Corner shop blending master class 1.0

We've all been there, Sunday afternoon 4.10pm, lack of preparedness that has meant that you've nothing to drink and Morisson's has just shut.*

This leaves one in what I call the corner shop quandary. Obviously the idea of spending a Sunday evening drinking tea and council pop is far too distressing to countenance, so we'll pretend it's was never proposed.

Any way, here we are, surveying the delights displayed at wherever your local cash and carry reseller's located. If you're anything like me you'll find yourself double flanked by rubbish, over-priced wines to the left and more expensive rubbish over-priced wines to your right. Barring the occasional corner shop gem in the dirt (I tweet them when i see them) you're stuck with it.

However, I believe I've discovered a solution. One I really ought to have divined far earlier (I'm blaming the ennui that hits upon the realisation that a corner shop wine trip is the only course of action), for this I can only apologise.

So without further ado I present: Plan of action for dealing with corner shop wine.

Firstly one has to mentally recontextualise the situation. You are no longer a sap buying cheap corner shop wine. NO. Now you're a flying wine maker. The bottles on offer are now the tools of your trade, the marble from whence your masterpiece'll emerge. See that 'Le Pressoir' Corbieres 2013, previously thin, green, over cropped Carignan. Perhaps best destined for the pot, but no, now it has new purpose. The perfect foil for the Castillo del Diablo Shiraz 2011 (confected black currents and fruit pastille chewiness), now, wed together they combine, shine and dazzle. What was previously green, hard tannin now adds underlying structure and savouriness to the simplistic one dimensional fruit of the Chilean Shiraz. Previously overtly plump fruit now delicately swaddles the pleasant acidity of the underripe Corbieres.

I may sound over excited, but I kid you not, this is the intellectual challenge of wine making repurposed for the corner shop generation. Whilst one's wary of sounding overly excited, it would be remiss of me not to finish thusly.

"Wine retail deprived residents of the world unite" "We have nothing to lose but our palates (assuming none of us has any allergies to excessively corrected acidity in our wines)"

* I appreciate that others may be better endowed with local major retailers but I'm not so you can fuck off with your judging my patronising of the North's favourite supermarket chain (as I'm lead to believe they are).