Gone fishing

Apologies for the long silence here. I’ve been off booze for a bit, and writing about how not to drink isn’t always that much fun. However. I’m just back from a weekend away where I didn’t drink (but might have taken more than one mouthful to spit out again) a red wine of very great deliciousness. We opened it on Friday night after a long journey out of London during which we listened to tales of the Lord of the Rings’ Dark Riders and cosy Shire inns on Audible while driving down Dorset’s dark, narrow lanes, passing thatched cottages and cosy pubs. I kept thinking we’d feel the cold chill of a robed horseman…

Such a lovely weekend – fossil-hunting, eating, reading, walking. Also, spring is here: I think I picked up a tan on Chesil Beach this morning.

Here’s the wine: Lismore Greyton Syrah 2014 South Africa (Strictly Wine, £23.99; Noel Young Wines in Cambridge, £24.99)

I often think a good syrah comforts but also has an air of foreboding and something feral about it. This definitely does, which suited our mood perfectly. It’s an utterly superb wine. You can feel the sturdy, fortifying warmth of South African sun and taste ripe mulberries but there’s a lot of savoury here too: the smell of fynbos, black pepper, black olives and rich black berries.