​Answer might be at the bottom of the bottle

Blame my niece, Lucy, for getting married and forcing me to contemplate the transience of life and love and to ask the unanswerable question of what they're actually for.

Also, I read a book recently which reminded me that, like yourselves, I'm going to die. I'd always suspected that it could happen and naturally had preferred not to think about it too much. Death was for others, surely, but not for me, the great bon viveur and connoisseur, Raymond Gleug, was it?

Surely, my fate was to reside here at my lovely home, Rose Cottage, with my beloved wife, the enigmatic Madame G., sampling wonderful wine and checking in with you guys once a week in perpetuity. No?Apparently not. I suppose one should consider planning for the other possibility. Not the will or even the music at the funeral ceremony- Chopin's Raindrop Prelude and Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, please- but the spiritual stuff.

It was difficult for me to locate a soul to scrutinise beneath my looking-glass but after an intensive period of meditation I can proudly declare that there is indeed one inside here. Let's celebrate! A bottle of vino seems certain to help the contemplative process.I don't want to drag you down, dear tipplers, and I'm certainly in no position to preach, so I suggest you also pour yourselves a glass or two of today's Wine of the Week, the complex, seductive and versatile 2022 M&S Classics, Malbec £8.50) while I share the fruits of my metaphysical musings. First, the wine. Mellow, well-rounded and firmly balanced, this graceful, savoury Argentinian drop teems with ripe, muscular black fruit and plum flavours which mingle pleasingly alongside notes of leather and delicate hints of mint and spice. One for a Sunday roast of beef or lamb.Alas, my bottle runs dry... what a metaphor! What then, sings Plato's ghost, what then? The sad truth is we live in a terrible world. Science tells us it's doomed to die and we're doing all we can to accelerate the process.

You see, very few people truly believe in God, a soul or an afterlife and rarely stop to notice how rather than being a self-contained entity within a society of competing individuals, we're all deeply interconnected and interdependent. This results in short-term, selfish thinking.

Disregard for the consequences of our actions and lack of empathy for the sufferings of others inevitably brings ecological disaster, war, famine and other bad stuff such as moral corruption in high public office. But they say the drink makes you forget all this and I seem to have forgotten my promise not to pontificate. Time for another bottle, tipplers.Let's soften the blows with the gently honeyed, fresh and fruity 2022 Cono Sur Bicicleta Viognier (£7, Sainsbury's). A vibrantly aromatic bouquet leads to a lively, just off-dry palate that is full of citrus, apricot and melon flavours. You could certainly enjoy it with seafood or salads though I preferred mine with my Madame's delectable, deftly spiced saag aloo.Heavy stuff, this mortality carry-on, hey? But, fear not, physical death need not mean spiritual death. Though it may do. I mean, once the bottle runs dry, the party's over. Unless you can find another one... Anyway, it can't do any harm to peruse upon one's demise once in a while. Can it? Forewarned is forearmed, they say. In the meantime, it's a really tough world out there so I suppose we really should try to be as nice to each other as possible. And just remember what Niels Bohr told Einstein- thinking isn't simply pursuing an idea to its logical conclusion, to truly think one must be creative too. Perhaps the answers lie at the very bottom of this bottle. Or underneath the next one. Should we keep looking? Till next week, tipplers, sante!