Like every other blog in existence, it’s been FUCKING AGES since I updated mine. But I bought some WINE. I’m not going to lie, I’m already a fair way through it. I got told I was contrary by a tiny witch today. It hurt, man.

Anyway, despite the screw top, this wine was half price in Tesco and Looks Well Posh, so I slung it in my basket along with my ten silk cut and chicken kiev two pack* and marched to the checkout, to be served by a young lady called Stacey. Stacey looked mounfully at my wine, clearly wishing she was sitting at home in her skinny jeans, wishing she was dating a boy with sleeve tattoos and a liking for shouty guitar music. Maybe.

BUT ON TO THE BOOZE. This wine smells like strawberries and damp. I LOVE it. The strawberries continue on the tongue, but they have now been dipped in petrol. God this is tasty. I’m going to be fucking trashed tonight. It’s lucky I hate my job.

10/10!

*mixed rocket salad and Welsh goats cheese

I snarfed this from my mother’s stash of red, which extends from the kitchen into the garage. Oh, the thought of all that future drinking! It makes me wet, nauseous and incarcerated just THINKING about it. Anyway, on to the beverage at hand. Dark as blood, this vintage, with the musky scent of wet wood and damp newspaper. On the tongue it tastes like you’d imagine your gran’s cherry wood bureau to taste if you liquified it – inky and knotty, with an overlay of chestnut glaze. But that’s pushing it, frankly. Pushing it up the hard shoulder in the middle of August on the M42.

6/10

Praps it’s my humble roots, but rosé always looks like unset jelly to me and I somehow expect it to taste the same. This is no exception, however the scent betrays these humble origins like a posh cunt trying to make the best of it in a Wetherspoons. There’s cranberries, marzipan and brown sugar on the nose, but the first thing you notice on quaffing it down your gob is a real kick to the back of the throat, as if it was laced with chillies – a result, I think (cos I know fuck all about this really and am just a wannabe sommelier with alcoholic parents) of the high boozes to fruity water content. I genuinely can’t tell if I like it. There’s something about the taste of this wine that seems to have you up against the wall, challenging you to like it. The more I drink, however, the less tasty it becomes. AVOID.

3/10 – one point for the environment preservation advertised on the bottle, one for the smell and one for kicking my ass.

As it is indeed the day of our glorious Patron Saint my father rightly thought that we should tosh all that French swilly for some fine English plonk, and what could be finer than some tasty cider? A better rhyme?

Very small bubbles and a yeasty smell personalise the look and nose – rather like a healthy fanny, it greets the rhinos with a deliciously musty, earthy scent. On diving on in there the bubbles vibrate off the tip of the tongue, while the taste is clearly reminiscent of the rough, scabrous rind of a Cox’s Orange Pippin, and the sharp, immediately regretted bite into a cooking apple – the flavourful equivalent of sucking in breath at a particularly nasty pole vaulting accident.

The end result is extremely subtle – almost too so – this is a cider to be enjoyed alone, as any strong flavours overpower its floral charms. As such, you have to drink an awful lot before you really get the hang of the multifarious character. What a shame.

9/10

Two things have changed my perceptions of life in the last few years. The first was orchestrated by a dear friend and ex-boyfriend of mine, Seb Patrick. Spending time at his house made me realise how brilliant cats are – previously, I had been exclusively, prejudicially, a dog person, being brought up, as I was, with two incredible border collies, Ben (l) and Sally (r). RIP.

Since then, I have embraced I can haz cheezburger, Stuff on my cat, Cats in sinks, Rolcats, and many other quality websites the peerless intarweb nurtures.

The second change was the work of Miss Nikki Morton of Ealing, who forced me to drink vast quantities of rosé wine even though I claimed I didn’t like it (cos it was pink and I’m a feminist), it being a particular favourite of hers. Difficult as this was at the time, I came to enjoy my cerise purgatory, like a sort of booze-soaked Stockholm Syndrome.

All of which brings me to this review of Chat-en-Oef rosé. On the bottle there is a drawing of a cat sitting on top of an egg, as would be expected from the appellation, however, twist the bottle round and the label proclaims the wine’s support of the RSPCA.

Now, I haven’t been able to discover the exact extent to which this tasty booze patronises the fine animal charity, however, it has filled my woefully middle class heart with momentary joy at humankind’s respect for our eukaryotic relatives in the taxonomic kingdom Animalia.

Anyway, to the job in hand! The nose is beautiful – gutsy; cigarette smoke sucked through a holder made of celery and mushrooms and peat. On the tongue, sharper notes of red in the form of port drift through, balanced, though, by the lightness of the rosé form. Nom, frankly. Buy it – support animal charities and get pissed at the same time… it’s a wonderful world that we live in.

Next week: I lick pedigree chum-sponsored Babycham off David Duchovny’s love handles.

10/10

I bought this delighful beverage from the giant Tesco in Bushey, Watford – a behemoth of capitalism who’s only redeeming feature lies in its enormous booze section. Once past the Value Lager (which may be reviewed at a later date, salary permitting) I stumbled (not in a drunken manner) into the New Zealand shelves and thought this was the same as some other tasty Quentin I bought from the crusty man in my local Wine Rack.

It was not.

