Thornbury Gisborne Chardonnay 2012 – $$

How do you know when you are taking your hobby a bit too seriously?

A sign surely must be when you start buying esoteric pieces of kit to improve your performance at something in some small way. Like spending $120 on a carbon bottle cage to save a few grams in weight on your road bike, or $700 on a driver to belt a ball 10 metres further down a fairway.

I spent $10 on a box of XL5 215ml tasting glasses like they use at wine tastings. Does that count?

A guy on Sue Courtenay’s wine review website thinks XL5s are the ‘ poor man’s Riedel’ glasses , and outperform most other glassware when it comes to presenting wine at it’s best in terms of smell and taste.

I read this and thought I would give them a go. The showboat glasses that I usually drink from are so large that a lot of the bouquet is used up just filling the bowl…

L brought this bottle over to mine a week ago, and now I’m taking it back to hers, along with an XL5, to have with her home-cooked butter chicken. Yum!

Light yellow. The glass is doing its job – the wine smells like a memory: lifted fruit bouquet, white peach, thyme. In the mouth there is stonefruit, butterscotch and honeysuckle. Some lees-stirring here, and 35% in French oak barrels. 3