At the Officers' Mess after work yesterday I kindly asked to be surprised with a glass of something red to relax after what was arguably the morst horrible week at work I've had in a while! Blah! AND to top it off my course notes for Data Analysis and Statistics arrived - all looks like heiroglyphics - there's no hope for me at all!

Back to the wine.....on asking, "What is it?" I was told that my glass contained a wine style I hadn't heard of before....'turif' (I can't tell you what winemaker, etc at the moment but I promise I will wander back down on Monday and find out) but I did ask her to spell it for me so I could be sure.

I did a bit of a "google" search and I could only find one Australian winery that mentions 'turif'...and being a Mess wine it was 'most likely but not 100% certain' to be Aussie. Please help me out if you can.

A little more research (and a bit of luck rally because I never would have thought to alter the spelling...) Vinodiversity lists "durif" as a grape variety and you can read an article on that here. A case of you say tomAto - I say tomahto I think??? I'm kicking myself for not asking to see the bottle while I was there!

Anyway, I liked it. For me, it was a wine that was smooth and almost creamy, quite full flavoured, and in the half-light of the Melbourne evening (in the Mess beer garden) it looked to be almost dark purple/red in colour. However after only one glass, and a whole heap of socialising, I didn't really concentrate on the wine more than to know I enjoyed it greatly...I will toddle off down and grab a bottle of whatever it was this week and 'taste' it properly.

Any excuse really....