I have long given up denying what fun it can be travelling as a wine writer. I have been to more than my share of beautiful places and great restaurants whilst tasting some truly delicious wines.

As much as I enjoy them, these visits do throw up their fair share of disasters which are sometimes more memorable than the wines themselves.

So, in the spirit of lightening the prevailing mood of doom and gloom let me put on record some of the funniest incidents.

In Tuscany some years ago I was in the middle of a tasting in the winemaker’s apartment when I had to nip to the loo. The door was old and not the easiest to close but after a little gentle manoeuvring I managed to ease the lock shut. Getting it open again proved to be altogether more challenging.

Not for all the money in China was this lock setting itself free. I yanked, I pulled and I banged until eventually the circular handle came off in my hands, the lock still firmly sealed.

It took quite a lot of knocking and shouting before someone came to my aid. In typical Italian fashion, that one person soon grew to five and not long after it sounded like the whole village was outside the toilet door.

The chattering (and laughter) intensified and eventually, in broken English, I heard “No problem will get you soon”.

The babble of noise moved into the room next door and almost to the outside. I peered outside the toilet window to see the gallant winemaker’s son standing on next door’s balcony, grabbing hold of some frighteningly thin-looking creepers and leaping into the bathroom.

He must have had some sort of weaponry in his pockets because lo and behold I was liberated about five minutes later.

I could have died with embarrassment; the hallway was full of people, cheering and clapping and making jokes about the ‘wine being so awful I had to shut myself in the bathroom’.

Suffice to say I never did get to the end of the tasting but I did enjoy the impromptu village party that ensued.

For someone that travels a lot it is a nightmare that I suffer from terrible travel sickness; most notably on buses. Visiting the steep, hillside vineyards of Spain’s Galicia is a treat but the roads are not.

One morning, a well-meaning colleague persuaded me to try her travel sickness pills. I remember that it took some time to persuade a ‘no-drugs’ chick like me to take it and then absolutely nothing afterwards.

Whatever it was, it knocked me out like a light. Some time later I was shaken awake at the doors of a winery and propped up in the tasting room. I am ashamed to say I remember nothing of the wines at all. What I do recall is the horrid feeling that as I closed my eyes as I sniffed the wine (as I do) I was precariously close to falling straight back to sleep. I was mortified.

Perhaps my worst — and most regular trick — is knocking things over. I have dropped precious bottles, knocked over family heirlooms and spilt more than my fair share of wine.

The worst of these was at a seminar I attended on the art of blending some years ago. There we all were, in our immaculately clean, white tasting room armed with glasses filled with red wines and a pipette. We were being guided through the qualities of the various blends and were being encouraged to experiment. Never one to shy away from a task, I set about the job with gusto.I am not sure why — or indeed how — I thought that shaking the pipette without endeavouring to seal it some way was a good plan.

Clearly it was not and the contents launched themselves away from my little workstation, landing full-force on the smartly-dressed man beside me.

I know that in trying to tidy things up I made everything a whole lot worse. He was not amused.

Despite these alarmingly regular misadventures I somehow seem to get invited back which is — as long as hosts and my fellow tasters can put up with it — good news for me.

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