Dugois Arbois Savagnin '05 & Chateau Batailley '94

Over the last couple of months I have been wallowing with the eagles at night a fair amount more than is probably good for me. So the rare occurance of making it to bed before 7am on Saturday meant that I was up in time to accompany Sister, through the blazing October sunshine to Borough market in search of pork.

'Nduja is one of the many ingredients available in London at the moment that are as trendy and delicious as they are unpronouncable. It is a raw pork sausage from Cantabria made mostly with head and neck cuts and then laced with shed-loads of hot peperoncino chilli. The porcine equivalent of speedballing.

Some people like to cook with it; frying it up or adding to sauces for pasta or fish. And whilst I'm sure this is great, it's also a bit of a cop-out. It's really just a pimped up Sobressade and hence better eaten on it's own, spread thickly on crusty bread.

It's also fantastically difficult to pair. The rich porkiness that you get from cheap cuts and raw fat shot through with untamed chilli seems specifically designed to obliterate almost any wine you care to mention.

We tried a couple of leftfield juices with supper: Dugois Arbois Savagnin '05 and Chateau Batailley '94.

The Batailley was the better wine: all sour blackberry and sweet raspberry, cracking woodiness, length and balance. No angles, and right in its prime.

The Savagnin is definitely an oxidative style, with a distinct, nutty vin jaune-y nose. But the palate's dancin', with a keen acidity and buckets of apples, cut by a lemon-pith finish. This was the wine for 'Nduja- the apple played nicely with the pork, and the citrus cut through the fattiness. There's not really an answer for that amount of chilli, but it was close enough.

Soaring with the pigs in the morning.

Chateau Petrus 1982

c. £4,000

As you would expect, my recent arrival in the United States was met with great fanfare, rejoicing and brouhaha.

The timeless pairing of good strong beer and Xanax had seen away an overnight train ride with ease, and I arrived in Camden ready to take on the South. The Americans were going to have to pull some pretty peculiar stuff out of the bag if they were going to surprise or unsettle me this time.

I was off to visit the US contingent of the Russian's large and complicated family, who had recently relocated from California and were in the process of spreading themselves thinly amongst a number of indistinct towns in South Carolina.

An early victory in the campaign saw us locate the single shop in town that hadn't closed down and procure from them an excellent pirate hat, as a gift for the Russian's little sister. And buoyed by this, we headed for home and the bright beacon of his father-in-law's superlative wine cellar...

A cursory inspection revealed a large number of bottles, mostly Bordeaux and Burgundy, and largely adorned with labels saying things like Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, Lafite and 1947.

"This ought to go well with the steaks," opined the father-in-law, breaking my reverie. 1982 Chateau Petrus. Well, yes- I imagine it might. Food and wine pairings rarely a problem for the man one suspects.

Flame-grilled steaks and one of the most expensive wines ever produced - staggering generosity - the Americans evidently were really very pleased to see me.

The wine, as you would expect, but probably can't imagine, was sublime. The nose was heady, almost Bugundian, but with a little more spirit. Tannins were hitting a luscious integrated peak after 18 years, the palate beautifully balanced with complex with red fruit, lead, leather, tobacco, earth... I could go on, but trying to describe this wine is somewhat moot; as a university lecturer once told me the only apposite response to sublimity is "FUCK ME!" By some distance the best I have ever and probably ever will drink.

Not, of course, several thousand pounds a bottle better, but that's wine people for you- mad as snakes.

As I finished my last few drops I was hit by an overwhelming sense of personal failure. I knew they had done it again- gone and surprised me.