Given the close proximity to the much-awaited (by at least one of us; clue: not me) 2010 World Cup, we chose our wines along football-relevant lines. Originally, we'd hoped to get wines from each of the countries in England's qualifying group, but Algeria and Slovenia turned out not to be well-represented (well, represented) in our local off-licence. So we wound up having a wine each from parts of Group C (England and United States) and two wines apiece from the hosts (South Africa) and the current holders (Italy). The English wine was one we acquired last year on our holiday in Burwash (and surprisingly good - to the extent that I judged that it must be the non-English white and voted appropriately ... and incorrectly). The choice of the theme also gave C licence to roll out the assorted World Cup tat that we've amassed over the years, including a England-shirted gnome we put on the front steps to greet our guests.
While the evening went very well, true to form the scores were uniformly low. Out of a possible 24 points (6 wines times 4 properties: grape, country, year, alcohol content) the highest score achieved was a meagre 9 (I pulled down a shockingly poor 5). A result of this low scoring was that we then had to have a three-way tie-break to tease apart the weak field and determine our winner. Next time, I reckon that some form of multiple choice should be used so that we have at least some idea what vintages and potencies are in the mix, with the hope that our scores are somewhat more respectable.
Anyway, the upshot of the contest was the wresting of the Golden Arse from June (shown here, pre-match) by her daughter Rachel ...
As usual, there's a full set of photographs here.
