Beers, wines and spirits

My father used to drink brown ale.  I never did acquire a taste for it and, when I started drinking alcoholic beverages, my choice was the then current fashion - lager and lime.  The short (or spirit) of choice was rum and black(currant).  Of course, my tastes changed over the years and I eventually drank the same as most other people - bitter - with lager left for continental holidays.  None of that chemical brew for me, thank yo very much.  My decision to leave lager well alone was reinforced one summer when we were on holiday in Switzerland.  It might have been the hot weather or it might not, but one afternoon after I had enjoyed a cooling lager in the warm sun I developed a splitting headache.  This was within five minutes of finishing my drink.  When it happened again I swore off lager for good.  I did rather assume it was the chemicals in lager that were causing the problem and, once back in England, continued drinking the occasional pint of bitter.  And the pints were just occasional.  But in the end even English beer was causing headaches, even half a pint, so I switched to Scotch, but that was too expensive.  Nowadays I drink wine instead.

All that drivel is rather a long way to reach the point where I say that the Old Bat and I enjoy a glass of wine with our evening meal.  Indeed, we enjoy a glass and a half each, which means that a bottle of wine lasts us for two meals, which in turn is a complicated way of saying that we drink half a bottle of wine between us with our evening meal.  We are not winoes or alcies, but we do enjoy our wine.  You will realise, then, that I was rather concerned when my rheumatology consultant, when talking about prescribing methotrexate for me, asked about my drinking habits, explaining that this wonder drug and alcohol just don't get it together.   OK, we could have easily stopped drinking wine, but all the same, it was good to hear the consultant say that my couple of units a day would not affect the methowotsit.

We don't drink expensive wine.  In fact, most of the wine we drink is a French supermarket's own label and costs about £3 a bottle top whack.  Wine snobs can turn up their noses, but we are happy with what we drink.  Those tasting notes that mention aromas of tobacco, red fruit or the garrigue are completely wasted on me as I can never distinguish any of the aromas (my poor sense of smell) and can rarely taste anything except excessive oaking (apart from the wine itself, of course).

We drink more red than white and are happy with the Auchan merlot or their Cahors, Ventoux, Corbieres, etc etc.  As for whites, my real preferred choice is sauvignon blanc from New Zealand but I am happy with muscadet (provided it is sur lie) or - a current favourite - the chenin blanc Secrets de Chai.  We finished off the second half of this bottle last night with the fish pie and thoroughly enjoyed both the food and the wine.

Tonight we will eat a roast meal, the traditional Sunday dinner.  I don't know what meat the Old Bat has on the menu - if I were a betting man my money would be on lamb - but I suspect we will be drinking the other half of a bottle of Ventoux.  Neither last night's nor tonight's wine would make the top ten of a real wine buff but the best advice I have ever seen from a wine expert was in last weekend's paper:  "if you like it," he said, "drink it".

I'll raise a glass to that.



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So the bridge pictures are finished.  At least, I have posted all those that are not near duplicates and that I am prepared to make public.   But it occurs to me that a bridge in its simplest form is nothing more than an arch, so that leads me on to post this picture of the southern gate to the Roman town of Glanum down in Provence.  This dates from about the time of Christ and is remarkable well-preserved for 2000 years old.. Unfortunately, the Old Bat didn't feel up to exploring the ruins and I couldn't leave her sitting in the car for an hour to do it alone so I had to content myself with just this little bit and the nearby mausoleum.