Tired of all the overpriced restaurant meals (and wines) and leery of the Friday night crowd, I hung out at a friend’s place instead last night. There were four of us, and we ordered three 10 inch pizzas to wash down with a bottle of Languedoc Pinot Noir (La Forge Estate Pinot Noir Reserve 2006 I brought from home (incidentally, I just trekked over to Nat Decants to take a look at her suggested pairing for meaty pizza, and pinot noir was up there on the list).

The wine was a cheap (relatively, in Singapore terms; do you know that the government charges a flat tax of $7.50 per bottle of wine that comes into Singapore?) bottle I had picked up on impulse at Denise Wines. My expectations were low, so I was pleasantly surprised by the wine. It had a light and fruity nose – strawberries, raspberries – and some cinammon in the finish. Nice and smooth tannins that went really well with our pizzas: a BBQ chicken one; one called the Sunshine Fantasy, which had boiled eggs, which I love; and a pepperoni and sausage one.

So, all in all, a delightfully pleasant, low-key evening punctuated with shouts of laughter.