Beer and darts and stuff

Well, today was the penultimate day of judging at the IWC. I had another excellent panel, which consisted of Graham Nash of Tesco, Julia Jenkins of Flagship Wines and Alan Kennett of Yellow Tail in Australia. Quite serious, when you consider that Graham is a buyer for the UK's leading wine retailer by far, and that Alan is in charge of 10% of the Australian Wine Industry's crush.

This evening I was planning to have an early night, but I ended up going out with with two good friends from way back - Karl and Richard - and we ended up drinking beer and playing darts in the Ailsa Tavern in St Margarets. This is after I ribbed Joe Wadsack and Nick Dymoke-Marr for their darts sessions in a Ham pub, near where Joe lives. I just thought that Joe and Nick would look the part as darts players, dressed in proper darts shirts. Maybe we should organize a wine trade team darts competition. I also joked with Noel Young that he could pass as a darts player when we were tasting on adjacent tables yesterday, which didn't go down well.

The Ailsa Tavern has a beer festival on at the moment. We tried Pale Rider from Kelham Island in South Yorkshire (5.2%) which was warm, rich and fruity with a lovely hoppy bitterness, and Tribute from St Austell (4.2%), which was richer and maltier but still fresh and citrussy - not showing as well as it should have done.