In a rut.

I am in a rut. Personally, and well, avec le vin.

You ever feel like you're bored out of your mind with your life? I'm feeling that now - big time. It seems that with every bottle I'm opening, I'm becoming more and more..........disillusioned I guess. It's not that I've been having bad wines - it's just that none of them have been great wines.

I firmly believe that every once in a while, for special occasions or whatever, you're entitled to enjoy a really great bottle of wine. I mean, a really magnificent wine, the kind that reaffirms why you fell in love with wine in the first place. Off the top of my head, I think I can recall maybe 3 or 4 bottles that did that for me, that makes you go WOW when you take a sip. And that hasn't happened to me since last spring, when we opened that bottle of 1986 Chateau La Lagune. So you see why I'm getting a little antsy.

My confidence in wine was shaken big time last term, around November. I had bought 3 bottles - a Chilean pinot noir, a 2004 Croix du Mayne AC Cahors, and a red Minervois. The Chilean and Cahors both turned out to be corked. It completely blew me away that I would open two bad ones back to back - this kind of thing just shouldn't be happening with today's bottling techniques and materials. Luckily, LCBO has a great policy for returning corked wines. And I ended up picking up a great bottle of Morgon, for around $30.

But I havn't had anything really memorable since early last year. Sure, going to France was great, but again, nothing really special. The wine I drank there was good, no doubt, but I was still hoping for more.

So what to do? I'd love to be able to go out, and grab a $70 bottle of Pommard, but of course, with my current financial situation - that'd be like writing cheques that you know will bounce. However, relief is on the way, in the form of my 2005 Bordeaux futures. They should be arriving in April, either early in the month or towards the middle. Hopefully.

Having made the committment and paying half the deposit already, I'm really excited for their arrival. It's a big moment for me - my first futures purchase, the first of hopefully many to come. And the very first thing I'm going to do is open a bottle, just to reassure myself that all this interest in wine is worth it.