Silver linings
Hugh Johnson (March 2021 issue) wrote that ‘you need a microscope to find a single bright spot in being locked down’. Not so. During this time, wine has been my saviour.
When the pandemic first hit, the first thing my husband and I did was buy a Coravin. In early 2020 we would order six different bottles on a theme, do some learning online and then taste them all and make notes. Before long,
new options came up. London’s 67 Pall Mall wine club has an incredible range of virtual tastings, and many independent merchants offer sociable Zoom tastings on Fridays. This is how our house started to fill with small 100ml bottles. Each of these tastings would send a set of six to 10 of these small decanted bottles.
When Hugh talked about missing the conviviality of sharing wine with friends, I understood entirely. So we decided to host a virtual tasting of our own. I selected 12 bottles from my cellar and decanted them into my now huge stock of 100ml glass bottles. I packaged them up and dispatched them across the country to my wine friends, and the next evening we virtually spilled our thoughts over this shared experience. With my wine-loving friends spread far and wide, we could never have met like this, even in normal times, so we have unlocked something new and rewarding. Necessity really is the mother of invention. Caroline Hewitt-Thomas, Eastleigh, Hampshire, UK