Only an idiot would schedule a home move involving an entire, top to bottom, renovation of a new flat in the busiest work month of the year. That idiot is me. Dramas in the last week have included the discovery of three rotten ceiling joists (“Yes,” said my Polish builder, really cheerfully, “It is very bad news actually.”); an infestation of ants; mutterings about new problems with the roof and the news, just as I was about to order it that the new kitchen (and yes, the old one has already been ripped out) was going to cost 25% more than the original quote because the cabinet company had ‘forgotten’ to include certain vital components. (Cue emergency kitchen shopping elsewhere). Oh, and then there was the small matter of a three hour  exam. Very weird to be back at a wobbly exam hall desk – “You may turn your papers over…NOW.” And work. On top of all that. Stressed? No, no problem at all *not sounding at all clenched* *pouring a stiff drink*.

Two good things:

1. The Fortnum & Mason food & drink writing awards on Tuesday night. They were lovely. Not just because to my astonishment I was given Drink Writer of the year. Also, my goodness that place knows how to throw a party. Apologies to those who spoke to me at the end of it by which time I was on Very Short Loop (blame the champagne). Lovely to meet the extraordinarily nice Rachel Khoo who told me her teeny Paris flat is just 21 square metres – she still has to pull the bed down every single night before going to sleep (sort of know I’d end up sleeping on the floor some nights because I couldn’t really be bothered). Also the very impressive Jack Monroe and her fab granny. Also Claudia Winkleman who teased me for zooming shyly off stage after accepting a little silver-hamper-trophy-thing without making a speech – “I asked Victoria if she’d like to say something and she said, ‘Absolutely not.’” Well except perhaps for – thank you Fortnums, on all counts.

2. I’ve been tasting too much wine by day to drink any at home (though have mixed quite a few daiquiris…get that El Dorado workin’) but as a completely frivolous antidote to all the house/exam hassle I have ear-marked one of the new wines I tasted at Waitrose on Thursday afternoon for the next sunny evening we have (there will be one, won’t there? won’t there?) It’s called San Leo Asti NV Italy (Waitrose, £6.99 down from £9.49 from Wednesday – 22 May – to 11 June). YES I did say Asti. Asti is my guilty secret. I really love this super-girly, frothy, fizzy, sweet, floral wine from northern Italy. I think of it as Nectar of Summer. Slightly nectarine-y too. Happy, stop-worrying stuff to drink with a big bowl of strawberries and a bunch of nice friends.This is a new wine to Waitrose, a sibling to the San Leo prosecco, and it has a super-smart red label. Look out for it on offer in the next few weeks, wait for a burst of sun and chuck it in a big glass (don’t fiddle around with flutes). Pure escapism. Like being a teenager again.

Apparently, of all the words used to describe wine, ‘zesty’, ‘fresh’ and ‘peachy’ are three of the most easily understood. At least, they are according to recent research which asked drinkers to rate 43 words and phrases for helpfulness in describing the taste of wine. I can’t help thinking it might just be that zesty, fresh and peachy are three of the words that most easily make us feel perky and thirsty. I speak for myself here. As I write this, just the ring of them on the keyboard is enough to make me check there is a bottle of white – it would have to be white; zesty, fresh and peachy would never be red – in the fridge for later. The same research found that almost no one had a clue what ‘brooding’ or ‘spring hedgerows’ might mean. Well, I can understand the difficulty with brooding – metaphor is always a bit tricky, unless you’re Shakespeare and then it’s genius – but spring hedgerows? C’mon, guys, it’s spring, go out, find a country lane and get sniffing.While you’re at it, maybe keep a nostril open (just one, it’s not a very nice smell) for ‘foxy’ – another term used to describe the whiff of wines, usually those made from vitis labrusca rather than vitis vinifera. And if you say that, you’ll sound like an expert. In the meantime, here is a zesty, fresh and peachy wine I tasted at Marks & Spencer the other day. I would also like to add the description, ‘crisp.’ Can we stretch to crisp? It is, anyway.

Tapada de Villar Vinho Verde 2012 Portugal (10.5%, M&S, £6.99) Zesty, fresh and peachy. Um…do I need to say something else? Low in alcohol. Made from three grapes – loureiro, arinto and trajadura. Lovely. Not brooding. Suits sunshine and early evening. Please can I have a top-up?

It might be true that in book club we keep ‘forgetting’ to read the book. Book club has four members. We have been meeting for over ten years and in that time there have been four weddings, one divorce, six children, one career-change, seven house moves, quite a lot of gin-and-vodka tonics and five books (or three, if you’re not prepared to count a trilogy as three separate volumes). A while ago we decided that we only really liked the first three and  just read those on loop, or don’t read as has been the case recently. Last night we didn’t-read at Louisa’s* house. I noticed a bottle of Barefoot Merlot (made by Gallo Family Vineyards) on the kitchen worktop. “Do you like that wine?” I asked. “No,” said Louisa. “Not at all. It’s incredibly dull and boring and almost sweet. But we buy it quite a lot because they sell it in the local shop and there is never time….” There was a little sticky yellow £5.99 label on the bottle  so I thought I would recommend two MUCH NICER wines, a red and a white, inside Louisa’s part-time-teacher-with-family-£5.99-a-bottle-budget, that she could buy instead. Oh, and they can be ordered and delivered so no need to worry about time.