However, I decided to press on and get it anyway. It’s a delightful colour – exactly what your wee should look like if properly hydrated, indicating a medicinal value to the wine even beyond it’s inebriating qualities. On the nose it’s perfumed, scents of bitter cocoa, angelica and gelatine wander about the nostrils like a crinoline skirt caught in a murderous cotton loom.

It’s not quite as good on the tongue – a little too sweet for my liking, but it would be perfect if it were to be accompanied not with nachos and instead with a tarte citron. Probably.

8/10

This tipple has caused a party in my nose AND EVERYONE’S INVITED. Strong blackberry, cigar smoke and walnut scents are jostling for prominence. On tasting the flavour rises very high in the mouth, seemingly running up to the top palatte – piquant and peppery with hints of fennel and angelica… It’s really rather tasty, but there is a sharpness that I’m not mad keen on, as if the flavour had points not curves… If that makes any sense.

And yes, I am spending this Valentine’s Day alone watching old episodes of the X-Files. I am comfortable with that, however, TAKE YOUR JUDGEMENTS AND STUFF THEM UP YOUR ARSE.

Also, I have decided to post a picture of me, so you can see what your charming reviewer’s mug looks like.

7/10

In the words of Kevin Spacey, I’m baaaaaaack. Don’t all wee your pants at once. Anyway, it’s my Dad’s 58th Birthday, so we had sparkling, bubbling booze of the type mentioned above. It’s a lovely colour. How I would imagine the beerquariam would look in reality, only without long, stringy fish poos. On the nose, notes of hay, biscuit and rose waft around, while shortbread and butter abound on the tongue. The texture of the bubbles is lovely – at once delicate and numbing, as if a good anaethetist was involved in the winemaking. I have to have my tonsils out in about six weeks, and I’m thinking of snarfing a bottle prior to the op just in case – I am having it in Hemel Hospital after all.

8/10

Gosh, it’s been a long time since I updated. If I explained why, you probably wouldn’t believe me, but I’ll give it a go. First off, I had to have my wisdom teeth out (well, on one side, the other side is scheduled for a few weeks time – horrors!) and was feeling rather under the weather. I’d also been told alcohol would loosen the blood clots, causing the gaping, empty sockets to haemorrage.

Delightful as that sounded, I decided to abstain, and was still feeling rather crud the week after, when my stomach began to hurt. The pain started off in the middle, then migrated over to the right side. After a few days of lying in bed with a hot water bottle thinking this was the worst period pain I’d ever had without an actual period (I endeavour to only bleed out of one gaping orifice at a time) I went to the doctor. On the bus. He prodded my stomach a bit, I writhed in agony, and then he told me I’d better go to hospital and arranged for a taxi to take me at once.

I know what you’re thinking – Rachel, how can this story ever end, so fascinating is it?! Still, I feel it might benefit from brevity. The next day I was operated on and my by then nasty, perforated appendix was removed and presumably thrown in some kind of raging incinerator.

Since, while attempting to recover and being on a LOT of antiobiotics, I haven’t really drunk much. I’m not going to lie and stay I abstained; one must have some pleasures during the ennui of convalescence. Yet, unable to lift my arm from weariness, I could barely press the eject button on the dvd remote while watching Alias, let alone type a whole review of some tasty booze.

Still, it will be three weeks tomorrow since the op, and I am sitting here in my drawing room enjoying a lovely bottle of red plonk with a picture of a stern and fluffy emu on it. If Queen Victoria had been an emu, the expression on her face would be exactly the one from the bottle.

It’s a fantastic colour, to start with, almost reminiscent ofthe large volumes of blood I have excreted recently, and the surface is greasy with alcohol – the high content indicating just how ripe the grapes were on plucking.  It is, however, very light and soft on the nose, like breathing in a baby’s bath towel.

In the mouth it doesn’t disappoint – a bready, crusty attack on the back on the tongue followed by a needling of the inner cheeks and then what can only be described as an afterglow. This wine is as commanding as the Victoria Emu, proud, full bodied and scrumptious.

10/10

The week before last, Thursday night, I attempted to drink all the booze in London. I awoke on Friday morning, well, afternoon, with a question of metaphysical proportions before me; how had I managed to not vom on the Brighton train home? No answer was forthcoming, so I had some toast.

Now, I am merely an amateur booze writer, with a modest blog. So I only got as far as drinking lots of wine in the Penderel’s Oak on High Holborn. Giles Coren, one could imagine, downs entire London boroughs on his days off. He stops in for a quick Wandsworth, before moving onto the harder stuff of Camden, then buggering off to Lewisham for a bit of rough.

Anyway, having worn that analogy out, I though I’d let you in on my thoughts on this particular beverage. It was, rather unappetisingly, poured by what looked like a lager pump. Still, it was properly Meryl so I decided to take my chances. On first sniff it smelt like condoms. Strawberry flavoured condoms, to its credit, but still, the overwhelming hint of spermicide lingered around my rim. Luckily, it tasted much better – like jelly with berries in, then Vimto, then Jolly Ranchers and raspberry laces.

By this point, having made up my mind that nachos were a proper, stomach-lining dinner food and not, in fact, just a plate of crisps, I was quite pissed, and engaged in conversation with a bemused fittie from Newcastle.

7/10