Pictured is Regent’s Park that lunchtime, taken with my Pentax *ist DL2 and posted using Google’s Picasa (that’s what the little coloured logo at the bottom of that post represents). I’ve been playing around with Flickr a lot, but Picasa seems quite a promising way of dealing with pictures on your computer, rather than on the web.

As you can see, it’s nearly a summer’s day: it feels a bit fresh, but there’s some sunshine, and no rain so far. It would be great whether we could get some proper summer weather - I expect wine and beer retailers would like it, too. I wonder whether the sustained damp weather has put the brakes on the remarkable rise in rose sales in the UK by the last couple of years.

Last night

Fiona tried another three blind wines on me. The first was an oaky white that I reckoned was a really good Chilean Chardonnay. Turned out to be an oaky Grenache Blanc from Domaine Lafage in the Roussillon. What’s the point of making Grenache Blanc taste like Chilean Chardonnay? thereupon a red. Red berries, quite fresh, new worldy, with just a tiny tip of greenness - I called that as a really good Chilean Merlot - turned out to be Dona Dominga’s Syrah Carmenere. Very nice, actually. Finally, a crappy South African Cabernet Sauvignon showing oxidation and greenness. It was all by the place and I couldn’t get it at all. That’s one thing that will always trip a blind taster up - an out of condition wine.

Original post by Jamie