Planet of the 'japes

Tonight’s visit to the amusingly named ‘Planet of the Grapes’ promises to be an evening of fun, frivolity and much quaffing of wine (although I’ll be spitting the red I imagine). It’s a novel idea for a 30th birthday party event and one which I suspect will raise the bar from the usual gratuitous drinking to an evening where we might actually learn something.

The only downside I can see so far is that the evening ends in a wine tasting competition with the boys versus the girls. This means I am going to have the spend the best part of 3 hours with girls who are not technically ‘my’ friends….they are, but they are more Steve’s friends.

Also it has to be said that they are prone to temper tantrums, bickering and more than the occasional bout of bitchiness whereas I pride my girlfriends on being down to earth, grounded, stoical and not in the least bit ‘silly’. Birds of a feather an’ all.

Wine tasting fast approaching I turned my thoughts to the only other time in my life where I spent my evenings slurping wine from unmarked carafes in an attempt to label the contents 100% accurately. University.

Yes, mine was one of the only courses in the Country to include a ‘Gastronomy’ module. This meant dining on fine cheeses, and having an extensive course on New World wines from none other than The Brown Brothers.

The finale of this module was the blind tasting session, where we had to identify 10 different white wines by region, age, grape, price and probably lots more. My team did remarkably well, passed and were awarded with a lovely gold edged certificate which I keep in my ‘National Records of Achievement’ folder (the only place where something utterly pointless might live comfortably). After being awarded the certificate and being more than just a little squiffy I decided it would be a good idea to half inch some booze to take back to my housemates who were rather stupidly studying things like English, Music and History….no booze there!

I made a quick exit with what turned out to be a vintage bottle of port shoved up my top and then promptly took a tumble down the hill, smashing the bottle as I fell, and ending up looking, and stinking like a two-bit alcy.

I’m hoping to not make the same mistake again, but you never know.