Kishore Singh: Wine, wine everywhere

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The Chilean ambassador's heart is clearly larger by far than his garden. And so, the table at which we found ourselves, for a festival of top Chilean wines, was wedged, like so many other tables, between other tables, that it seemed to cut off circulation quite effectively.

Being an affable host, and evidently supported by the Hyatt's cuisine, and the importers/distributors of Chilean wines, the ambassador's home should have wanted for nothing. If it did, though, it was only lack of space. Or, maybe it was just our table that, for no apparent reason we could fathom, seemed to have turned invisible for all the waiters around.

At the tables surrounding ours, wine waiters bowed and poured, as importers and sommeliers warbled on about the Errazuriz Max Reserva and the Caballo Loco No. 7. Perhaps the Escudo...de Rothschild was every bit as good as everyone seemed to indicate, but it might have been better if we'd been poured our fair share of Chile's best, as we waited for the steward to turn around and see our empty glasses.

"Here, pssst!" hissed the German sitting to my right, "How about some wine, now?" "Of course," said the waiter censoriously, seeming to imply we were drinking more heartily than a snobbish appreciation like this called for, and poured her a dribble. And before you could say "Furlotti", he'd disappeared, leaving seven others on the table jaw-gaping.

Eventually, though, through tackling waiters who seemed to look over the curve of our shoulders to sight empty glasses on the table just past ours, and nabbing them in mid-flight, we'd just about managed to have eight ready glasses to say cheers, when a new wine "" the Tabali Reserva Carmenere was announced. And before we could gulp down ours, the glasses had been removed, and we waited for the next course of wines that wouldn't be served at our table to, well, not be served.

When we did manage to catch the eye (and elbow) of a waiter, the wines were poured sparingly while at the tables surrounding ours, the guests fared better and the conversations grew jollier. But if the wine waiters were being parsimonious, it was as nothing compared to the waiters who moved around with the food. From the fragrance, we could make out that there were chicken tikkas and mutton seekhs, and possibly fish kebabs. But like ships in the dark, they passed us by, rushing around to fill up the rapidly emptying plates of those on the tables to our fore and aft. When the Chilean guest on my left nabbed a passing dish of mushrooms, the waiter failed to spot his spouse, or the rest of us, and once again the opportunity to taste the Hyatt's fabled cuisine passed us by.

"I think," said my wife, "perhaps we should tell the cook that we will be having dinner at home, after all," but even though we got home early, the cook had fed the children and cleared out the kitchen, and there was nothing left to eat any more.

But as luck would have it, there was a bottle of Chilean Merlot in the fridge, which we pulled out and opened with the flair others might have reserved for a "top" Chilean wine. But as far as we were concerned, a Chilean wine ""any Chilean wine "" at this point seemed like a good idea.

With the wine left to "breathe" and climb down to room temperature, we now turned our attention to food. Not knowing much about Chilean cuisine, and not having the requisite ingredients for it anyway, we did second best and tossed ourselves some Spanish omelettes. And with our feet up on the table, let our hair down to enjoy our Chilean interlude.