Monday, 1 November 2010

Reflecting on a Rockford Red

Rockford Basket Press

You don't get to open a $50 bottle of red every week, but with the last Saturday in October marking the anniversary of the wine dinner that started Hughesy and 'Er Indoors as an item, it's the sort of landmark that justifies doing so.

Assuming that we're still around at the end of 2020, that's probably the time to take a look at the third bottle of 2006 Rockford Basket Press Shiraz. As noted in Tastings, we rated the first bottle of Basket Press as very much a baby and pencilled in 2015 as the likely timeframe to have a look at the second.

Out in the garden on Sunday morning, however, I thought the occasion provided an opportunity to reflect on changes that the intervening decade had brought.

We were reflecting on some of those matters as we savoured the depth of flavour on offer in the Basket Press, and while Sunday isn't a designated add another bit to the website day I thought that the topic was worth a bit of reflection, along with a bit of musing on the Monday morning walk.

That ten year period has seen a number of significant developments. We finished the landscaping and added an extension to the Little House of Concrete, Hughesy's involvement with community radio came and went, and I've spent around half of the decade out of the work force. All of those could well provide the basis of a good eight hundred to two thousand words in themselves, but to my mind the most significant change over that time has been the change in Hughesy's approach to alcohol.

Ten years ago I was firmly in off to the pub every Friday mode, and had a permanent taxi booking at 5:15. That was something that would have to fall by the wayside when we were looking towards the financial rearrangements that were going to have to fall into place around retirement, but at that stage retirement was a vague prospect that lurked on the horizon rather than a definite possibility.

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