To the Irish bar, Finnegans Wake, for Christmas lunch. The price of the meal had risen by just under 100% since booking it so the 6 of us were pretty hacked off before we started. Sitting down at 2pm we passed through the prawn cocktail and then the soup and eventually at 3:30pm got the turkey dinner. The plate was piled high but there were some notable absences, the gravy, bread sauce and roast potatoes were all missing. A very thick piece of perfectly round processed ham was placed on top of everything else as if the crowning glory. The turkey was so dry that several of us had to leave most of our portion. The wine was free but there was only red. The trifle consisted of a tin of peaches set into jelly with squirty cream on top and decorated with hundreds and thousands.
The boys bought me a nice bottle of wine for Christmas. The box was very impressive, a leather hinged box and inside in the casing was a bottle opener, pourer and something else I couldn’t identify. Excitedly I showed it to my friendly wine expert (Thanks Ron) and he checked it out on the net. His report “I can find no reference to the name La Fete Champetre in the information on Bordeaux Grand Cru first growth vineyards, nor of the owner/maker, La Guyennoise. Can’t find anything on the web about these either.”
So there you go, the boys had paid probably good money for wine that didn’t actually exist. And then I saw the back of the bottle. Not even the French make that many typos – even the name of the wine was mis-spelled!
Welcome to China.