The Wine Snob

I once bought a bottle of wine from an off licence (liquor store if you are American), and it cost 99p. It wasn’t the low price that attracted me to it, it was the name of the wine – something like Cheap Plonk – effectively stating exactly what it was – a very cheap bottle indeed.

It’s worse than that, dear reader, because I was taking this wine to a party. I can almost feel you shifting uneasily in your seat at the thought of my impending embarrassment at presenting the hosts of a dinner party with a bottle of red camel piss in order to contribute something to the drinks cabinet, almost certainly thriving under the addition of £20 bottles of fine wine from the other more generous guests.

Don’t worry – it wasn’t that kind of party. In fact, it was a normal house party full of drunken people, all consuming their own alcohol. The reason I bought the wine was because I was young, already half-caned and ready to drink anything.

My memories of the party are vague but I do recall having my first glass of my bargain booze and thinking “actually, this isn’t at all bad!”.

Fast forward to 1998 when I was in France with the family. In a supermarket, as you can guess, the choice of wine was huge and I found myself staring at rows and rows of wine trying to work out which one would complement a nice meal in the sun outside the apartment we were staying in.

I decided to try an experiment. I bought a cheap bottle of wine, again costing about one pound sterling, but this time I also splashed out and bought another bottle that cost around ten pounds.

My plan was to try a glass of each and see if I could tell the difference.

Let me tell you this, dear reader – they were both beautiful.

Now I can imagine a wine snob reading this and thinking:

“You absolute heathen! Your taste buds must have been burned off your tongue!”.

Wine snobbery is a similar ailment to pseudo intellectualism. Pseudo intellectuals praise vomit stains as wonderful art just to appear clever. Wine snobs praise expensive bottles of wine just to appear sophisticated or show off their wealth.

Of course, there are exceptions, but mostly I consider somebody who is willing to splash out a huge wad of cash on a bottle of wine at a fancy restaurant is just careless and/or slightly mad.

They are basically show offs.

Except, I am not impressed. I would be more impressed with somebody who bought the house wine to be honest.

I have a couple of rules about buying wine:

(a) In a supermarket, I only buy a bottle of wine costing more than £3.99 if it is reduced in price from £7.99 o £3.99.

(b) In a restaurant, I will never buy a bottle of wine costing more than my main course.

Restaurants make most of their money on wine. When you sit down at the table of a good restaurant, the first thing they do is present you with the wine list. When you open it, the price ranges from around the price of a main course to stupid money. And if you are unfortunate to be sharing your table with a wine snob, you will find that to only are they willing to spend their cash on the most expensive wines, they also speak utter crap.

There is no way that I want to spend £200 on a bottle of wine in a restaurant when I can get just as much enjoyment from a £10 bottle of wine. Think about it – the same drink but it costs 20 times more and the difference in taste will never ever be worth the difference in price, I don’t care whether you are a wine connoisseur or not. You may as well flush your wallet down the toilet.

Now I don’t mind people wasting their cash on expensive wine – that’s their prerogative. What I do mind, however, is the pseudo intellectual style bullshit that invariably pours forth from their mouths when they take their first sip of £200 wine:

“Oh my goodness. The bouquet of this wine is astounding; it’s the perfect combination of peach and cantaloupe, accompanied by a hint of cherry flirting with a gathering of blueberry in a two hundred year old oak casket. It tastes divine, like a tide of flavour from a heavenly ocean washing up on your tongue. It speaks to me; I’m getting banana, blueberry, strawberry with a hint of a rare Brazilian cherry found only the shores of the Amazon in an area of the rain forest untouched by human beings. This nectar is transporting my tongue into orgasmic ecstasy.”

What a load of old bollocks.



We recently went to a wine tasting event in Manchester, where we met three very famous wine connoisseurs from the television. As somebody who hates cookery programmes, I did not know any of them, but I am told that they are famous.

Perhaps you’ve heard of them. Oz Clarke, Olly Smith and Tim Atkin.

I shook hands with Oz Clarke as I walked in, thinking he was just the event organiser. I only discovered who he actually was when Mrs PM, a wine lover, bought one of his books. Basically, the event was very enjoyable and I was able to try quite a few whites, reds and rosés, most of which were very pleasant.

At first, the words of the people offering the wine passed me by and as I sipped the wine, their words went in one ear and out of the other without my brain registering their words. However, as I got slightly more merry I actually started talking to them and asking them what was special about their wine. Some switched to wine snob mode and started talking about “ a hint of fruit salad with an undertone of mahogany” but I found that quite a few of them actually told me how suited to various meals the wines were, which was actually very interesting.

And as the event wore on, I wobbled up to the people and said “What’s your most expensive wine?”

Maybe my taste buds were numb but, to be honest, the top end wines didn’t taste much different from the cheaper ones.

So, what did I get out of the event, apart from proving all that I have said about wines?

WelI, I bought some cheese from a cheese company in Cheshire that experimented with different flavours. Yes that’s right – I went to a wine event and walked out with several pounds of weird cheese.

Nevertheless, I did enjoy how some of the wines complemented the cheese.

And that’s about as pretentious as I get:

“This lump of mature English cheddar complements this Sauvignon Blanc”.

Rest assured, dear reader – both were cheap.

Food Glorious Food

I was recently tagged by Kath, from Blurb From The Burbs to have a go at this food-based meme. I usually steal memes so this is almost a novel experience for me (I have been tagged legitimately once before). It does make me think about the morality of stealing memes. Actually that's a lie - I couldn't give two hooots! I will continue to steal them.


However, I will walk on the legal side of the meme line – just this once. Unless of course Kath stole it – in which case – oops I did it again!

