Days like this

It's on days like this that I remember why I'm in France. The sky is bright blue, it's the end of October and it's warm and, more importantly, there's nobody around to piss me off. Wonderful!

I can remember buying it, but not when. It was probably sometime last year, or even the year before. Anyway, the other night we opened a couple (three actually) of Chateau L'Euziere, Les Escarboucles 2003, from 34270, Fontanes, in the Pic Saint Loup area. Wow, was it nice. So, with a dinner party tonight for some special friends, who were an enormous help at James' wedding last month, we headed off to buy some more.

Madame was really helpful but was quite surprised that we wanted some 2003. There was none available on her price list but, she said 'she could offer a 2005 which needed laying down for a few years.' A quick tasting proved that she was right but, I pointed out, 'we need something for now.' 'OK,' she said, 'we do have a bit of 2003, which we're keeping (to sell later at a huge price), and I can let you have one box.' 'Sold' we said and, with a couple of boxes of some other stuff we headed over to Sommieres! Life just doesn't get better than this - until, that is, we pop some corks tonight