UC Davis does wine, I mean really does it. No, they’re not all winos, there aren’t lots of expensive fancy fashionable Napa style wineries around here, but this is the place where those vintners come to learn what the hell is going on with those grapes. The viticulturalists and enologists here are the top of the game, and they know their stuff. So now they have a shiny new complex and vinyard on campus to work with, the Robert Mondavi Institute for Food and Wine Science. I sat out there yesterday lunchtime and sketched inside the courtyard’s Good Life Garden. More new additions are being, er, added to this complex, including facilities for the study not just of winemaking but beer-brewing too (I’m sure a few frat houses have their own micro-brew facilities already set up).

“Beer and Wine, I’ll be fine“, that phrase comes from a friend of mine who vehemently claimed it to be true, and then after downing a bottle of red plonk and a few pints of amber nectar, spent the rest of the night disproving his theory in the toilets of the Dublin Castle in Camden Town. Don’t mix grape and grain. I wonder if any of the high-tech labs are working on similar experiments. No need, mate – just go down Camden, innit.