I have a small herb garden. I am not very green fingered, but am very proud of the modest crop. My mint is particularly vivacious right now, and I thought I would put it to good use by making my own mint tea, and try to impress some visitors.

All you need to do is to pick a few fresh leaves, rinse them, bruise them a bit and put them into a pot with some boiling water. After drinking the tea I noticed some brown bits in the bottom of my cup. If it was packet tea I could put it down to tea 'dust', but this was obviously not the case. Looking more carefully I soon realised that they were lots of poor minute aphids that had been boiled alive.

'At least it was quick', was my first reaction.

I kept quiet about this infestation and hoped it went unnoticed. So plentiful were they, that I am sure if I had turned my cup upside down a passing clairvoyant could have performed an aphid reading.

On further inspection my mint plant was indeed hiding an expanding colony of aphids, cosily tucked under the leaves and very difficult to wash off. You would need a scanning electron microscope to spot them, and a vicious dentists tool to dislodge them.

I have not made mint tea since.

Have you ever thought about all the bugs in the wine making process that escape prevention and cleaning methods, and end up being crushed with the grapes? Grape vines attract aphids, which in turn attract beautiful ladybirds who delight in feasting on them. This normally would be a good thing, but when you have a bumper aphid year, the quantity ladybirds becomes a real problem.

Ladybirds, despite their rather elegant appearance harbour a very nasty chemical, that in tiny quantities can completely change the character of a wine. This is normally used as their defense mechanism, and when there are too many crushed ladybirds in wine it can cause a condition known as 'ladybird taint'. I am told it is sort of green vegetable aroma. I unsurprisingly have not actually eaten a ladybird, or crept up behind one to scare it enough for it to produce this chemical, so if you are an open mouthed cyclist and have had the inevitable misfortune of gathering one, please let me know what they taste like.

If this idea of jus de ladybird in some wines bothers you, then there is a choice. Scientists have worked out that wine cartons sealed with an aluminium layer actively reduce the taint, a major trade off being that wine keeps less well in cartons (it is more susceptible to oxidization, which I wrote about here).

For me, I would rather put one thousand ladybirds in my Magimix and mix the resulting juice with my wine than drink from a vulgar wine carton. Naturally I would give them the option to 'fly away home' before attempting this heinous act of mass extermination.

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