Let's just revise that description of the flavour of Langhorne Creek shiraz.

How long does red wine last, opened?

I had opened the bottle, a very rich, purplish-black Langhorne Creek shiraz of 14%-alcohol strength, only a day or two earlier, and I had left it unfinished, stored in a dark cupboard. I had forgotten to replace the screwcap, which was sitting by its side. The bottle had just over a glass left. It should be fine, I thought to myself.

I decanted it slowly into the glass and there was still an inch left.

*

I cooked the steak, flipped and turned it so that the grill marks made perfect squares. Ninety seconds each side. Rare. The potatoes were already done, as were the asparagus and the fried onions and the pepper sauce. I served it up and sat at the big round table in the kitchen of the beach house where I can eat and read at the same time. I had been going through some old online newspapers from the 1940s researching a job I'm working on. (It's taking longer than it should, because I keep finding interesting items in the old newspapers unrelated to the task at hand.)

*

I drank. I ate. I read. The wine was still good. No reason why it shouldn't be. Langhorne Creek reds have a combined aroma of melting chocolate and berries when you squash them between your fingers and I also detected a very faint astringency that I hadn't noticed the previous evening. I attributed this to its 24 hours exposure to the air with the cap not being on.

I finished the steak and decided to finish the red wine. I tipped the bottle of black inkiness and as I did, a black something went into the glass. Sediment. The mark of a really good red wine. Those cheap reds come out of steel barrels, but this was matured in French casks. I kept pouring. This time a larger piece of black.

Christ almighty!

It wasn't sediment.

It was a cockroach.

The smaller, first, piece was its head. Or one of its legs. Or an antenna.

I had drunk a glass of cockroach wine.

Or at least, cockroach-infused wine.

What do you do? I'm not the hysterical type, nor do I disgorge. I just stood there wondering whether I should anyway.

Then the secondary thought waves came crowding in.

One: how stupid I had been not to make sure the cap had been screwed back on the bottle.

Two: cockroaches can climb glass bottles.

And then three: was the cockroach dead or just dead drunk?

That one really did my head in.

*

But what really disturbed me was that I should never have allowed this whole episode to have occurred, due to a precedent in this house some years ago.