It's been a day without internet today. Only now, at 21.30, am I able to pick up emails and update the blog. Of course, some days I don't do this through competing pressures on time; today I had the time but not the connection. It's a good discipline to occasionally abstain from connectivity of the wired kind.

So what am I busy with at the moment? A lot of my attention is focused on finishing my second book, but it's one I'm sort-of embarrassed about. It's an important book that needs to be written, but I'm worried people will mock me when they find out it is restricted to the topic of wine bottle closures.

But, to quote Peter Godden and Leigh Francis of the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI): ‘It can be argued that closing the bottle remains one of the greatest technical issues facing the wine industry. The winemaker can control many aspects of wine production to create a wine suitable for the marketplace, and yet there can be an unpredictable incidence of problems once the wine is bottled, due in large part to the properties of the closures used.’ (From the introduction to the AWRI closure report of 2001.)

The book is an unbiased, balanced account of the closures debate, and it's scheduled for publication this May. It will be a cracking read.