I’m not particularly a wine snob. I should be really, as I generally like to act as smug and princessy as possible at all times over any snob-worthy thing. “Oh, you wear ‘synthetic’, do you? How nice…” or “we only eat organic, high fibre-fed, free-range, naturally grazing Cod. Don’t YOU???” Or even, “well we had to close the house in the Cotswolds because of Squatters, so we had them killed, its a terrible mess”.

Yet wine snobs are definitely the worst. It’s not that I can’t taste the ‘underlying blackberry and lard with tones of lemming and elderbury and hints of mud’, its just that I’m not that bothered to try and discern them. I either like the taste or I don’t. I’m too binary to be a wine snob. I like hamburgers. With a heavy aroma of meat, base notes of ketchup, mustard and onion, and just a soupçon of bun. And more meat.

We like Torontes. It’s an Argentinian white wine. Which is very light and fresh and fruity and fab. But not the easiest wine to get hold of because it has to come a long way and its not an expensive wine. Evita probably liked it. And Maradona. Who, like me, was probably a ‘quantity over quality’ wine aficionado.

Our first stop on the great world tour of Argentina was in the north, a town called Salta. Most spectacular place in the world. And there, in the northern Andes, grows the Torontes grape. Which they send down to Mendoza to process, but ‘up there’ at altitude and northerliness, they only grow that white grape. The Malbec reds come from farther south. And in a nice restaurant on our first night, we sampled this local white and fell in love. It cost less than 3 quid for the bottle. In a decent restaurant. (Reasons why I LOVE Argentina, number 3. Would be number 1 if there were no sheep or cows to eat down there).

Waitrose announced in the newspaper that they had Torontes ‘on special offer’. Holy shit! A sign from heaven. I rushed up to North Finchley with a flat-bed truck. Only to find that they didn’t have any. I was devastated. But while the very helpful lady was searching the stock-room, I found my favourite whisky on offer so grabbed a bottle of that instead. God moves in mysterious ways. And I am a terrible whisky snob. The worst.

The moral is: as long as it gets you pissed; who gives a shit?

Happy (hic) Tuesday

A xxxx