But it's all in a good way. Really truly! Nothing but the finest of fine red wine. My wife the Goddess of Punctuation and I were invited, along with 250 other lucky souls, to the 25th birthday of Charles Melton Wines, which is an ultra-high quality winery in the Barossa Valley in South Australia, an hour's drive north of Adelaide, which is a 2 hour flight from where we live in Sydney. So a fair way from home. In times BC (Before Children) we used to go winery visiting once or twice a year, but this trip was only the second time in 11 years that we had both been away from our girls. The girls were fine with it; I had separation anxiety.

Charles Melton is best known for the amazing wine called Nine Popes, which is made from predominantly Grenache grapes, with some Shiraz and Mourvedre thrown in.

The Barossa has a reputation for producing very high quality wine. Penfolds Grange, which is widely considered one of the best wines in the world, is made just up the road, and Nine Popes does for Grenache grapes what Grange does for Shiraz.

I won't bore you with piles of wine talk (I hope) but there were two highlights I must mention.

The first was an international tasting. Charlie brought in 12 wines from all over the world for a comparative tasting of four grape types made in totally different ways in different places. Slovakia, France, Italy and the US were on the list. I'll particularly mention the 2005 Seghesio Old Vine Zinfandel from California, the 2008 Christian Morery Vallions Chablis from France, and the 2008 Aston Hills Reserve Pinot from Australia. All amazing wines. And Charlie imported all these for us to taste at his own expense. Every drop of wine all we 250 guests drank over three days, both the imports and his own, plus some amazing food was given us by the winery as a massive thank you for our support over the years.

The second highlight was the vertical tasting of every vintage of every wine Charles Melton ever made. He had Nine Popes on the table from 1996 to 2008, and it was an amazing experience to taste one after the other. You could even taste the difference between the normal sized bottle and the magnum of exactly the same wine, and believe me, the difference was very clear. Same goes for his Shiraz wines and his Rosé.

The Melton Rosé by the way is named for his wife: Rose of Virginia. He also has a Shiraz called The Father In Law. There's no law says fine wine can't have a sense of humour.

Charlie talked about how he was running a small business, which he said to us in a huge shed surrounded by large vats of fermenting wine. If that's his definition of a small business, he should try writing.