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Both Grahams and Taylors Late bottled Vintage and Ruby ports are available in better wine shops, Tops being one of them, and I would think that Wine Connection would also have them. However as I said in another post, I get mine from a local importer and distributor and they are just as good as those, and just having checked again, can be bought for 800 baht a bottle.

Haven't tried a particular wine and was interested to see the grapes used, in as much as Roussanne is rarely seen outside of the Rhône wines, and is used to "soften" the Syrah (Shiraz) in that area, where allowed, and is allowed in the Ch Neuf du Papes blend. Also blended with Marsanne to produce white wines I will have a look around the "wine cellar" area of Tops to see if they have that particular wine, as would love to try it, with wines from Cote Rotie and that area once being a favourite of mine.

A Saturday night venture out into the party area of Patong, i.e. Bangla Road, produced much the same result as my last post, with only a couple of slight differences......... First of all I caught up with a friend at Blue Beach Café and Restaurant and this will certainly be my "go to" Food & Drink establishment in Patong, as the food is varied, from snacks to full on meals, there is wine by the glass, and the food is great, superb even; especially the chicken schnitzel which I had last night, which was to die for (luckily I'm still alive, with just a few dead brain cells after last night's excesses). Also it was fairly busy, so I think locals are starting to get the hang of the place and good that they do, and continue to support it. Wandering up Bangla after the meal and a few glasses of red, the words of a friend came echoing back to me – – "that Bangla Road was busy and full of Indians and Arabs"! Because it was, and because of this the bars were not exactly packed, however I did see one small group of Indian men walking along with a beer in each hand, and that is a rarity. The music bars, all bar one, were not very full at all, and my favourite, Red Hot, was only about 15% populated, which is the lowest of ever seen it, which in itself is sad because they play probably the best music in Patong. I had considered ending up at Red Hot, but after settling in to the Blue Lotus café for a few drinks with friends, time got away on me and the alcohol killed a few brain cells, so at around 11:45 PM I thought I had best trundle off home, which was a wise decision, considering how I felt this morning. Just a note, whilst I was sitting at the Blue Lotus café watching the world go by, it struck me that Bangla is no longer the place where one can see pretty/beautiful women, as they are few and far between at the moment, and also of note was the amount of very fat people wandering around the place, and indeed at the table in front of us was a party of six from Australia and five of them were enormous, almost blocking the view of Bangla!!! Perhaps Bangla/Patong is becoming a place for wrinklies/misfits/uglies/fatties and oddities, so I'm not sure quite where I fit into that mix!!!

It is quite possible that ThailandRyan has a wine cooler a bit like the one I have here, and it is temperature controllable for red as well as white wines, and as I only drink red wines and port, the setting is a given!

Nice work if you can get it/them, however I have tried a few French Pinot Noirs here, and some of the better ones, however have been hugely disappointed – – maybe that's because my tastes have changed since my days of buying it by the case (Pommard Clos des Epenots was a favourite) and I have become accustomed to the fruit driven and great range of Aussie wines.

