I travelled to Perth this week for work. It's a long flight and my difficulty, since I'm not wealthy or important enough to fly business class, is that I really don't fit into the economy seats particularly well. I have what a girl once described as ludicrously long legs. She was jealous.
It's a serious problem though because I always manage to be seated behind the ignorant jerk who insists on reclining his seat all the way back. On this occasion, even before the wheels had left the tarmac, I had a beady, beardy head in my lap. And not in a good way.
To make things worse, the national obesity champion was parked in the seat next to me. He was so morbidly corpulent that he required a seatbelt extender and would certainly have qualified for a Green Card. When he wasn't greedily eyeing off my Pringles, he liked to sleep sideways, pouring himself into what was left of the airspace above my seat.
Anyway, the wine. The only red option was a Rosemount homebrand shiraz, and I ordered a quaint miniature bottle as soon as the hostie noticed me waving from beneath my neighbours. You can appreciate why alcohol was necessary, notwithstanding the paucity of choice. I’d have ordered beer, but I didn’t have the space to accommodate the bloating.
The first bottle was decidedly average, although I can't say I was expecting much better. It was as dark as an angry Nigerian, but smelt of nothing much at all. It tasted like weak, tart blackberry cordial. But it did help to dull the pain from my crush injuries just a little.
The second bottle was much better - still a pretty lightweight Shiraz, but the tongue-zapping tartness was dissipating with every inebriating sip. The third bottle was as smooth and sweet as flat Coke. I should have probably just ordered one of those to start with.
But at least the rapid boozing gave me an excuse to climb over Jabba the Hutt and visit the little boys' room regularly. You encounter some weird people hanging around airplane toilets. I'm not sure what the bloke before me was doing in there, but from the noises emanating through the plastic door, I suspect he was making a solo attempt to join the mile high club.
Whatever he was up to, he certainly got his money's worth. The Virgin hostie (although I’m pretty sure she wasn’t) noticed my look of panic and quickly stepped in to disinfect the latrine.
That ordeal over, I returned to my fourth bottle of the mini Rosemounts. It was suddenly superb - the quality and taste apparently enjoying an inversely proportional relationship with my sobriety.
But seriously, this really is pretty generic wine. Sure, it’s cheap, but it’s also wildly unimaginative and deeply uninspiring. I certainly wouldn't buy it unless I was cruising 30,000 feet above the nearest bottle shop.
Then again, as the great Don Walker once wrote: Once I smoked a Danneman cigar. I drove a foreign car. But, baby, that was years ago. I left it all behind for my...Rosemount Diamond Label Shiraz.
I didn’t notice what year it was. I suspect it doesn’t really matter.
Rating: 6.5
Drink with: a 3-day growth
Price: $10-$15 (or $6.50 for a miniature bottle on Virgin)
hilarious!
ReplyDelete