Like a possum in the headlights of indecision

OK, OK, I give up. For some months now, since the denouement of my last wine column - ruthlessly cut off at the knees by a zealous rival media organisation - suppliers have laid siege to my door.

Some days I get home and can't get in, such is the pile of crates and cartons blocking the way.

I exaggerate, of course, but if anyone thought the civil service was hard to get out of, then try getting off the register of wine writers.

I suppose I ought to be flattered. To be frank, I haven't tried very hard.

Caught like a possum in the headlights of indecision, I've turned procrastination into a very fine art form.

On the one hand, I've gone through troughs of severe self-doubt on account of the fact I've never been much of a "nose" - despite the reasonably prominent extrusion that wanders a little crookedly somewhere south of my eyes and north of ma bouche.

It has a history all of its own, my nose, and I'm not going to bore you with all the gory details - what goes on in the scrum should stay in the scrum - but suffice to say there are some days when the barometer takes a dive, or the air's thick with pollen, or, more likely, the wrong stars are in alignment, and when try as I might, I just can't get the "saddle sweat".

Pea straw maybe, mushroom sometimes, vanilla occasionally, but I swear when it comes to saddle sweat - as in "this juicy little number reeks of berries and nicotine with undertones of oaky vanilla and just the merest hint of saddle sweat" - I'm just lost.

Further, I have to confess - which should probably disqualify me right at the outset - I'm a bit of a reluctant drinker.

It's not just the acid reflux that kicks in after the second bottle of rough red, it's the next day's haze.

Pathetic really - a wine scribe put off by a little morning-after fug. Wine wimp more like.

Not that I constrict myself to wine, you understand.

Some Monteith's Porter Dark Ale - as thick as treacle and with a decent sort of a boot (6%) on it - arrived through the post the other day; quite tasty too, but brilliant in a lamb stew.

Stick around and I might give you the recipe, not that I ever use recipes.

When, as a matter of principle, you ration yourself to 30 mins max food prep time, recipes just get in the way.

Cook by the seat of your pants, I say. Less anal; more fun. Because, apart from anything else, you never know quite how it's going to turn out.

But I digress . . .

As I was saying vis-a-vis that possum in the headlights of indecision, on the other hand it is flattering to be assailed by bottles from far-flung parts of the nation.

Many of them are items of considerable beauty: too pretty to drink in fact.

Then there is the guilt factor at that gathering "cellar".

In the quid pro quo stakes (you send me the gear, I might write something about it) there's quid coming in but not much quo going out.

Things have got out of kilter and I really ought to do something about it. Besides, truth be told, I do enjoy a tipple now and again.

I blame my old Massey University mentor, Malcolm Reeves, who lecturing in Food Technology III or whatever it was, somehow contrived to get wine-making onto the curriculum, and in addition to schooling us all in the art of oenological appreciation, took us up to Hawkes Bay - this was in the early 70s when Marlborough was still just an accident of history waiting to happen - and around the wineries. Such as they were.

We took grapes back to the lab in Palmerston North and proceeded to make our own brew - which yours truly promptly managed to destroy through mis-adjusting the pH by a factor of 10.

That was, in effect, the end of my wine-making career, but it hasn't stopped me drinking the stuff. Reluctantly, you understand.

- Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor and a weekly opinion page columnist at the Otago Daily Times.

A long-time food and wine enthusiast he has "sung for his supper" by writing on food, wine and restaurants for publications ranging from the Independent in London to The Press, the Sunday Star-Times, and Cuisine magazine.

In 2008 he was a southern regional judge for the Cuisine Restaurant of the Year awards.