Homemade wine

Having been involved in wine as an amateur since the early 1980s and professionally shortly thereafter, I have had a lot of experience tasting everything, from priceless 1st growth Bordeaux to everyday drinking wine. Though I have always specialised in selling wines of exceptional, in one way or another, pedigree, I have tried and drank lots of middling or indifferent stuff, with one horror always lurking at the back of my mind - a friend's home-made wine.

Uninformed people like to kid themselves that somehow a little person on their own with no facilities and little real knowledge can make a better, a more honest wine, than the dastardly commercial producers, out for what they can get with little regard for purity and real quality. It is a wonderful, innocent idea that seems rational until you know a bit more about it, when if you have any sense you realise that this is all a bullock would deposit not long after a good meal - the average Joe or Josephine has no suitable equipment, little knowledge and, quite frankly, limited understanding of what makes a good wine. Not to labour a point, most homemade wine is mediocre, sometimes embarrassing and, more often than not, undrinkable by anyone with a trained palate.

You, my regular reader, remember clearly that back in May I took a ship and visited old friends on the beautiful island of Kos, friends that I had known since before my teens and that I had lost touch with until relatively recently, life being what it is. After spending a few days on the island, encountering the same warmth that had bound us as children from entirely different backgrounds all those years ago, I had to leave and return to the Greek mainland. One of my kind friends insisted he give me some of his family's homemade olive oil and a bottle of their family wine, both of which I accepted with outward pleasure and inner apprehension; the wine especially worried me.

Over the last few months the olive oil has been in regular use in my sister's household, where I am thankfully a guest, enhancing many a salad but also, despite my friend warning against it - don't waste this in cooking, it's too good - I used it in a handful of yummy dishes. The wine posed more of a problem - what if it was awful? - and I was more circumspect in sharing it, not wanting to embarrass neither my friend in Kos nor the sharer, so I kept it in my wardrobe.

Well, today became the moment of truth and, as my sister went out for the evening, I indulged in some basic cooking and a glass or three of wine, choosing my friend's wine from Kos as the victim. And - and I can hardly credit this myself - I was bowled over, for this was a terrific red wine, serious and concentrated in nose and palate, intense strawberries with a touch of brandy dominating everything. Rich and pleasing, it was the exact opposite of what I had feared and exactly what my friend had loosely promised me... Oh ye of little faith!

With all my preconceptions shattered, my simple meal tonight fittingly involved some of his olive oil as well, giving me lots of satisfaction in more ways than one and proving to me how stupid prejudice is - yes, most homemade wine is shite, but some can be very good indeed. As a little egomaniac I may not enjoy being taught lessons but, on the other hand, I do so enjoy learning! The pleasure from this unexpected surprise was such - and I was fully prepared to have to flush the wine down the sink, if I'm honest - that I polished off the whole bottle and it left me wanting more.

I do not know when my next time in Kos will be, though I hope it may be soon as I yearn to spend more time with my lovely friends there, but it will have to include a bit more of this lovely wine, made with love and surprising skill and offered with affection for a friendship that, incredible as it may seem, has transcended the years - I feel so amazingly blessed.