It’s taken three months to get here (don’t ask) but I have finally received my copy of The Wines of Northern Spain written by my friend Sarah Jane Evans MW. I ordered it back in April when the publisher had a special offer going and I had this rather naïve notion that I would be spending LOCKDOWN doing a lot of reading. Ha.

Have just had a quick look through and, man, this would have been so useful before I went up to Galicia last summer to do research for that Decanter article (in fact, it was Sarah Jane who first recommended me to Decanter, bless her!) but I had very short notice for that trip so there wasn’t time to order it then. Especially with a more than three month delivery time.

Actually, that was a mix up with my address. Three times. When I got in touch with the publisher after a month he wrote back saying the delivery company had come to my place twice and left notices for me to pick up the book at their drop off point. Well duh. Not likely since I was home all of May and June. Anyhow I got in touch again and they offered to give me a refund, but I was really keen on having this book, so they sent it a third time. This time they also took my phone number (don’t know why they didn’t do it in the first place) and last week I got a call from a guy who lives down the street saying his cleaning lady had taken in a package addressed to me. At his address. Duh. Anyhow, I finally got round to picking it up today because the guy said they were only at home in the evenings, and I don’t go out in the evenings, so we worked out a plan whereby he’d leave it at the shop across the street from me. But then it turned out they were leaving on holiday today and would be at home at midday… and so I finally have my book. Now I just have to get my brain out of lockdown mode…