I would rather a frontal lobotomy than have to endure another history lesson in my life. All I need to ensure a good 6 hours sleep, is to hear some bone-numbing diatribe about a whole lot of people grinding their way through generations of hard work in the pursuit of some or other monotonal yet historically significant wine. When researching a product for sale, I usually gloss over the "History" section and head straight to the juicy "E-News" section of the wine site - that hopefully deals with past homicides, interesting divorces and general family acrimony which is far more interesting ...

Those blokes over at Hallmark Inc. have a lot to answer for. If it wasn`t for them, the bulk of us would'nt have deal with rubbery eggs and a kitchen that takes an army of cleaners days to get back into working order after the kids have "made Mum breakfast in bed" - and thats if the fire department has not been there first. They are also the people who turn ordinarilly desperate restauranteurs into tyrranical despots for a night  - who begrudgingly hand out tables for two like they are gold bars - only for you to be forced to eat at one of two strictly regulated times on Feb 14 - be offered only two choices of courses if you are lucky, and are hopelessly overcharged for what you get - all in the name of love...

It was just an ordinary day when I was trawling the blogs looking for trouble when I first came across this wine. Normally one needs to sieve through the usual flowery adjectives and explicatives to get to the bottom of the commercial reality of a wine and its prospects for success. The Teusner was no exception - with people uniformly waxing on about not only how good the wine is but also wondering at how such amazingly quality could possibly be selling at this price level. Seeing the glasss half empty as usual, we did the usual tasting and it the right buttons for all of us right off the bat. (This is not a daily occurrence in our neck of the woods.)

Beer is as much part of life in Singapore as the humidity, the unending road works, lunchtime hawker centre queues and the sky-high cost of pretty much everything connected to Marina Bay Sands. No matter how one goes on about wine and the perfect food match, and the fact that I put on weight just thinking about a freezing cold glass of it at the end of the day - nothing beats beer...

As an immigrant myself, I have to empathise with the feelings of any new arrival on foreign shores, but when the King family first arrived in New Zealand, they picked Invercargil, the most southern of all cities in New Zealand to disembark - where it is so bleakly cold and wet that if it were me, I would have just turned right around and gone back to the joys of a depressed 20th century UK instead.

It seems that all of Bordeaux is a-quiver these days - waiting for the next bus load of newly minted Chinese grillionaires to swing past and buy the farm. It has been happening with alarming regularity for the past year or two and has been creating some waves. I guess the world is a global market place these days and one should not get too hysterical about this sort of thing, but its fair to say that some sectors of France are taking a view pretty much the same as when Kraft bought the much beloved Australian Vegemite brand and what may possibly end up happening to Southcorp and the Penfolds Grange.

There is a quiet storm brewing in the district of Canberra, where Tim Kirkus is hitting sixes out of the park vintage after vintage with his wines. Getting his Shiraz Viognier 2009 - nominated "Wine of the Year" by Jeremy Oliver in 2011 is one thing but then coming back with a "Best Shiraz of the Year" and 97 point rating from Oliver the very next year has to be something of a historical achievement.

There is a great urban legend that floats around the dealing rooms of Singapore about a certain banker who at annual bonus time, treated herself to a few nips and tucks and sent a snap of the final front-end bodywork to one of her mates to admire. I guess we will never know the full extent of the real details, but the rumor is that she BCC`ed everybody in her corporate address book - and she worked for a large global bank and was really, really well connected ...

I have to be honest about it - I do a mental knee jerk whenever anybody mentions "Robert Parker" and "Australian Shiraz" in the same sentance these days. The reality is that a large slice of the global wine community (inlcuding a lot of gurus who should know better) have "done a 180" and now seem to have blanket opinion that if a Shiraz comes from Australia it is uncool. If it has high alcohol and big rich fruit it is doubly undercool - and then if RPJ actually likes it and rates it highly - the stuff is worthy of immediate suspicion and derision...

It has to be said that the Movie Awards Season has been a bit slow this year. So far there havent been any bulimic Vicoden-addled actresses undergoing emergency treatment, no over-the-top fashion divas arriving dressed in wagyu striploin, and not nearly as much brazen excess of diamonds as the reputed 250 million dollars worth, adorning all the silicon-puffed boobs at last years bash. The most interesting part of the Golden Globes this week was watching the barman at the E-News Cocktail Bar afterwards, getting slowly plastered off his own martinis with presenter Guliana Ramsic - while they waited hopefully for a dazzed award winner in some overpriced frock to drift in for a cocktail and get interviewed...
 

If there was to be a game show about wines and a sub-category dealing with Australian Cabernet, one person would almost certainly come up amongst the questions - Peter Douglas. He is dubbed "Mr Wynns" - having been the major driving force behind the rebirth of the brand in the 1980`s.

There are plenty of cool places to stay in the Cape, but one of the best options for the world weary traveller is a tiny old fishing village called Hermanus. It sits on the edge of a piece of coastline outside of Cape Town called Walker Bay where each year, a vast pod of whales come back to mate and you are surrounded by some of the best wineries in the world. It surely has to be the perfect spot to sit, have a glass of wine and become part of the rythmn of Africa.

Ask any child star who within a few short Oscar seasons after hitting puberty, ends up living back with their mothers and holding a Loyalty Card to Betty Ford Clinic - its hard to change the way people think about you once they have made up their minds.

I was at a birthday party over December where things got a little out of hand at midnight as the host turned 40. In celebration of this milestone, he decided to do his best impersonation of Bernie Eccleston (before the divorce) and started spraying the crowd with a well known French champagne that we sell often. I decided that it was bound to taste better out of a glass than off my date and went inside for a glass. The stuff must have been imported into Singapore by camel via Siberia - given the quality and was certainly not fit for human consumption or showering for that matter. I reckon there were more than a few very expensive color rinses that were washed away that night with something that would have given Chechnian tap water a run for its money...

It is always fun to note pricing disparities between French and Australian Syrah for example, that have enjoyed the same rating level from the same writer. It seems the value always lies with the New World option with very few exceptions. I guess that is what makes the whole ratings debate so interesting, and as my perpetually hung-over, anti-establishment economics lecturer used to say - "bring on chaos and disparity and opportunity always follows".