What an amazing "drop" !!

One of the biggest surprises at Christmas 2018 was this bottle of Bleasdale Bremerview Shiraz, 2009 ... which has been in the house since 2010. I made the decision to open it this Christmas, since we had at least some small reason to celebrate (we're starting to make visible headaway, and given all we've been through, that is nothing to sneeze at).

Now, the wine (bought from the cellar door at Bleasdale) was actually ... a bit acid and rough for my unsophisticated palate in 2010. Then it was stored without much attention (read: none whatsoever)  to keeping it at a stable temperature; and eight years later --

Honestly, I didn't have much in the way of hopes for it. To begin with, this one hadn't suited my palate when it was "new," and after being thoroughly abused through eight Aussie summers, I wouldn't have been surprised one iota if it'd turned into paint stripper! Oh, frabjous say ...

Against the odds, it was like drinking dark velvet.

If Frank Langella's Dracula had fancied a glass of wine instead, this would have been his choice:

One word for it: spectacular! I don't imagine you can still buy it anywhere, and I wonder if the other Langhorne Shirazes are as good. The only other such that we've tried (a few years ago, now) was the Rusticana 2013, from Newmans ... we have a bottle of that on store, too. Keep it another year or three; then, when there's cause for celebration...

Christmas was quiet: tree, presents, food...

The Christmas Eve brunch feast ... see the aforementioned wine at top left. Wow.

The Christmas Day brunch feast ... too hot for a sit-down meal.
Smoked salmon, turkey, Turkish bread, Swiss cheese, local avocados and cherries... 

...and the tree, with its loot intact, before we ripped into it! 

With Twelfth Night looming tomorrow, it's time for The Christmas Tree Down Ditty, and we'll just wade into 2019 and see what can be done this year. Time to pension off this old Christmas tree, for a start: Zolie did quite a number on it, last year and the year before: twelve or thirteen pounds of cat climbing a very light tree? To say it's asymmetrical is an understatement! Time for a new one, in about eleven months' time, I think.