KEY POINTS:
The night of my marathon run I opened a bottle of wine I'd bought specially to commemorate the occasion.
Now that I enjoy the occasional tipple, after six years away from the booze, I find it a nice way to celebrate.
And I'd bought a bottle of Wither Hills pinot when I'd run a half marathon in Marlborough. It was a toss-up between a bottle of their chardy or their pinot, but given that the Irishman doesn't drink white, I decided to be generous and buy a bottle we could both enjoy.
And enjoy we did. It lasted us two nights, and went very well indeed with the pizza, and it was a fabulous drop I felt I deserved.
And I'll be buying more bottles of it despite this hoo-ha over the Wither Hills sauvignon.
I suppose there will be some people who feel cheated, those who know a bit about wine.
But wine for me is like art - I don't know much about it but I know what I like. Gold medals mean nothing to me. In the supermarket, I go for the wines where there are yellow supersaver signs - getting an $18 wine for $11 makes it taste that much better - and when it comes to special occasions, I'll go to a wine shop or a vineyard, have a sip of a sample and buy one I like.
Quite often, the wines that are written up enthusiastically by wine experts taste like cat's piss to my peasant's palate, so I'll just buy what I enjoy and leave the fighting to the in-crowd.
Probably just a bad case of sour grapes anyway.
