Co-pilot causes train wreck, but vintage MS works. Grape Expectations by Max Crus

Since Microsoft introduced MS Works way back in the 1980s, things have just gone downhill.

Who could forget the joy of typing a whole document on a Compaq386 without running out of characters?

Sure, you only had eight characters when naming the document, but the challenge to abbreviate your masterpiece’s name was part of the fun.

It didn’t even have autocorrect because at the time users knew more words than machines, unlike today’s ‘word processors’ who think they know more but frequently change things even when they don’t.

Yes, Bill Gates, Apple and Co, only recently allowed you to type certain words without correcting them to something very highlyreligious, prim and proper American. This from the porn capital of the world where they shoot 40,000 of one another each year

Margan Broke Fordwich Ceres Hill Barbera 2023, $50. Like an annus horribilis, sometimes an anise character is off-putting. Other times, such as in liquorice and this, perfectly acceptable, indeed desirable. Delightfully different. Have it with fancy anise and fennel supermarket sausages or get your own snags from the butcher and add liquorice. 9.4/10.

Margan Borke Fordwich White Label Saxonvale Mourvedre 2023, $60. Saxonvale Mourvedre sounds like a character or place straight out of Game of Thrones, so drink this from an oversized pewter mug while ripping a huge chunk wild boar from the spit with your teeth. Ample fruit and just voted in Trump as president who put Elon Musk and Hulk Hogan in the National Cabinet! Anyway, each upgrade through Windows 95, 97, 10, 11, merely made things worse, until we reached MS 365, presumably the number of useless updates since we threw away our golf balls, Ataris and Commodore 64s.

From those halcyon days of doing everything yourself such as paragraphs, lists, dotpoints and those abominable sweetness and tannins will easily counter the gaminess of the pig. 9.3/10.

Margan Broke Fordwich White Label ‘Timbervines’ Graciano 2023, $50. Gracianos have been somewhat weak and watery over the years, but this is a proper weight, 14 per cent, real man, or woman, red with body that even Hulk Hogan

‘bullet-points’ which to this day still cannot be undone, has been a backward step, not the least the latest which includes a peculiar icon of indescribable shape and meaning popping up every time you start or add to a document.

There it is now! All part of the new ‘AI’ world, or ‘A1’ world as an MP described it to a Tech gathering recently, clearly thinking she was at a dairy conference. Apparently it’s would be pleased with. If he could spell Graciano. 9.2/10. part of Microsoft’s fancy new thing called ‘Co-pilot’ which thinks we need help at every keystroke. Of course we do, but not from Hulk Hogan or extreme religious-right, pro-Israel, anti-abortion, antivax Americans with skills learnt machine-like from the ramblings and babblings of Murdoch and Sky/Fox News hacks for which, weirdly, Rupert has been paid handsomely. Perhaps that was all they could afford?

Margan Broke Fordwich White Label Semillon, 2024, $45. So bright and fresh, as always, you could just about get through summer on this alone, well, December at least, before you moved on to chardonnay. Maybe a sauv’ blanc could fll any gaps, or a fano.

9.4/10.

Margan Broke Fordwich White Label Shiraz 2023, $50. More body than most Hunter reds and without that underlying pinot character that makes people wonder if they’ve opened the right bottle. It’s not Barossan but holds its own and doesn’t whack you over the head the next morning to remind you.

Please can someone re-invent a simple word processor with no bells or whistles or ridiculous icons popping up in the margin –there it is again. I don’t care if my document names are only eight characters.

Wine, spirits and beer have survived largely unchanged since man descended from the trees of central Africa two million years ago. If only word processing had done the same.

9.2/10.

Margan Broke Fordwich White Label Chardonnay 2024, $50. Funny how White Label Chardonnay conjures something soft and fowery which this is defnitely not. Full-bodied and fullfavoured, maybe it would be better labelled white-hot? 9.4/10.