It was the name that did it. The label on the bottle said Wootonga and I just had to investigate. It was only 5 euro and it had a 19 volt kick. Wootonga, Australian sweet sherry.
It might have been fine if I had drunk it in small amounts as an after dinner tipple, but I drank the whole bottle in one go, and for some unfathomable reason decided to eat a jar of Ahti raw baltic herring in a mustard sauce to go along with it.
Logic should tell you that Australian Sweet Sherry and raw baltic herring in mustard sauce is not a good combination, but let me just say that the unusualness of the flavours, the mingling of the sweetness and the bitterness was sufficiently interesting that three-quarters of the wine was gone and the almost all of the raw herring before the nausea began to creep into my throat.
Having started a project I was loathe to give up, so operating on the principle of a "hair of the dog that bite you" I downed the remaining glass of Wootonga in one gulp and observing some onion rings and black peppercorns remaining in the raw herring jar I ate them as well.
It was when the molars crunched through the peppercorns that the projectile vomiting started, and after the stomach was empty the dry retching continued. There is nothing worse than the taste of bile in your mouth... well in actual fact there is... Wootonga and raw herring.
I should not be punishing myself like this.
