Rhubarb, Elderflower & Mint Wine 2020 - First Bottle (6), 14th February 2021

Our Valentine's meal was sponsored by mint. Not only did we drink this bottle of wine, but we had gin & tonics with a mint garnish, Vietnamese Mint Chicken and Nigella's Vietnamese Salad, featuring mint. We must have had delightful breath after all of that.

The wine was excellent and I opened this vintage because Claire has been disparaging about the previous two years. It is zingy and light, and it is a shame that I have given a bottle to Liz!

Our Vietnamese Chicken was another Padian Food pack that we cooked along with Rachel & Duncan. (Who says Valentine's Day should be a romantic meal for two?) It was blistering hot but delicious - the correct level of sourness. Another lovely evening.

I also made cake - a nut meringue slice

If you want to see how I made this wine, click here.

Jasmine Tea Wine - Second Bottle (1), 13th-14th February 2019

Jasmine Tea Wine is the very definition of a mid-week bottle. Drinkable but not delicious and certainly not a treat. It is far better than pure Tea Wine, but the tea-flavour is still too strong, which creates a drying effect in the mouth. If I were to make this again (which seems unlikely) I would use half the quantity of tea.

Most the bottle was drunk on Wednesday, but we had enough left with which to celebrate Valentine's Day. Who says I'm not an old romantic?

The Jasmine Tea Wine

Mango Wine - Fifth Bottle (3), 26th-27th January 2018

I see that it is exactly a year since I last opened a bottle of Mango Wine. It will be some time before I open the final bottle. This was truly horrible. I only once got a hint of a taste resembling fruit. Otherwise the wine was dry and bitter and did not even have the grace to be interesting. Of course we finished the bottle - though it took a Friday and Saturday to do so.

On Saturday Chris and Kate were here. After a bottle of champagne, to celebrate their engagement (my brother, getting married!) I poured them each a glass of Mango. Kate was distinctly unimpressed and declined to finish her glass. How rude!

Rhubarb, Elderflower & Mint Wine - Fifth Bottle (B2), 25th February 2017

I think this is one of the best white wines that I have ever made. It is light, refreshing, summery and has a subtle mint jab. Just delicious. I put it in the fridge because I thought Claire deserved a treat after bad news about her job on Friday. In other attempts to win the "Best Husband 2017" award, I spent the day shopping, tidying, washing clothes, sorting through compost bins (not as disgusting a job as I had anticipated) and cooking a meal of Greek-style fish stew, pan-fried new potatoes and spinach. (Claire was at a viola masterclass in Ilkley for much of this.) The fish stew was lovely, and simple - always a good combination.

Rose Petal Wine - Seventh Bottle (B6), 14th February 2016

It is Valentine's Day. What other bottle than Road Petal could I open? Well, strawberry springs to mind. This bottle of rose petal, however, was delicious. It has exactly the right level of sweetness combined with the exotic, floral taste of roses. And a delightful pink colour too.

Claire and I have had a lovely Sunday, rounding off a fabulous weekend. This morning was lit by winter sun and we took a walk to Roundhay Park and back, marvelling at the huge red-brick Edwardian houses we passed. Then this evening, Claire baked a chicken pie from The Hairy Bikers' Cook Book. Right now I am feeling both tiddly and sleepy. It is a good combination.

Gooseberry Wine - Fifth Bottle (2), 30th June-1st July 2015

Glorious summer has arrived. After another depressing WYSO rehearsal, Claire and I sat in the garden drinking gooseberry wine. The sun had already set but the day's warmth remained. We sat and we drank and we talked and the seventeen years ago that we married both shrunk to a moment and expanded to a lifetime. At eleven o'clock we were still outside but drinking whisky. When we decided it was late enough and approached the house I noticed our honeysuckle. It was in full bloom and its scent was Paradise.

Lemon & Lime Wine - Second Bottle (5), 13th March 2015

One of life's great pleasures is spending Friday nights at home, sinking slowly into inebriation with my wife. It is not an unusual experience, and objectively probably not interesting either. But right here, right now, it is just lovely. I have known Claire for nearly 20 years and have never stopped loving her. And I'm not sure what it is about lemon & lime wine that is making me all gushy. But I have a charmed life, and the greatest charm of all is the woman I married. That is all.

Rose Petal Wine - Eighth Bottle (B2), 14th February 2015

What other bottle could I have drunk on Valentine's Day? For a day dedicated to lovers and romance, its perfumed flavour was entirely suitable.

We are in York and by happy coincidence, so are Chris, Rachael, Paul and Myles. By the time the bottle was finished, Myles was in bed and Rachael and Paul had left for a rare romantic meal. My baby-sitting duties consisted of drinking more wine than was good for me and going upstairs to check on a sleeping two-year-old about ten minutes before his parents returned.

Blackcurrant Wine - Final Bottle (5), 29th-30th June 2014

Claire wanted something reddish to drink on Sunday night with her mushy peas and haggis. I was out playing a concert in Ilkley and fished a bottle of blackcurrant before I went. On my return I gulped down a glass with some fervour, still high from the concert, but recognised it would be sensible to leave the rest.

We have finished the bottle tonight, Monday, while eating obligatory salad from the garden and 'Surprising Rice' (inspired by Cabin Pressure). The surprise was its searing heat and the crunch of cinnamon sticks.

Claire suggested we go for a stroll afterwards in the evening sunlight. Twenty minutes later we found ourselves in a bar drinking beer. It was lovely. Claire and I spend surprisingly little time with just each other doing something that is not domestic. And tomorrow we will have been married 16 years.

Strawberry Wine - Fourth Bottle (6), 14th February 2014

It is Valentine's Day and therefore something pink was obligatory. I hid Claire's card behind the porridge tin and for the first time in several weeks she did not have porridge for breakfast. I ended up e-mailing her from work to tell her where her card was hidden. It was not quite the spontaneous romantic discovery that I had hoped.

This evening has been aided and abetted by the strawberry wine, which is excellent (he said modestly). Claire's gesture towards romance was to make pudding. That it happended to be tapioca which was "Best Before 2001" only detracted slightly.

Elderflower Wine - Fifth Bottle (B6), 5th-6th December 2013

I had an unexpectedly free Thursday evening because Madeleine's quintet was cancelled, so I spent most of it drinking wine instead. Claire and I ate by candlelight, not for romantic reasons but because one of the living room light bulbs exploded in dramatic fashion on Wednesday evening and we haven't worked out how to remove the remainder from its socket. But a glass or two of elderflower win in candlelight is rather lovely.

By Friday night there was only one glass each left in the bottle, so we filled up on whisky macs as a suitable alternative.

Strawberry Wine - First Bottle (6), 1st-3rd July 2012

Sunday was our fourteenth wedding anniversary. Written down, that sounds like an enormously long time. Certainly I find it hard to believe there was ever a time that I did not know Claire. Yet our first kiss, where I stuck my nose in her eye, feels like yesterday. Time is strange.

Fourteen years is worthy of celebration, and how better than a bottle of strawberry wine to a meal of Greek Baked Lamb (which was the first thing I ever cooked for Claire). Both food and wine were as excellent as ever, and we followed our meal by watching a remarkably silly episode of 'Midsomer Murders' - a DVD I had bought earlier in the day as an anniversary present. Who says romance is dead?