THE RED: Cuvee Chasseur Red 2012 France (£4.95, Waitrose) Cheery, bright, happy strawberry-scented grenache from the south of France. Every year I love this and the new vintage is as good as ever. Hurrah.

THE WHITE: Tesco Finest Picpoul 2011 France (Tesco, 2 for £12 until 23rd April and if you buy 12 bottles online from Tesco Wine by the Case by 18th April there’s an extra 25% off taking it down to £4.50/bottle) OK, so it’s not within budget by one penny. But it nearly is. Louisa said she was fed up with sauvignon blanc, “All that aggressive cat pee,” and Alex has recently fallen for picpoul. I was impressed with her tasting note, “So lovely and dry and almost salty, sort of marine,” – and she didn’t even know the vineyards, right down in the hot Languedoc, practically overlook the saltwater lagoon of the Bassin de Thau. An excellent alternative to sauvignon blanc. Slides down so easily…

* Some names have been changed at the friend’s request to protect their identity from the ire of wine snobs

I spent last week in Bordeaux. There were fairytale castles and expanses of perfectly raked white gravel; trimmed topiary, fearsomely expensive wines (which we spat, it still makes me feel a bit funny to do that with a £600 bottle), equally fearsomely suave Frenchmen (and women) and wineries that instead of being a bit grubby and dishevlled gleamed like the honeymoon suite of a five star hotel. I was there to taste the wines en primeur*and have three observations to make after six long days of 8am appointments and dazzling late dinners.

1. Wardrobe crisis? What wardrobe crisis? My annual Bordeaux trip always begins with a wardrobe panic that involves spending eight million pounds in Reiss on smart black things (never wear white near a spittoon, you will only get Pollocked) and taking everything back the following week. Bordeaux is all about show and polish. But. It is impossible to out-French the French and therefore ridiculous to try. This is why my hero of the week is Neal Martin. Neal is the indie kid of the fine wine world. He writes for the massively influential Wine Advocate but as the rest of the wine trade is striding and scrunching over gravel paths and into grand chateau after grand chateau, pristine-dark-suited as if auditioning for a part in Reservoir Dogs, he is usually alone in scruffing around in specs, a pair of jeans, an old cardie, or a zip-up top, carrying his stuff in a battered record bag or exchange-student-style rucksack. And he gets away with it. I was disappointed not to bump into him this year. But then, I don’t eat at KFC in Merignac which is where Neal hides out from the asparagus and lobster lunches.

2. Never listen to anyone else This applies big-style in Bordeaux where everyone is desperate to make important pronouncements on the vintage FIRST before ANYONE ELSE. Exhausting! Like being on the school bus. So I will say something about 2009 which I did not taste en primeur but which was lauded as one of the (three so far, or is it four?) vintages of the century. There have not been many but every time I taste a grandly expensive 2009 in bottle, I am a tiny bit disappointed. I do not fall in love. They are so warm and ripe (delicious out of barrel, I suspect, all lovely and fruity) but it’s like you booked tickets to the opera and found yourself at the Folies Bergere. Of course they are not so bathed in hot and over-wrought sun as the 2003s but even so. My notes for 2012 throw up a lot of “delicate” “gentle” “perfumed” and “elegant”. Let’s see how much they all cost before we say any more.

3. On fairytale castles I slept two nights in Chateau Pichon Baron, which has a gorgeous pale front and grey turrets. Here’s a picture. Amazing from the outside, decorated inside in a style the restaurant critic Bill Knott calls, “French Awful.”

Funnily enough my nearly-god-daughter (age 6) was not terribly interested in hearing about how the heartland of the first wine is the 25ha of vineyards right by the chateau, overlooking Latour. But she could hardly believe her eyes when I showed her the picture and told her that this magnificent place was empty for almost 50 years (Why?), save for a brief interlude during the war when evacuees were sheltered here. I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell her that the local Rotary club used to meet in the great salons on the ground floor, or that the attic is now just a big office for AXA Millesimes who own it. Instead I passed on to her, in case she ever needs it, the words of a very wise man. “A castle only becomes enchanted when it has a beautiful princess in one of the towers. Otherwise it is just a pile of stone inhabited by a selfish giant.” And I told her that she holds all the power and she must never forget it. She seemed quite pleased with that.

*What is en primeur? It is a cunning system devised by the Bordelais to sell their best wines as early as possible. Long before they are bottled, let alone finished. It means merchants and critics taste violently purple wine taken shuddering from barrels just a few months after the grapes have been picked and sell them on the basis of a combination of judgment and hype. How can you tell if these tasting samples will accurately represent the final wine? You can’t. How is it possible to know whether a wine tasted so freakishly young will grow into a pleasant or a tormented adult? It isn’t always. Lots of people get it wrong a lot of the time. Why do we continue with such a crazy system? Because it works for the Bordelais, and until it stops working for the Bordelais, nothing will change. Why do I go? Because primeurs week acts as a crash course for what’s happening in a region that makes almost as much wine as Australia and is still the backbone of the investment market.

