Wine thoughts and Orford Delights
There isn’t a cat in hell’s chance of resuming tasting in the foreseeable future, so do we let the WSFWS lapse, or do we try to keep it going? For a wine tasting society, if we can’t get together to taste wines, there’s not much point, or is there? Actually whilst there is no substitute for drinking wine, imbibers do seem to enjoy talking about it… endlessly! And about food…and about travel, and holidays.
Anyway, as you will have seen, the committee has decided to keep WSFWS going through the medium of communication via our website. And a reminder – we are inviting members to send in anecdotes relating to their wine, food, holiday, travel, experiences, in fact anything to do with leisure and likely to lift the Covid gloom!
I am one of the ‘fall guys’ who’s been asked to set the ball rolling!
Being of a certain age, I am aware that I am at ‘high risk’ from Covid and should avoid interaction with others as much as possible. This can be pretty stifling if you are cooped up at home, and a trip to Waitrose is not all that exciting or risk-free. But, for the present at least, we can still travel further afield, and social distancing can be virtually guaranteed. My experiences are reasonably current, and take that into account.
A few weeks ago, Mary and I decided to go to Orford, I am sure you know it, we all do, but it is such a quiet and unassuming little seaside town, that, quite fortunately, it gets forgotten. It wasn’t a bad day, weatherwise, and despite its being early August, parking was easy. We could have had a pleasant, breezy few hours walking the quiet old streets and the Quay, but this is where we sinned. We had actually booked to have lunch at the Butley Orford Oysterage, a renowned, but unassuming restaurant dealing primarily with the sort of fish that come from that part of the North Sea. They used to have a smokehouse too, just out the back, and that had to be seen to be believed, completely covered in tarry deposits, and that was on the outside! I suppose EU regulations must have put an end to it! Of course, oysters had to be the starting order, and Mary had smoked salmon. To follow, we pushed the boat out a bit and had lobster. You know, I can’t remember the wine in the glass I had, it wasn’t Chablis, it may even have been Albariño, but it went very well with the meal.
After lunch, we actually drove down to the Quay, where the heavens opened, but it really didn’t matter at all.
PS. If those who agreed, were to invest in a particular bottle of wine, we could actually have a Zoom tasting. Now that could be fun!
