Gate 108 [Edinburgh Wine trip:Part I of II]

Gate 108, entrance to Edinburgh. Long a hold of cheap drink. Cheap drink means cheap wine. Now, unlike the Irish system which despite constant warning from the front-line wino's has  resisted price regulation until late, however even with the hikes in Scotland, they have cleverly decided not to squeeze the good out of the world of wine. For students with friends over there to whom they make constant visit too, this is good news.
Now, if only had we two such people, willing to taste wine in a country famed for her scotch, a county where you are as likely to pair your wine with battered Mars Bar as you are with pasta. If only. Clearly I would not elaborate to this extent if we hadn't, otherwise this article would be rather (Forgive the language but) shite. So this seemed like the idea spring holiday for the Empty Glass boys to go for a holiday! Now this also meant  getting to sample a few airport wines, over priced as they are, still nothing like settling the nerves before take off.

So we're did we take off? Wining began  in the Oak bar café in Terminal 2 (despite the fact we weren't flying from there). The first wine to go down was Rioja. Cune as this bad boy was christened, opened quickly, typically oaked like any other Rioja, you have the usual trade mark punches of Rioja, raspberries and vanilla, but you got something extra in this. Strawberry. This is there in more than a hint form too. At €20, not really in normal circles paying its worth BUT as ever this is the airport and a good find in T2. A note on the Oak bar the "Just here for  a job staff" are lovely people and all, so try hit them! The Oak bars selection is amazing, with a few 50cl bottles from  for a popular destination (These bottles including a Fleurie and the said Rioja) but beware the arrogance of the senior staff behind the counter who thinks that your money somehow means less because you are a student.  

Last texts sent, drinks necked and time for O'Leary's death trap

So it took us a while to mount our offensive on T1. Once we hit there, besides asking our team mate Rob to strip to all but his boxers going through security, the bar was of course hit. We ended up watching flights take off and of course our own merry plane come in! So from my comfortable bar stool I sipped from my cleaned palate my Chardonnay. Jacobs creek, while not a star in the league of Chardonnay, is a pretty bog standard pub wine. Not a bad one either, not a great one mine you but hey on this side of the water, a good pub wine, don't pay more than €4.50 for it because even that is expensive for it!

Watching the flights come in and out provided ample time for "empty" talk as we've begun to refer to it now. topics that have we're raised in the chat were newsletters, college societies, attempting to use Empty to organise student wine societies around the country so that they could interlink and add meaning to student wine. A lot of things were put into our heads and who knows what'll come of it, but it is exciting to be in the middle of it.

Watching all the planes fly got to my nerves going, so in the most sensible way possible I steadied myself for another drink on the plane. Prosecco, was the next on the causality list. Very, overly appley, so appley I began to wonder had I in fact asked for apple juice. However an inspection of the bottle revealed no plausible links to apples on this note, Mr O'Leary can once more be thanked for annoying me.