Contents
1 Title Page
2 Introduction to the paperback edition
3 Introduction
4 I Buying it
5 Pounds and Pennies
6 Ordering Online – Tesco Cava
7 The Joy of Wine Browsing
8 Minimum Pricing
9 Six-bottle Discounts
10 Virgin Wines
11 Deliveries
12 A Tale of Two Tastings
13 The Mixed Case
14 II On the High Street
15 The High Street Wine Shop
16 Befriending a Wine Merchant
17 SPAR
18 Marks & Spencer
19 Nicolas
20 Tesco Express
21 Lidl
22 Sainsbury’s Basic
23 III Containment Policy
24 In Praise of the Half-Bottle
25 Wine in a Box I
26 Wine in a Box II
27 Plastic Goblets
28 IV Tools of the Trade
29 The Decanter
30 The Paris Goblet
31 The Riedel Tasting Glass
32 The Corkscrew
33 The Pichet
34 Duralex Glasses
35 Tumblers
36 V Thinking and Drinking (1)
37 Dinner at CJ’s
38 Quaffing and Glugging
39 Wine on a Boat
40 From Plonk to Plonkers
41 Queen Victoria’s Tipple
42 Breakfast Wine
43 Drinking Alone
44 Nostalgia – Beaujolais Nouveau
45 VI CJ’s French Connections
46 Buying in Bulk
47 A Case from France Pt I
48 A Case from France Pt II
49 A Case from France Pt III
50 Cubi Filled by Pump
51 A Tanker of Wine
52 VII PK’s English Aspirations
53 Laying Wine Down
54 Drinking Wine at No. 10
55 Dinner-Party Wine Etiquette
56 Drinking Wine at Lambeth Palace
57 Port
58 Claret or Bordeaux?
59 The Posh Wine Merchants
60 VIII Thinking and Drinking (2)
61 Drinking from a Mug
62 Nostalgia – Le Piat d’Or
63 Celebrity Wines – the Sediment Selection
64 Wine and Game
65 Nostalgia – Wine Drinking with Mary Quant
66 Drinking Wine Like James Bond
67 Nostalgia – Regency Drinking
68 Unfinished Bottles
69 About the Authors
70 Copyright
Introduction to the paperback edition
A lot has happened since we wrote the pages you’re about to read. It was some years ago when we first came up with the frankly ridiculous notion of writing a blog about real-life wine drinking. At the time, we thought about how much fun we were going to have; and how much free wine people were going to give us. Our motives were no more noble than the rot we drank.
So Sediment was born: a blog about worryingly affordable wines, wines in boxes and bags and screwtop bottles, wines that really ought to be better than they are. Plus all the business of what to drink the wine out of, how to drink it before it turns to vinegar, where to drink it without embarrassing yourself, how to acquire it in bulk, and how to get it into the house without your wife noticing.
As it turned out, we got almost no free wine. Nor did PK in any way advance his social standing by association with wine. Nor did CJ find a way to improve the quality of the bargain-basement muck he normally consumes.
And yet success beckoned, although not quite as we’d expected. We found that we’d been nominated and shortlisted for quite a few wine bloggers’ awards (without ever actually winning any). We got invited to some posh tastings (where we embarrassed ourselves repeatedly in front of more serious wine writers). We’ve even appeared in the pages of Decanter magazine, the wine aficionado’s vade mecum. We may, in fact, have been doing something right – we’ve certainly been doing something different.
Finally, our favourite writings were turned into a book (called, appropriately enough, Sediment). And what do you know? It was not only among the Drinks Books of the Year in both the Independent and the Evening Standard – it actually won the prestigious John Avery Award at the André Simon Food and Drink Awards. And it was described as ‘the funniest wine-book I’ve read in a long time’ by the judge, the esteemed novelist Julian Barnes.
I’ve Bought It, So I’ll Drink It takes all the goodness of the original Sediment hardback and refashions it into a handy yet glamorous paperback. The new title has been our motto since day one of the blog (and was dreamed up, incidentally, by CJ’s wife, Susie, who reckoned it said everything that needed to be said), and is now getting its own chance to shine.
So our words are now roughly at the price point of a bottle of cheap wine. And look at it this way: they should last a bit longer, and are less likely to make you ill. Unless that is, like Julian Barnes, you find it ‘choke-on-your-cornflakes funny’. Which we sort of hope you do.
CJ AND PK, JUNE 2017
It was a couple of years ago. We were having lunch in a pizza restaurant. We were also drinking a bafflingly described, boldly overpriced and completely mediocre red: our normal wine consumption.
‘This is appalling,’ one of us said. ‘Shall we have another bottle?’
The second bottle arrived, and the other one of us asked, ‘Why does nobody write about these wines? Why do they only write about the good stuff? Someone should write a blog about real everyday wine drinking and real everyday wine, like this horrible Valpolicella.’
We thought this was such a good idea that we went ahead and did it. After all, we know more about writing than we do about wine, and we know more about wine than pizza. Which made it the perfect