Went to Vinopolis with work, it was ace. It's all automated, I didn't expect that. You get a charge card type thing when you go in pre-loaded with points, then you go around the various rooms learning about wine and then choosing one you'd like to try from one of the temperature controlled cabinets. These have bottles inside, with a tube going into the bottle connected to a pump that's operated when you put your card in. Tastes of wine (not sure what volume, I would guess at 50ml) range from 1 point up to 8 points for a Penfold Grange special. The 1 pointers were all good anyway, it's not jacobs creek or anything. You can spend your points just on wine, or there were ports and sherries, or even spirits.
We had a great couple of hours there anyway. I even got some food, though could have done with more. I should be able to work out how much was in each dispensation of wine by just how tipsy I got. I know we had twelve tokens each, and had a pint before we went in and then two pints after. Then it gets a little hazy. Everyone else was heading off to gourmet burger to eat, but I decided to head home, and I'm fairly sure I told the group this.
Typing this up on Clare's laptop and the shonky keyboard is annoying me, the space bar does not really work.
So, I left the group from work in a pub near Borough Market. It was not the Market Porter, I think that was too busy, and we had walked past a couple more. After they left I was talking to some Aston Villa fans who were there for a Millwall game, and they were quite amused by my lack of football knowledge. I have a slight fear that I was doing their accent while I was talking to them. Maybe they abducted me and put me on the wrong train, the next bit is not clear, but from my phone I can see I texted Clare to say "I'm at Rotherhithe be home soon". I had to look that up, it is a couple of tube lines away from where I should be, it's on the East London Line. I should have remembered that from my time living in New Cross...I also texted from Hoxton, and took a picture of myself at the Famous Cock Tavern (aka the Big Dogs Cock at Highbury and Islington. So I went a bit wrong, but I did manage to get myself home. I think I must have just got on the wrong tube at London Bridge, though I don't remember this.
If I'm right about the wine samples being 50ml then I only had 600ml wine, which is less than a bottle. Some of that was fortified though, and then there was an Australian promotion at Vinopolis so we had quite a few extra glasses there. Add a few pints and then anything I might have had after getting separated from my cow-orkers and it does start to make more sense. It really is a good job I only go out about once a year.
I do remember my favourites from Vinopolis though, mostly. I enjoyed a Georgian dry white that I think I have a picture of to remind myself of the name, and it was great to learn more about sherry]] and have a couple of madeiras.
The only other points of interest on the way home were that I nearly got in trouble on the train for having a group ticket and not being with the group, and then I walked home from Folkestone. This was good as it gave me the opportunity to sober up enough to feed number two son at 11pm.
I did have a bit of a hangover on Saturday, which is a rarity.
Saturday we went into Folkestone just to get supplies for tea. Today we walked on the beach with the boys. Quiet weekend apart from all that!
Paul Clarke's weblog - I live in Hythe near Folkestone. Married + dad to two, I'm a full stack web developr, + I do js / Node, some ruby, other languages etc. I like pubs, parkrun, eating, home-automation and other diy stuff, history, genealogy, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.