Some days, things just don’t go my way. Even when friends have the best wine intentions. And sometimes, there seems to be a week when I have my fun well and truly spoilt.

Take, for example, Simon Cox MW, for whom I organised a few wine visits earlier this year. When I met him for lunch on a day, he told me he had something for me to say thank you. ‘I remember you said you enjoy sherry and Madeira, Cathy,’ he said as he delved in his bag. ‘Oh, yay,’ was my enthusiastic reply. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘I did bring you a Manzanilla from the UK but the B&B I stayed in in Pretoria was a dry house, and so I was forced to open it and drink it myself on Christmas Day. Hope this makes up for it,’ and handed over a bottle of J&B.

A few days later, my business partner, Petra, who travelled to Tasmania in December to visit her sister, had a confession to make. She was thrilled to be visiting a wine region that I hadn’t been to before and was intent on finding me the island’s ‘nicest’ pinot noir. And she did, according to an SMS that came through from her at five o’clock in the morning. Petra and Claudia had been to a wine festival, had sampled every pinot on offer, bought my bottle and then decided – tipsily – to share the news with me, forgetting that I don’t appreciate early mornings.

And then, returning with her bounty, she made it from Hobart to Melbourne, and Melbourne to Perth with the bottle in her hand luggage but was prevented by security from taking it further in the cabin. By this stage, the bags were safely stowed in the hold and she could do nothing but hand it over. So, there I sit, on Saturday told my Manzanilla had been drunk in Pretoria, and on the Tuesday that my Tasmanian pinot noir was possibly languishing in an Australian customs bin.

And what did I miss? Well, Manzanilla is the most delicate of fino sherries. It is made around the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Fino is made under a blanket of flor that protects the base wine from contact with the air, and that imparts its distinctive ‘nutty’ aromas and flavours. Sanlúcar’s cool temperatures and high humidity are very flor-friendly, and the blanket or cap that develops here is much thicker than that developing in the other sherry towns, Jerez or El Puerto de Santa María. The thicker blanket provides better protection from the air, and Manzanilla therefore has a fresher, more delicate flavour than other finos. In addition, it has a ‘saltier’ tang, said to be the influence of the sea estuary of the Guadalquivir river, on whose banks Sanlúcar stands. I took the photo alongside at one of its most famous bodegas, Emilio Hidalgo.

The pinot noir Petra had chosen for me was made by Home Hill Wines. According to their web site, they make several different pinots and, unfortunately, she can’t recall exactly which one she liked best. There’s the early release Home Hill White Label Pinot Noir selling for about Aus $25, the Home Hill Kelly's Reserve Pinot Noir which retails at around Aus $32, and the Home Hill Pinot Noir at Aus $35. The 2008 bottling of the latter was awarded Gold Medals at the 2009 Sydney Boutique Wine Show at 2009 Cowra Wine Show. I had hoped, for her bank balance’s sake, it was the White Label. But it was the medal winner. Bad luck indeed.