Here goes:

1. Whats your #1 comfort food?

I’m sad to say that it’s cheese. I love the stuff, particularly mature cheddar. I’m not that fussy though; I will eat cheese from any country in the world – as long as it doesn’t taste like old socks (which some do). If there is cheese in the house and I am even slightly peckish, I will eat it. In fact, contrary to the urban myth, it actually DOES give you weird dreams. Mind you, I have weird dreams all the time – I won’t go into those here. The only cheese I don’t like is that blue veined rubbish, like Stilton. It tastes as foul as it looks.

2. If you were stranded on a desert island what 5 foods would you want to have with you to survive on?

If there was a sand-powered fridge, I would say:

Cheese, eggs, bacon, pork and beer.

If such a thing didn’t exist, I would have to be more sensible, so for the purpose of this question I am going to assume that a sand powered fridge does actually exist.

3. What are your signature dishes? (What dishes are you known for making?)

I can rustle up a decent pasta dish as long as I have pre-cooked sauce or pesto. It’s quick and easy to make, so over the years I’ve honed the technique, adding bits and pieces of food to it, including, of course, cheese.

4. It’s Friday night, you don't know what to cook. You opt for?

To be honest I’d rather eat out on a Friday night, but, if I had to cook, I would opt for a Chinese stir fry – not as easy as pasta but easy enough.

5. What's your ultimate food weakness?

Cheese – bad for me but delicious.

6. What food can you soooo not eat?

Rhubarb! One of my very first posts on this blog cursed this disgusting vegetation. Here’s an excerpt from my rant about it:

Rhubarb is the only food of any description that makes me throw up. The taste is revolting and activates a cataclysmic chain reaction deep within my abdomen. Not only does it taste revolting, it looks utterly repulsive. And it is poisonous (well the leaves are anyway). I would love to know which masochist spotted a rhubarb plant and thought “Now there’s a strange looking piece of vegetation; I think I’ll stew that”. That person is one of my least favourite people in history. Without that person, my sadistic infant and junior school teachers wouldn’t have rammed rhubarb down my throat and instilled in me a morbid fear of school puddings.

7. You need a drink, you grab a.....?

On Friday and Saturday evening - beer. Or on a school night or during the day at work - a cup of tea. I think I would be sacked if I drank beer at work.

8. What's the most decadent dish you've ever had?

Since I travel abroad on business a few times a year, I sometimes end up in oddly uncomfortable and extremely posh and pretentious restaurants ordering all sorts of decadent crap. I think I will plum for “thousand year old eggs”, which was a starter in a wonderful Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong. It looked repulsive – a dark green yolk in a clear brown goo. When I put it in my mouth, I said to a colleague: “Mmm this tastes just like egg!”. A second later the real taste hit me. It was like eating a solid fart. It was utterly revolting and tasted worse than it looked. I’ve never eaten one since. Here’s a picture.

9. What's your favourite type of food?

I don’t really have a favourite type of food. I do love Mexican food, Indian food and Chinese food so I will cheat and claim that I can’t distinguish between them.

10. Favourite Dish?

That’s a tough one – probably chicken cordon bleu – with tons of cheese!

11. If your partner could take you to any restaurant, where would you go?

I would go to Café Deco on Victoria Peak in Hong Kong. There is a wide range of food there and not a sinlge 1000 year old egg to be found. The view is spectacular. I get a fuzzy feeling inside when I’m there with Mrs PM – fabulous memories and fabulous food in my favourite city outside England. Here's the view from Cafe Deco:

Fab isn't it?

12. Soup or Salad?

Soup – every time. I’m a sucker for chicken and mushroom soup, although I’m usually tempted by any flavour to be honest.

13. Buffet, Take-Out or Sit-Down?

Sit down – unless I’m broke – in which case take away. You can’t beat a bag of fish and chips.

14. What's the most impressive meal you've ever made?

Mrs PM threw a dinner party and forced me to contribute. Worse than that, since she decided that starters and desserts were harder, she made me cook the main meal. Even worse than that, she didn’t even allow me to select the dish – she had chosen it for me. It was some kind of risotto and, as I was following the recipe to the letter, I began to have serious doubts about how good it would be. Thankfully, it went down very well. Nobody was sick and people claimed to have liked it. I’ve refused to make another one.

15. Do you consider yourself a good cook?

No – not at all. I can cook basic stuff but when it comes to anything more difficult than pasta or a quick stir fry I am seriously out of my depth. Mrs PM disagrees though; if she had her way, I would be attempting all sorts of culinary masterpieces. She is one of those irritating people who can throw together a gastronomic delight out of anything. So why she makes me cook is a huge mystery to me.

16. Do you know what vichyssoise is?

I think I dated a girl called Vicky Sauce once but I guess you don’t mean her. The answer is no.

17. Who's your favourite TV cook?

I despise them all. They have a one way ticket to Mars when I become World President. Actually, that’s not quite true. Gordon Ramsay is so rude that he makes me laugh and I quite enjoyed watching Keith Floyd becoming steadily more drunk as he cooked a meal. The two worst offenders and the only ones who make me rant mercilessly at my cowering TV are Jamie Oliver and Anthony Worrall Thompson. Every time Oliver opens his mouth, I scream “SHUT UP! Just shut up! Say PUKKA once more and I’ll be on the next train to London to throw you in the Thames.” Worrall Thompson has a similar effect. GET THEM OFF MY TELLY!!

18. Can you name at least three famous cooking personalities?

I think I named four in the last question, so yes.

19. Homemade or homemade from a box?

Home made (as long as I am not the one who made it)

20. Tag three more foodies...

You can steal the meme if you want. I don’t care. I like to live dangerously. That’s why I eat the food I cook.

If you do steal the meme, let me know and I'll comment on your answers.