Cheap Wine and a Three Day Growth

I drink cask Lambrusco. There… I said it.

Actually, I’m a bit partial to Fruity Lexia as well. We’re a long line of cheap wine drinkers, the Bogans. My parents kept a cask of Tropicana in the fridge for guests and special occasions. I graduated to West Coast Coolers. The rest is history.

I don’t mind a bit of wine tasting. Mainly because it’s free. I love the concept of going into a shop and trying free stuff. If you choose your time at Woolies you can almost get morning tea on a Saturday. OK, so it’s all crackers and cheap cold cuts, but it’s still worth it.

Same with wine tasting. Any free grog’s a bonus in this life. You just don’t know what you’re going to get though. Unless you’re with an expert. I’m very rarely with an expert wine drinker (given that Brad the Tradie can really just tell the difference between Jim Beam and Jack Daniels…)

Given how close I now live to one of Australia’s premier wine regions, it seemed only fair to take my VGF Smurfette of the Outlets to drink some free grog. And she’s married to a true expert. The manager of a chain grog store. This woman knows her alcohol.

After playing Paper, Rock, Scissors for three hours to decide who’d be the designated driver, we felt it only fair to call off the negotiations and book a wine tour that picked up and dropped off at the Bed and Breakfast.

You know,the kind of too-ahh where the purple party bus turns up just after breakkie and takes you on all day piss-up. Like a pub crawl, with less flannelette and more camembert. A whole heap of people who begin as strangers and end as … well… strangers singing YMCA and That’s Amore on a mini- bus with a fully sober and suffering driver called Silvano.

So here was Blossy… with a three day growth (ie, hadn’t shaved my legs since Monday) on a fully loaded party bus with Smurfette of the Palette. She who can identify top notes… and stuff. She can swirl. Sniff. And man… can she DRINK. Our rule for the wine too-ahh? We agreed we could not say no to any alcohol offered throughout the day. Which totalled (yes, we carefully kept count)… thirty seven tastings and one full glass (with lunch). About one and half litres. Which, you know, is fine if it’s only wine, but we also did shots at a liquers factory. And we weren't the worst off on the bus, let me tell you.

The difference between Smurfette of the Palette and myself is that I have a very simple system of rating wine. I call it ‘Yummy or Yukky’.

It goes like this:

Wine tasting Chick dressed in llama fleece: This is a very expensive bottle of award winning Cabernet Merlot with full bodied blah blah blah and a pretty sticker.

Blossy: Ohhhhh NOICE. Filler her up luv.

Smurfette: Ooooo, I like that one. Can you feel the raspberries?

Blossy: Nup. Yukky. (yet swallow anyway).

We’ve determined a system for my palette. I like cheap wine. I stopped reading the ‘tasting notes’ and just labelled each wine as ‘yummy’ or ‘yukky’. And yes, without fail, the yummy ones were the cheap ones. Well, if you count between ten and thirty bucks as cheap.

So after driving around in the rain in a mini-bus Silvano decided that we’d had enough (well, it was getting dark) and dropped us all off. And Smurfette and I WENT OFF. We are part-ay animals. We….then.. umm… went back to the B and B to drink some more. In our pyjamas. Watching Masterchef and eating leftover cheese and posh pesto. The way I figure it, you’re already in bed. May as well just finish the bottle, then have a shower and a pandeine.

Today when we self-toured the region (yeah, I decided to drive given that my palette sux the big one) at one posh winery they let Smurfie taste an $85 award winning something-or-other red. She can tell the difference between that and cask wine. In fact, when Smurfette bought a bottle close to $30 at Leeuwin to have with dinner when we got back to Beachville, my main concern was ‘holy crap! What will we eat with it? Snags or chicken burgers?’ (don’t panic, we called into Coles and grabbed a lamb roast to do the Cab Sav justice). Posh wine makes me hungry. Good thing there were M and M's in the cupboard.

So… shall Blossy be spoiled and have to convert to cellar door only bottled wine? Nah. I reckon once Smurfie goes back to Boganville I’ll get the Lambrusco out of hiding.

Long live cheap wine! Unless someone else is paying.

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‘Cheap Wine and Three Day Growth’ – Cold Chisel, 1980.