Imagine a bunch of aspiring wine geeks sitting around a table at Betty’s saying sternly and indignantly to each other “That was absolutely not a typical California Chardonnay” and you have a pretty clear picture of the aftermath of the Wines 1 final exam last night.

When you find yourself mixing the same old cocktails all the time, sometimes it helps to add a semi-random element to your decision-making. For me, that element is often the contents of our weekly organic bin, which for the past few weeks has included a small package of organic blueberries.

I have recently re-entered the halls of academia, this time as a student of oenology, so that I may eventually be fully qualified to go off half-cocked on the subject of wine, rather than completely un-cocked, as has been my habit up until this point. Details of my successes and failures, to date, are encapsulated herein.

This is a Bacardi Cocktail made with our house light rum, El Dorado Deluxe Silver. That means it’s not really a Bacardi Cocktail as far as Bacardi’s trademark lawyers are concerned. But the name, like the name Sazerac (over which an acquaintance of mine was served a few months back), is now its own semiotic entity, whether the lawyers like it or not.

We’d been the recipients of a bottle of Grey Goose as well as a bottle of Tito’s Handmade Vodka over the past year (before the latter became available from the LCBO) from generous friends and houseguests, and so together with our own bottle of Russian Standard it seemed criminal not to line them up and see if there really was a clear winner among them.

Why cook well?

Why do anything well? Why make sure your belt goes through all the loops when you leave the house? Why listen to music? Why wash your hair? Why paint a painting? Why make love?

My wife and I went to see Kate Rusby at Hugh’s Room in Toronto’s west end two Sundays back. She’s had limited exposure here in Canada, though true anglophiles will know her as the singer of the theme song for the understated comedy Jam and Jerusalem.