porton Down chemist who has inadvertently opened the world’s last vial of smallpox, pondered what to do with it now.

Throwing it away was like an admission of defeat. Returning to it had the threat level of returning to a lit firework. I can’t imagine what you might cook with it that could possibly balance its flavour – andouilette, perhaps?

I supposed I could drive back to Majestic and return it, but I worry that they’re going to make an issue out of it, and claim that it’s just my opinion against theirs. “And look at it this way, sir – who drinks the most wine, us or you?,” a discussion in which my wife might get involved.

So a week later, summoning my courage, I open the second bottle. (Because of course, to get the Majestic discount, I had to buy two…) It was marginally more drinkable than the first, ie I could actually drink it; but that may have been because my palate was clenched in anticipation, like a boxer expecting a punch. Essentially, bottle #2 established the fact that bottle #1 had not just been spoiled. The foulness was a characteristic of the wine.

I have now discovered that I am not alone in this judgment. Perhaps not surprisingly, the word “foul” is absent from Majestic’s own description. But a selection of words which feature in their customers’ reviews include “dreadful”, “nasty” and “medicinal”.

One customer gave it one star out of five, only because the Majestic system doesn’t allow you to award zero. I even put in my own, one star review, just to reinforce the position.

So how, then, do Majestic arrive at a rating of 3.5 stars?

I’m just an O Level mathematician, but it appears to me that from a total of 7 published customer reviews, this wine has achieved a total of 14 stars. My pygmy brain suggests that is an average of 2 stars. Not, as the Majestic site has been displaying, an average rating of 3.5 stars. This is clearly a 40% failure of a wine, not a 70% success.

And if half of your customers report that a wine is “nasty”, “dreadful”, “appalling” and “strange”, surely it merits a better response than simply fixing the star rating? Or is this why “This product is not currently available” from the Majestic website?

Never mind. Just think yourselves lucky.

PK

Simpler Things - Waitrose Grenache

So in a fit of helpless nostalgia-seeking, I find a pile of colour magazines from the early 1970s and churn through them looking for whatever past I think I might have to thank for my current condition. The contents are intrinsically complex, the early decade riddled with a nostalgia of its own as the bright promise of the 1960s turns out to be a bit crappier than anyone had anticipated, leading to an enthusiastic rediscovery of earlier styles (Victoriana, Deco, nineteenth-century sideburns, Regency high-waisted skirts) to take away the taste of the present.

But also much simpler, in that the hydra-headed monster of consumer choice is still relatively under control: which means that the stuff in the adverts between the articles, the stuff you can buy with your rapidly depreciating currency (inflation hovering around 10% per annum in the UK, rocketing to over 24% in '75) enjoys a much reduced taxonomic range, and doesn't have much going for it when you do buy it. A trawl through the ads is therefore blissfully underwhelming. A new Ford Granada gives you a push-button radio with speakers front and rear! Warerite offers a better range of standard sheet sizes than any other laminate manufacturer! And if you want some wine with your food? Blue Nun, from Sichel: Right through the meal. Not just one less thing to worry about, twenty less things. Forty!

If Blue Nun doesn't do it for you, Deinhard Green Label ('A crisp, refreshing wine characteristic of the finest Moselles') should provide adequate cover, as will Goldener Oktober ('Cool, clear, light-hearted'), or Deinhard Hanns Christof ('A smooth, well-balanced hock'), or, for red, Bull's Blood ('Full-bodied'), or for sparkling, Asti Martini ('A wine with finesse and perfect balance'), or, indeed, Marimont ('The light, delicate, sparkling wine from France'), at a very reasonable £1.20 a bottle. Top and tail it with a Harvey's Bristol Cream ('The best sherry in the world'); and a Cockburn's Special Reserve ('A very fine bottle of port') and you're away. Quite apart from which, you're probably smoking so much (did everyone smoke in 1973? Judging by the pictures, then, yes), any subtleties in the drink are going to be as evanescent as starlight reflected in a puddle. Life couldn't be simpler.

Except: a little cloud, like a man's hand, in the form of an advert from Mary Quant - of all people, the famous fashion designer - who, in 1974, is running her own wine import business, Mary Quant (Wine Shippers) of Chelsea. And she is going to shatter the conventions of mainstream English wine drinking by bringing us a properly-sourced Côtes du Rhône, a respectable Blanc de Blancs and (something for the ladies, no doubt) a Bordeaux Demi-Sec, all on mail order. 'Appellation Contrôlée wine for around £1 a bottle,' she announces, and while part of me leaps up at the chance to get away from the Deinhard Hanns Christof being boosted as if it were a '49 Margaux, the rest of me sees, for all Ms. Quant's admirable high-mindedness, the dawn of the beginning of the Modern Age, with its domesticated wine snobbery, its specialisms, its drudgery of choice.