I thought I might jump in here, mainly because there are few comments which interest me, especially having started my winetasting/collecting in or around 1970, so have tasted a fair few bottles, mostly red, in that time. Firstly, I have tasted a few Thai wines, and have visited a couple of vineyards, but cannot say that I have been overly impressed with them, especially with the prices being charged, so after my first few tastings, I've never bought another one. There have been some comments about the Napa Valley wine and Australian Shiraz, so my thoughts are as follows: – the Napa Valley can produce some great wines, and like other wine producing areas, can produce some very average ones, and an American friend of mine here who had only tasted "insipid" Californian Shiraz, thought that the Aussie wines would be likewise, and was stuck on Zinfandel. So I had to put him right with a good hefty Aussie Shiraz tasting. Having said that I have tasted a couple of wonderful Zinfandel's, which I can not find here in Thailand at the moment, although I keep looking. Talking to him, it would appear that the Californian Shiraz was a sort of everyday drinker and quite possibly from young vines and for mass production/cask wines, so he hadn't tasted the "real thing". Having said that, there are some average Aussie wines, although these days my tastes lean towards Aussie wines (with some Italian ones thrown in) and these are made for the mass-market, and some can occasionally be good. However there are some big bold Aussie wines which really do need to be tasted, and really do need to be left a few years, because in their youth they are damn near undrinkable! Some wine writers have criticised Robert Parker for glorifying these types of huge, almost undrinkable when young, wines, and I agree with that because he gives some huge scores to wines of this ilk and promotes them wherever possible. Max Schubert of Penfolds started the "next level" Shiraz in Australia, whereas prior to him it was a widely grown grape and produced a lot of average drinkers, in fact in the 1980s and a little beyond, the Aussie government promoted the pulling up of old/unproductive vines (and that included some Shiraz as many of these vines had been planted decades before) in Australia because there was a glut and the quality of the wine was not anything special. That has changed over the years, and it has been recognised that old vines can produce some stunning wines and the Aussie Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon wines from various areas are some of the best you will find anywhere. Vineyard techniques have also changed over the years and vine irrigation is often seen as necessary, and it has to be carefully controlled and regulated so that the end product is of sufficient quality and not purely driven by water (if you see what I mean). The object of the exercise being that the vine roots should be under a little stress so that they delve deeper into the soil searching out moisture and nutrients, thereby affecting the quality of the end result – wine! Regarding the above, with hotter summer temperatures and "climate change" I believe vine irrigation will become a key factor in the production of wines over the coming decade or two. Now an interesting fact if one wants to watch a good and interesting movie, which is based on actual events, and also stars the wonderful, late, Alan Rickman, and it is called "Bottle Shock" whereby wines from the Napa Valley beat the best wines that France could produce, in a blind tasting in Paris and the panel of judges were all French.........see below and it is well worth watching. The Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, also known as the Judgment of Paris, was a wine competition organized in Paris on 24 May 1976 by Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant and his colleague, Patricia Gallagher, in which French judges carried out two blind tasting comparisons: one of top-quality Chardonnays and another of red wines (Bordeaux wines from France and Cabernet Sauvignon wines from Napa, California).[1][2] A Napa wine rated best in each category, which caused surprise as France was generally regarded as being the foremost producer of the world's best wines. Spurrier sold only French wine and believed that the California wines would not win.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine)

Have been there a couple of times and sampled the red wines on offer and IMO they were very average and certaily not worth the price tag. Nice location though.

Around 3000 baht a bottle as I recall?

In my opinion, yes there are few wines out there in that price bracket, which rate, IMO, better than Yellowtail, although they too come from the Riverina area, so vineyard management with regards to irrigation, the grapes and clones used and fermentation practices all come into the mix.

I buy mine from a local importer/distributor and although it is from a port house which is not one of the more famous ones, it certainly is one of the better ports I have tried in my life, and if I recall, I pay about 740 baht for it.

Although there are a few which are available at top end "supermarkets" and Tops here in Phuket has some top quality Australian wines, and one which I have tasted is the "Two Hands – Angels Share – Shiraz, and it was big, bold and beautiful. They have a few more top end Australian and French wines, as well as Italian wines, so I know where to go if I need a drop of quality! And as you quite rightly say, the everyday supermarket would not see/stock wines like this.

SORRY!!

That was also my intake/consumption here up until about two years ago, when I then decided that after more than 50 years of drinking a bottle of red per day, that I probably needed to cut back!!!! (A bit late I hear you say). So now I drink half a bottle, followed by a nice glass of Portuguese port, and the rest of the wine has the air pumped out and put back in the fridge for the next evening. In my former life, and earning a great salary, and in days when I had my own winecellars, my choices were the French Grand Cru Classe wines, plus the wines from Cote Rotie and just the occasional Burgundy, and a few from around the world, including some great Aussie wines. But now, and not earning that salary, I am more careful about what I buy and as in my previous post (or two) I seek out the midrange/good value wines and am particularly fond of those from Australia and sometimes Italy, whereas wines from Chile I haven't really taken to as yet. I will admit to splashing out on a top end bottle of red if I am going out to a nice restaurant, or if indeed I decide to cook a steak with a stilton sauce, at home. Everyone to their own and that's the beauty of wine because it is diverse enough to suit just about every palate.

I manage to buy it from a small local "supermarket/wine shop" here for 480 baht, whereas it is 599 baht in Central!! IMO it is the best wine I can buy locally in that price range, although no doubt it will be going up again soon like most everything else!

I hadn't thought about this before, but I have just looked at the few bottles I have in my wine cooler, and the Appassimento (Veneto, Italy) and the "19 Crimes" (Australia) both have orange stickers on the top of the bottles, as does the bottle of Port (Portugal) so despite what the link says, it would appear that the orange sticker, which denotes an imported wine??

