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.
There were a couple of things that definitely needed to happen before I could retire, centred around finishing the landscaping around The Little House of Concrete and paying the lot off. Of course, that'd be a easier if I wasn't handing over $20 each week for a return cab fare and plonking down a fair bit more on the bar while I was out.
I was already drinking wine at this stage, but it was mostly sourced from automatic deliveries from a couple of wine clubs, reordered selections from those deliveries and whatever was on special at the liquor barn.
The first serious development after Madam arrived on the scene was to give her a Wine Society membership. I wasn't sure how long things were going to last, but I thought a TWS membership was a useful thing for someone who liked wine, and there were bottles of bubbly on offer to members who signed up new members. All in all I thought it was good value for the $50.
Hughesy's cellaring arrangements at the time comprised a stash of wine cartons under the futon in the living room, plus whatever whites I'd stowed in the fridge. It wasn't an arrangement that was conducive to long term cellaring.
Madam complicated matters by deciding that the fridge was for storing food and nonalcoholic drinks, so that brought the bar fridge into the picture, and that the futon had to go, which in turn raised the question of where I was going to store the wine cellar.
Fortunately The Wine Society had a special on wine racks, and I bought two 48-bottle units that were stackable, so it was a case of bye bye futon.
Changes in the faces I was running across at the QB and issues with the speed of service behind the bar eventually persuaded me that I'd be just as well off drinking wine at home, with corresponding financial implications as well.
It was around the time that I was starting to figure out the financial aspect of this retirement thing, anyway.
Southward excursions over the holidays were starting to come into play, and we got to the Granite Belt and the South Burnett before matters got to the point where Hughesy definitely needed to get out of the classroom.