The nostalgia trail ends here, in fact, with Mary Quant, not least because of what I am about to drink when I finally put away this stash of yellowing old colour supplements and fashion magazines: some of that Waitrose Grenache which I originally bought to try and tame my deadly CDR. Why have I bought more of the stuff? It's not bad, a nice mix of, frankly, fresh squid and fireworks in the nose - and close enough to the psycho CDR to suggest that the CDR was mostly Grenache, but without quite that CDR's desire to inflict harm - but it's not that great. I must have bought it on muscle memory or some similar low-level autonomic impulse. It's slightly miraculous, I suppose, that I can get such a wine on impulse, in suburban London, in the first place. But am I getting any more real pleasure, real quality-of-life pleasure, than if I were necking a bottle of Goldener Oktober and considering myself rather a swell for doing so? Exactly.

And if that makes me sound like an old man who yearns to grow a pair of scimitar-shaped sideburns and drive around in a Ford Granada with a beige vinyl roof while smoking a Rothmans King Size, well, I'm not going to say it ain't so.

CJ

Wine – delivered into mine hand

This wine delivery business – it’s such a palaver…

Oh, they make it sound easy. Give your address, name the day, pick your time. But it’s so much more complicated than that.

At one time, when I worked in an office, I would have my wine delivered there. Its clanking announced its contents to all and sundry across the open-plan, and no doubt other employees thought this was evidence of a profligate lifestyle typical of senior management. 

I’m luckier now, as I often work from home. But it’s only a marginal improvement to have a delivery van arrive outside one’s house, proclaiming its provenance in its paintwork. Every curtain-twitcher in the street can see you’re having a load of wine delivered, and can assemble their own little bundle of judgments as to your wealth, lifestyle and alcohol consumption.

(Later confirmed, of course, by examination of your recycling box…)

However, I can now theoretically name a day and pick a time when I will be home. And, significantly, when Mrs K will be out. So as not to trouble, unnecessarily, her concerns about infelicitous expenditure, and overindulgent consumption. The wine can then be spirited into the cellar, where its presence will not be detected amongst the bottles which are Not To Be Touched.

I have now had experience of completing several sets of merchants’ instructions for wine deliveries. Sometimes they make supposedly helpful suggestions, like “Is there a shed or garage where we could leave it if you are out?” No, there is not – because if the shed or garage had open access for deliveries, I would not be spending my money on wine, but on replacing all of my stolen tools.

Some also offer a two-and-a-half hour window during which the delivery should occur. This is all well and good, but at some point during that time I am going to have to visit the lavatory. Dare I? The last time I tried it, no sooner had business commenced than the doorbell rang. I had to yell loudly enough to be heard down on the pavement that “I’m in the toilet!”, an announcement both surprising and unnecessarily informative to several passers-by and next-door’s nanny.

This time, I was sent a very nice text, to tell me that my wine would arrive between 12 and 2.30pm.

At 11.15, the doorbell rang.

There outside the house is the emblazoned van, informing the neighbours that my consumption is now so great I must have wine delivered a dozen bottles at a time. And there inside the house is Mrs K, still working in her study.

Here’s a word of advice for couriers. Wine is like a baby – better delivered when due.

Fortunately, I was not in the toilet. Also fortunately, I was closer to the front door than Mrs K.

Speed was of the essence. “Anything to sign?” I ask brusquely, anticipating one of those ridiculous handheld electronic devices they ask you to “sign” with a stylus. (Few of us have experience of writing on glass, apart from the “yoot” who etch tags on to bus windows, and they are more likely to be recipients of a custodial sentence than a wine delivery.)

“Just this piece of paper. They asked me to have one of those electronic things, and I said, ‘How’d you expect me to hold that and a case of wine?’” 

Well, let’s not get into that on my doorstep right now, thank you very much. Last month we had 15 metres of skirting board delivered, and that chap managed it, but frankly I just want to get this case inside and downstairs, before…

“Is that something for me?” Mrs K’s dulcet tones precede her steps downstairs. I am caught in the hallway, case in hands, like a dog with a string of sausages.

“What?”

“That box.”

I think I would be pushing my luck were I to retort, “What box?”

“Ah. No. It’s just, er, a case of wine actually…”

“Oh! A case of wine. A case.” 

This emphasis does not mean that she suffers any category confusion about the actual concept of a case of wine. No; it is to convey that to her, “case” suggests a suspect level of both consumption and expenditure.

Fortunately, my salvation is staring me in the face – almost literally, since I still have a case of wine clutched to my chest. On the top of the box is a sticker. In most cases, I would be embarrassed by it, since obviously I aspire to be the kind of person whose cases are labelled something like “12 x Latour”. However, this one reads “Under £6 Reds”.

I gesture towards it with my chin. Mrs K observes, then moves on, with a departing, descending “Hmmm…” which, roughly translated, means “Alright this time…”. 

I take the case downstairs, and stash my embarrassingly cheap bottles away. But I wonder:

Why not save us all a load of trouble, and put those stickers on every case…?

PK