As I have just mentioned in another post, Wine Connection does sell French fruit wine, and I believe one of the labels is "Le Solstice" and the cheaper end of their range has others of similar ilk. Used to be mixed/blended/bottled in Vietnam, but not sure about now. I think it's the blue sticker which denotes an imported wine. More info here.......... https://oasissoicowboy.com/ordering-and-buying-wine-in-thailand/

So it's quite amazing how some of the less expensive wines can be as good as they are, given the duty/tax payable. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the Zinfandel which Tesco Lotus cleared out a few years ago (it was selling at around 1400 baht a bottle but was reduced to around 450 baht), but it was very good, as was the Brunello de Montalcino, so having taken a bottle home to taste, I bought about 40 bottles of the Zinfandel and about a dozen of the Brunello, however have never had that sort of luck since! I haven't been in Wine Connection for a few years now, but I thought they were quite clever in the production of some of their wines, whereby they would produce fruit wines in Vietnam, by shipping in grape juice from France and Australia and blend in the fruit juice there, hence the reason they were being sold so cheaply here in Thailand.

Yes there are a few bargains out there, and I went hunting for those you had mentioned in your previous post, however couldn't find any in Patong or Phuket, although I have found some heavily reduced wines here in the past, so I keep hunting! Keep up the good work!

PS. I thought that the authorities here had banned the inclusion of tadalafil and sildenafil in the Grakcu capsules when they found out about it. But who knows if the manufacturers have stopped using them, after all TIT!

I have tried to find out from various friends who work in the industry, but it seems to be a closely guarded secret?? So it is either added at the beginning of the fermentation process so that it ferments along with the grape crush, or it is fermented separately and the resulting alcoholic fruit liquid is then added to the finished grape wine. For red wines only dark fruits are used, and for white wines then white fruit – – and I do know that passionfruit is used in the mix, along with a few others which I can't recall right now. Either way, for whatever reason, it gives me a headache, so I don't touch the stuff.

I tried it once a few years ago now, and suspected that it might have had some other ingredients in it other than just "herbal", and it turns out that it has. However I didn't know that at the time and found it to be very potent, so much so that I was walking around with a "perky" on all day long, irrespective of any sexual stimulation whatsoever! It did give me the "blocked nose/sinus" type side effect, and then the report that it contained the other ingredients was published, so I stopped taking it after a short while. The bottom line is that it works, and it works very well, but the amount of the active ingredients it is unknown, so that could present a problem for some folks.

He cited a study from Oxford University, published in The Lancet Psychiatry medical journal. The study assessed Long Covid issues from data produced by about 1.3 million people worldwide. The study evaluated the risks of Long Covid affecting the brain, nervous system, and mental health.

I love my wine far too much to not buy it here, so I do seek out wines which are not too expensive (although the occasional one is great to taste) and which suit my palate. I'm not a beer drinker, nor do I like spirits, so wine it has to be and as long as I can still find a few reasonable Aussie wines in shops here, then I'm happy, although I have just ordered six bottles of Appassimento (from Veneto) by way of a change. One can still find reasonable bottles of Aussie wines in certain shops and a favourite of mine at the moment is the "19 Crimes" red blend which I can buy here at 480 baht a bottle. Then there is the Barwang range which can still be bought for 399 baht (although I've seen the price of this shoot up by 100 baht a bottle just recently in some shops). Then of course there is the Wolf Blass Eaglehawk range which sells for 399 baht, and although it is the lowest wine in their range, it's an okay wine with Thai food or pizza, but not one that I buy. I get the occasional very good wine from an importer/distributor here who sometimes has a clear out of his slow-moving wines and have paid 600 baht for a wine that was retailing at twice that amount, and it was fabulous. The bargains are out there, but beware, so is the rubbish wine, and it doesn't hurt to buy the occasional good wine just to break the monotony – – and for the record, I wouldn't touch Jacob's Creek anyway, and especially not at the price quoted by another poster!

But close enough to the truth for you to respond. Nail, head, and all that!!!! Anyway the findings from this and other investigations will ensure that this orange clown achieves his rightful place in the history of the USA, hopefully jail...........always to be branded as a loser, and "bigly" so (to coin a phrase).

Don't really need to what your news sources are, because it's abundantly clear by your posts that you are an avid trump supporter, a cult following, right winger no less, and someone who believes that this large orange excuse for a human being, can do no wrong. Well, classified material has already been found at MAL, material that should never have been taken from the White House, so not only is he guilty of lying (no, surely not, perish the thought) at this moment in time, I'm pretty sure there are more charges to come, so don't break out the popcorn just yet because you might choke on it.