It’s Valentine’s Day in America today. The whole country seems to have become obsessed with being a pair. Restaurant tables are filled with couples. Flower sellers are doing a roaring trade, selling roses and aspirations. People exhibit a lemming-like tendency to adore their significant other. Even my local wine bar, a favourite drinking haunt, is full of couples. I feel so alone. What is this collective neurosis that insists that men buy chocolates and flowers, and book tables for couples. Me, I’ve bought a bottle of Philippe-Louraine 2002 reserve Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon from the wonderful Solano Cellars, and I will celebrate the evening gloriously alone! It’s a big wine, full of silky tannins that taste like licking a stick of chalk. Don’t get me wrong: This is quality wine, with powerful aromas of cassis and eucalypt mint and cigar box funk. I need to find some salami to match with it. Ahhhh bliss!