joyful January

“Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man” – Plato.
Well said Plato! No going 'Dry January' for me. No, no, far too much wine tasting for that to happen. You see, I’m still learning about wine (thankfully one of those subjects that can happily keep you going for a lifetime – or less depending on whether you spit or swallow….!)
And, I’m discovering just what a diligent student I can be – thoroughly dedicated to the cause.
So, the business has been well and truly embarked upon, website is live (obviously) and has had its initial hiccups (I’m sure there’ll be plenty more of those). We have all got our long lists of stuff to do at AHW HQ: there’s marketing, marketing and more marketing to be done, new vineyards to approach, some professional photography to organise and the year ahead’s calendar to plan (mainly consisting of ‘discussion’ about who gets to go to Italy when?). All this, while keeping sales buoyant in the face of some killjoy’s idea of national austerity measures (aka Dry Jan).
Despite not going dry for January (or any other time of the year for that matter), it can still be a long, difficult month so I’m employing the following tactics to fool my way through it….What works for you?

• Keeping my Christmas Tree going as long as possible. All the coloured baubles are gone so now it is my chic January Tree with fairy lights instead of a sad, bare corner. It’ll probably shed all needles by the time I’ve written this and I shall have to embrace sad, bare corners…
• Not feeling guilty about wanting to spend whole evenings just snuggled down on the sofa with a delicious glass of Cascina Albano’s Barbera and husband (not necessarily in that order) to watch more than one episode of a series at a time. It does get dark early!
• A slice of toasted pannettone with butter for breakfast.
• Sheepskin slippers without socks.
• Lying in at the weekend with a pile of lovely new books and magazines which include:

Fernandez & Wells 'Rustic'
Kinfolk's 'The Kinfolk Home'
Garance Dore's 'Love x Style x Life'
Elle Decoration's 'The Trend Issue'
Ellie Tennant's 'Chic Boutiquers at Home'