Bastardo!!

I'm never one to shy away from a good old fashioned school ground joke ........ always happy to titter at a double entendre.

We arrived on another Crimean beach yesterday, which was quite remote, and we hadn't been shopping, so the cupboards, and more importantly, the cocktail cabinet was bare.

Luckily there was a shack on the beach selling the usual stuff, beer, vodka etc, but what interested me was a row of rather dodgy looking plastic bottles filled with amber or red liquid.

Turns out they were "local" wines, sold bulk by the litre.

Now normally this would be a recipe for a headache, but to be fair, we have only had one dodgy bottle in the past. So after a lengthy tasting session we discovered the chillingly named "Bastardo".

I've never had a wine quite like it. Bright purple in the glass, slightly cloudy, sweet by our standards but not oppressively so, and a taste that is hard to describe, but I will try, in the best tradition of those sunday magazine wine reviewers - hints of pear drops in the nose, ribena and vodka on the tongue, and a lingering finish that sort of tells you you have just swallowed something highly detrimental to your health, but what the hell.......

So we polished off a litre between us over the course of an evening, and don't remember going to bed!!

But the best bit of the story is that this morning, we feel absolutely great! 

Half a litre isn't exactly a friday night binge, but in terms of sheer fun, it was hard to beat. The last sip tasted as good as the first and we giggled all evening.

A far cry from Tesco finest..........

"Bastardo"!! - evidently it's the name of the grape!