Time for a Survival Bunker?

Spain is the champion of Coronavirus cases in Europe but before you celebrate, let's remember that this is nothing to be proud of.

What is worth celebrating of course is when a friend offers you a wine cellar while cleaning out his family home. I made this video after it had been cleaned out by movers and before my friend offered it to me which is why I am calling it my friends cellar in the video. He said it was mine if I could move it and after a month or two of waiting for me to confirm that I would take the lot, I missed out and the fate of those bottles is now a mystery.

Don't drown your sorrows too much, I had made my way through most of the vintage Champagnes over that Summer but left behind hundreds of bottles of Rioja red wine from the year I was born.

I might not have aged as well as the wine in the bodega over the last four decades but I was quoted almost €5,000 to ship the wine cellar to Ireland and knew I couldn't easily accommodate hundreds of bottles of wine in my apartment.

As cases continue to rise around the world with a million cases in America yesterday and a new case in Northern Ireland every few minutes, I hope you have a case of wine at home, just in case we end up in quarantine again.

It would have made a fantastic survival bunker I am sure but at least I got a few books from the bookshelves in the move that included some Joyce and Hemingway books that were on my list of books to pick up. U. p, UP.

Stay safe everyone and I hope you have kept a nice bottle or two for the centenary celebrations. Sadly, I loss out on lots of wine from 1981 which wouldn't have made a bad choice for Joyce's 140th anniversary which is of course the same day as the centenary publication of Ulysses, Groundhog Day.

BELOW: I managed to rescue most of the vintage Champagnes left down below at least.

WHINE: But I'm stilling whining about all that old wine, left behind.

JUST IN CASE: Shouldn't we all stock up for the next lockdown?

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