Whining About Wine

I think I mentioned yesterday that we had been out for a very nice but stodgy meal Saturday night. I can't say enough about the food. It was fresh and surprisingly good. The drink, however, was a totally different experience.

Let's start with the wine list. Hmmm. Only american reds and whites. Ewww. Migraine calling. There were however non-american wines in the sparkling, but I tend to get migraines with those too. Not drinking not being an option, LOL, I plumped for the lesser of two evils and hoped that I could scrape by migraine free with a couple of glasses of Freixinet Cava, as long as I drank plenty of water as well during the meal.

Water. Ahem. Not quite sure what ditch their water came from but it was NASTY. It wasn't chemical tasting like city water, nor did it taste like city water that had been purified. It tasted salty with a sulphuric aftertaste. Not a patch on my well water. Surprisingly enough they didn't have any bottled water either. I think they're missing a business opportunity here. With tap water that bad, they'd make a killing offering bottled water!

So I figured I could have a coffee or a tea after. Nope, 'fraid not. They didn't have an espresso machine so cappuccino was out and drip coffee disagrees with me, and it's such a palaver trying to get a cup of tea here. For those of you unfamiliar with tea "american style", you don't just say "I'll have a cup of tea please", and expect a cup of hot brown liquid suitably milked to appear in front of you. Oh no. That would be far too easy. This is how it goes...

"I'd like a cup of hot tea please" (as opposed to "tea" which is iced tea).
After 5 minutes someone will haul along a huge box with various types of tea (mint, green, cinnamon, chai, blueberry and raspberry, whale barf and snot), and if you're really lucky you might just find an English Breakfast or a Lipton teabag hidden away at the bottom.
Then you have to explain that you want it with milk on the side, not lemon, and when you say milk, you mean milk, not cream, or heaven forbid those nasty little sachets of non-dairy creamer.

Anyway it never got that far as one of our friends asked what teas they had and was told "Lavendar Early Grey" (ewwww) or "White Chocolate Tea" (ewww ewww ewwww). Why can't you have tea-flavoured tea?

Anyway, long story short, I went home, glugged several glasses of water, 2 glasses of this rather splendid, inexpensive french Anjou white wine at only 11% alcohol by volume, and a nice proper cup of decaf Tetleys and woke up Sunday morning headache free. Yay!!!!

I photographed the label this morning so I can go back and get some more.