A year has whizzed by and I have just been to my friends house again for Thanksgiving dinner.

I wrote about it here last year, and always enjoy experiencing pre-Christmas turkey mirroring my American cousins. It must be particularly nice in the USA being able to build up to Thanksgiving in October/November rather than prematurely over-egging Christmas like here in the UK. When the stale chocolate drops out of the first window in the Advent calendar I turn my mind to festivities. Prior to that my subconscious wrestles to ignore the flowing tinsel which fast wraps around every image and town centre, like an untamed rampant glittering weed growing out of season.

The Thanksgiving meal started on rather an unfortunate note as one of the guests did not entirely make it into the cottage on her first attempt. My friends have a huge moat of newly laid cables around their house, yet to be filled in. Combined with the dark evening it ended up swallowing her whole. Thankfully both bottle and guest were in one piece.

The meal was amazing, a real tribute to quirky American cuisine. The candied yams that featured along side the turkey made more of a cameo appearance than last time, but were served with grandeur on a silver salver displaying the mini marshmallows in all of their glory.

I brought two bottles of US wine. A Francis Coppola Diamond Collection Red Label Zinfandel (mainly because the label was quirky, I am a sucker for celebrity endorsements and the hosts love Zinfandel) and also a Cuvaison Winery Pinot Noir which was delicious. The hosts have an amazing wine collection nestling in a very large inglenook fireplace, there is naturally no 1787 Chateau Lafite there (now the worlds most expensive vinegar at about £100,000), but certainly some very fine wines, several of which made an appearance that night.

There are loads of obscure ways that wine producers are trying to combat the wine fraudsters when it comes to the higher end bottles that collectors obsess over. The latest most reliable method is so expensive that it is hardly worth employing. It involves cesium-137, a radioactive isotope (visions of Homer Simpson and green glowing goo) which liberally dusted our dear planet due to mankind's both dark inventiveness and carelessness. This 'fallout' ended up in the wine itself over the latter half of the 20th century and can be detected, and therefore the wine's age can be derived without removing the rotten cork.

I don't think I have ever had the pleasure of trying a wine of over about £50 a bottle, but who says price equates to a delicious wine, complex maybe but the taste is always subjective.

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