What was that all about?

I was a bit devastated to wake up to the news yesterday that Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie had died at age 79.

I love Fleetwood Mac and was lucky enough to finally see them in concert in 2019. DD and I rate it as one of our favourite live performances.

Vale Chrissie.

The rest of my day passed in the usual blur, then I raced to a trendy spot called The Winery for a drinks event.

The Botanist Gin was hosting a dinner at the Winery Garden Room in celebration of the festive season and their Christmas table centrepiece collaboration with Sydney florist Eden & Bell.

I’m not entirely clear on the details of the centrepiece collaboration as the media release hasn’t landed yet, but I mistakenly thought I was going to a Christmas table centrepiece demonstration.

I had it in my head that a florist was going to show me how to up my Christmas decorating game while I watched and sipped a cocktail.

The event ran from 6-9pm and I wasn’t allowed to bring a plus one. Those events are always a bit tricky because you have to make conversation with total strangers all night, but I figured there would be a floral demonstration to distract me.

However, when I checked my phone it was 8.50pm, with nary a florist in sight.

As I noted to DD via text message on the way home: “Weird night – no idea what it was about. Ate, drank and was handed a bunch of dried flowers to take home.”

The brand ambassador gave a quick speech at the beginning, then we were left to our own devices.

However, the hours flew past because I made two new friends while I was there. The first was a lovely young woman who launched a lifestyle website a few years ago called Enroute. We discussed how we are secretly both introverts who find social events a bit exhausting, except no one will believe us because we seem so energised.

Then I was seated next to a bloke who is in the process of launching a wine website. However, he was there in his capacity as a writer for a website called The Plus Ones, which was ironic when he couldn’t bring one.

We talked each other’s ears off for two hours. I barely noticed what I was eating and drinking as we delved into our respective life histories and six degrees of separation.

We worked out we had a mutual friend in the magazine industry and that he’d organised an event I went to last year in the Botanic Gardens.

Then I jumped in a cab and made friends with the driver.

I seem to have developed a knack for it in my middle age.

As for The Botanist, its unique flavours come from its 22 hand-foraged botanicals – including apple mint, heather, red clover, and meadowsweet – which are harvested across the island of Islay. 

The Botanist has its own full-time professional forager who hand picks all the botanicals. I thought their job sounded pretty dreamy until someone pointed out it is very cold and rainy on Islay most of the time.

However, the result for The Botanist is a spirit that has a nose filled with a bouquet of herbal freshness, juniper and sweet citrus, which opens to sweet, spicy and earthy notes of cassia and coriander. It has a round mouthfeel, with a relaxed, balanced finish of water mint, hawthorn, wood sage, cinnamon and soft juniper.

I sipped it in a few cocktails last night while eating grilled prawns and other delicious morsels. It’s hard being me.

Actually, I am getting a bit long in the tooth for the pace. I need a rest, but weary me is out again tonight.

Oooh and my buffet thingy is arriving between 11am and 2pm today.

Stand by for show and tell on Monday.

Have a great weekend.

Song of the day: Fleetwood Mac “Little lies”