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Buy me a glass of wine?

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Shiny enomatic dispensers at The Wine Theatre

Shiny enomatic dispensers at The Wine Theatre

I tried a very brief experiment today.

I was off to The Wine Theatre in Southwark for lunch to meet a fellow blogger, Oliver Thring of Thring for your Supper. As I had not tried the restaurant before, but it billed itself as a wine destination, I was hopeful that there would be interesting wines to try. They have their food and wine menu available online (I can’t believe all restaurants do not do this automatically), so it was easier to prepare.

Rather than choosing the wine myself, I opened up the choice to my followers on twitter and “crowdsourced” the choice – hoping they would be inventive, creative … and kind (and not force me to choose the most expensive wines). I’m a little busy with other tasks at the moment so I wasn’t able to encourage lots of participation, but one follower (@philippav) did respond with some excellent suggestions, and mostly ones I would not have made myself.

The result was that we ended up sharing a bottle (I know, it was supposed to be a glass, but we did have starters AND mains) of a Barbera d’Asti 2007 called Teis from Ca’Bianca – a lovely, light bodied and fruity wine (though with great Italian acidity) that matched the mood and conversation perfectly (though you’ll need to read Oliver’s review to see how it matched the food).

image_481I wonder whether this is an interesting challenge for future outings; to allow certain choices in my vinous exploration to be dictated by a group of like-minded individuals and thus encourage greater experimentation – a little like “Yes Man” (but with wine, and more style – not that I’ve seen the film, but I somehow doubt I need to bother based on the cast and the trailer)

Based on today’s results, it is at least worth repeating, but maybe with a little trepidation

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A hole lot of wine – for fun

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I was playing with the Google Maps tool the other day and noticed a cool little widget.

Dig a hole through the Earth. Point your icon at anywhere on the globe and it will burrow straight through the Earth and tell you where it came out.

I thought I’d try it for a few wine regions, finding out how close the Northern/Old World hemisphere regions were to their Southern/New World counterparts.

Surprisingly, there were almost NO matches where a region somewhere in the world was precisely “the other side of the world”. I did get a couple of close matches. Any guesses what they might be?

…

just giving you a chance to think about it

…

Well, the closest was an area between Galicia and the Rias Baixas region of North West Spain, and the Douro in Portugal which is almost exactly opposite the Nelson & Marlborough regions in New Zealand (well, close)

Drilling through from the main wine producing regions of Chile and Argentina you’d land in China. Unfortunately I have no idea where wine is made in China and it is a BIG place, so chances are it is way off.

Just a bit of fun.