No, not the furry, bob-tailed sort you casserole with mustard and thyme. Chocolate bunnies. And chocolate eggs. And just chocolates, frankly. And in case you have ever wondered what wine might best accompany a chocolate blowout, I have dedicated my column in the Telegraph – here – this weekend to this very important subject. Yes, chocolate and wine TOGETHER. Including some very good advice from Sarah Jane Evans, a Master of Wine and chocolate expert who has made it her business to conduct extensive research in this area. There’s a plan I doubt she ran past the school careers mistress. Happy Easter.

Hurray. It is Christmas again Easter. Well, it is easy to get confused given that it’s still so darned cold out there it feels like Narnia. On my way home from the office the other day I actually considered pinching the furry onesie someone had abandoned over in the features department. Just to keep warm.

We don’t ‘do’ Easter in my family which means that a fairly quiet weekend is in prospect. If anyone asks, I’m going to be doing a lot of running, revising and catching up on reading. In reality, there might be quite a lot of lying on the sofa, eating meatballs and watching series 2 of The Killing.

If you are doing a proper big family Easter Sunday you might be thinking about putting a big pan of mulled wine on the stove – a good move, though when the sun does finally come out, watch out for seasonal “what do you mean it’s May? We’ve only just put away the mulling spices” jet-lag. If it’s lamb that’s going on the table here are a couple of wines I’d be tempted by….

La Bastide Blanche Bandol 2010 France (Waitrose, £10.49 down from £13.99 until 2 April): When I mentioned this red on twitter yesterday my friend Joe, who is a bit of a wine genius, came in with, “I bloody love that wine.” Too true. It’s what I call a ‘proper’ wine – the real thing, made down in the heat of the south of France, rich and deep, and you can taste the balmy, herb-scented evening air of Provence in the glass. Waitrose have this on their flash 25% off fine wine sale, which is a pretty irresistible offer. A moment in which you feel Father Christmas walking through the melting Narnia snow. And I’d have some of this for summer too.

Chateau Lauriol Cotes de Francs 2008 France (Lea & Sandeman, £11.95/£10.75) A bottle full of smiles. This comes from a property that belongs to the family who own one of the most prestigious chateaux in Pomerol. I put this claret in the actual Christmas wines list I did for the Telegraph and like it even more as an option for please-can-it-be-spring-now. It has a pretty scent, all joyful red fruit – it’s the cabernet franc in the blend that gives you that – and a clean cut that reminds me of a crisp white shirt. Plus lamb is just lovely with red bordeaux, a classic (especially if you cook the lamb with a crispy herb crust). And I rather like wines from the 2008 Bordeaux vintage.

Tesco Finest Cotes Catalanes Carignan 2011 France (Tesco, £6.99 but 25% off if you buy 6+ bottles this week, so works out at £5.24) Always a good value wine, this generous, relaxed, brambly, figgy carignan. Works really well with lamb cooked with black olives. Also one for the store-cupboard as frankly it goes with pretty much anything, especially a raging thirst.

James McAvoy. Macbeth. Trafalgar Studios. New production. It was all brilliant but I won’t go on about it because you’d have to kill someone to get a ticket. What I will go on about is the very useful wine drunk with the supper eaten beforehand. I had made a tableful of antipasti partly to stave off noisy stomach rumblings during the performance, partly so I could stick all the leftovers in the fridge and not have to cook again for a week. Or at least, not have to eat mouldering oddments of bread for lunch for a week. There was a plate of cherry tomatoes in olive oil and salt; brown lentils with rocket, parsley and ricotta; artichokes; avocado; chicken wrapped in rosemary and pancetta; broad beans smashed up with lemon juice, pecorino and mint; green salad; toasted sourdough. I have been researching a piece for the Telegraph on wines from convenience branches of the big supermarket chains so there were also about two dozen opened bottles of wine in the kitchen. It always strikes me, that, grabbing food post-work, rammed up against a zillion other commuters, tired, cross and hungry there is almost no head-space left to make a wine choice except for the thought that a bottle that came with its own straw might be quite nice. So I had been shelf-scouring like a wine shopper, not a critic, to see what might end up in my basket, and called them all in to try. There were a few goodies – I’ll be writing about the rest of them in the Telegraph – but the one I chose to have a glass of with my plate of food was the Moncaro Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi 2011 Marche from Waitrose (£5.59 in large stores, £5.85 in a convenience branch). Italian wines often work well with Italian stuff – there’s just a little edge of bitterness – or unsweetness if you prefer – that jigsaws in and gets a hold of the food. This one is clean and green. It has a bit of leafy texture and grip (sorry, I know that sounds a bit weird, but it really does grip on in your mouth), and a tight line of citrus. Nothing complicated. But just right. And unlike pinot grigio which sometimes seems so invisible that if it wasn’t for the alcohol you might think you’d accidentally picked up a glass of water instead, you can taste it.