This is a rather enjoyable wine from Domaine des Cotes de Chalaya. A good deep colour and a complex taste, rich with red fruit and soft warm spice. Excellent value for money and a wine that would suit roast meats on a summers day.

© Richard Randall

Truffle hunting with a dog (or a pig) is a very special experience. The black Perigord truffle, Tuber Melanosporum, The Black Diamond, hides in the ground and only a trained dog (or more rarely, a pig) can find it - one of the rarest gastronomic delicacies, used in small quantities in luxury cuisine.

The Church of Scientology in France is set to stand trial for fraud. A women who was approached on a Paris street and offered a ‘free’ personality (she must have failed!) test ended up giving the Church of Scientology over 20,000 euros for books, courses, and illegally prescribed drugs, plus an “electrometer” supposed to measure fluctuations in her mental state (did it flash retarded, I wonder???).
This goes to prove that the streets of Paris are really paved with gold. Anyone with even just half a brain cell knows the Church of Scientology is just a massive scam, to con money out of the vulnerable and stupid (Tom Cruise, John Travolta et all).
Let’s hope after a fair (hang ‘em high) and comprehensive trial they are found guilty and banned for the sick and twisted cult that they are.

© Richard Randall

IN Nature’s temple living pillars rise,
And words are murmured none have understood,
And man must wander through a tangled wood
Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes.

As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim
Mingle to one deep sound and fade away;
Vast as the night and brilliant as the day,
Colour and sound and perfume speak to him.

Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child,
Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green;
Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild,

Have all the expansion of things infinite:
As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin,
Which sing the sense’s and the soul’s delight.

Bertrand with the Sword of the Constable of France by Jean Fouquet