When you first meet someone and fall hopelessly and helplessly in love, you are in the throes of a form of mental illness. A potent cocktail of chemicals and neuro-transmitters called ‘monoamines’ dominate your every action during this initial, attraction stage.

The object of your desire seems to hang on your every word, greeting each banal utterance with doe-eyed rapture and a puzzling atrophy of the neck muscles. They clutch you physically – generally by the arm – as if they are already going to lose you. They laugh loudly, and somewhat maniacally, at your hackneyed jokes and phrases – mainly because they have not heard them before, although you have secretly polished them up for millennia.  Worst of all, your new love accompanies you everywhere. Activities, pastimes, hobbies and destinations are no longer your own and the loved one shows a zealots passion for the most absurd elements of your previously, private life.

Thankfully such madness abates during the second, or attachment, stage. The absurd behaviour stops and the loved one realises that you are not so funny, charming, handsome and popular and so takes off the wetsuit and the cricket pads.

It did not take the V.O.R. (my wife, the Voice of Reason) very long to tire of wine speak. Each swirl, sip and florid comment was met with a rolling of the eyes, an audible sigh of boredom and, in extremis, a sharp exit.

Until the Epiphany occurred, and it came with a great big glass of Pinot Noir. This was no ordinary Pinot, however, but a bottle of Domaine Dujac, Clos De La Roche,1990.

Now I make no bones about Pinot being female friendly, soft, lush, sensuous and elegant with a firm tannic streak, a smattering of earthy minerality and a nervy acidic backbone – a skittish thoroughbred amongst wines. The VOR took to it like a duck to water, enthusing about the nose, how the wine evolved in the glass, fruit intensity, tannins and finish were all commented upon (my pupils were dilating and what was happening to my neck), before she finally said “After all that banging on about wine, I suddenly know what you mean”.

The attraction stage had returned, she understood me again, and once more we spoke with one voice – only now I need a bigger wallet!