I had a bottle left over from a summer spending binge that had intrigued me to such a degree, I never got around to drinking it.

Unconscious Bias is a course being undertaken by every two-bit insurance corporation and government quango in the land – desperate for another accreditation in diversity and inclusion – and its core message applies to my wine buying habits more than any part of my life. I am drawn unconsciously to styles of wine, locations of wine, the topography of the vineyards and the people whom I have a natural predilection for, despite not really knowing too much about them.

When I give my stock reply to someone asking me about my favourite wines, I have a reflexive, insentient clause: ‘I like everything, truthfully.’ I’m not certain how truthful I am actually being. See, I drink white wine and think it is beautiful, but the ratio compared to my consumption of red wine is, to throw a dart at the board, around 1:4. Should my answer be more along the lines of, ‘I drink red mostly, but like white’? Does the question even matter? I’m a wino and people tend to know it by my endless postulations on the subject.

I do know, for certain, my favourite region is the Northern Rhone and, accordingly, syrah my favourite grape. I sometimes feel like branching out to buy other things in the shop and, yet, more often than not, I put a bottle of St Joseph into the basket and go home confident in my purchase and free from buyer’s regret.

But I’m in the habit of anthropomorphising wines. I love syrah because its agility and power remind me of a top athlete and its complexity of a tortured soul. And Northern Rhone syrah isn’t Bordeaux or Burgundy, cabernet or pinot, it’s, perhaps, consciously more interesting. Maybe it’s Novak Djokovic and not Federer or Nadal. I know I’m overthinking it.

The bottle I left during the summer was perfect for the season, an assyrtiko from Crete. And I can’t give an honourable riposte as to why it was disregarded. I’m sure if I went to Greece I would be charmed by its people, architecture, weather, food and wine and when I got back to these overcast skies in Kent I’d sit at my desk and wish I was back in the heat demolishing souvlaki and ogling the suntans. It’s just never been on my holiday wish list. Can’t say why, something prejudicial within me or maybe simple and plain indifference…

This assyrtiko was lurking at the back of my fridge, hiding behind a fruit smoothie and a packet of those ever-so-moreish peanut M&Ms.  The label was plain, but distinguished with it, and spoke of the austerity and lemon-peel tang within the 25.4oz of liquid.  To honour its patience, it had to be drunk with good seafood, honest seafood and humbly good value seafood.  In Kent there is one place I know of above any other and it’s within a casting net’s distance of a nuclear power station and, forgive me, but it doesn’t let the fissioning get in the way of its fishing.

The Dungeness Snack Shack is one of those sanctuaries for the underground food lover.  You either know about it through reputation or have happened upon it by accident and took a punt when you saw how parsimonious the menu prices are.  And it’s not a grandiose restaurant playing around with a misnomer, it is literally a shack, or more accurately, a shipping container appointed with half-a-dozen cooks, some fryers and a cooking ring, bringing fried and deep-fried morsels of fish and shellfish to vivid life within.  The seating area harbours 6 alfresco picnic benches, which in good weather are always full, but somehow there is a space to park yourself even if it’s on the pebbles with a picnic blanket.  In bad weather The Shack is closed because the fish served each day is caught by the proprietors’ own boats, probing the Dungeness coastline for pescatarian treasure, and they don’t go out if the swell is too ferocious and, more than likely, wouldn’t have the hard-boiled customers to warrant opening in the first place.

Fortunately, on this fine, autumnal day the temperature is high, the cloud has dispersed and, according to their Facebook page, The Dungeness Snack Shack is open for business with a healthy haul of saltwater creatures.  I took the assyrtiko from the back of the fridge and applied an ingenious sleeve, stored in the freezer at -18, around the bottle and zipped it into a cool bag, because Greek white should be refreshingly chilled like rosé and this is an assured way of keeping it so. 

The drive down to Dungeness took in the High Weald of Kent, through Appledore and out onto the flat plains of the Romney Marsh where some of the UK’s best lambs fatten themselves on samphire and sea purslane, in an almost sacrificial act of self-seasoning, priming themselves willingly for the dining room table.  In such beatific weather, the hour it takes is pleasurable, the traffic is thin, and our stomachs start to anticipate the pearlescent white flesh of whatever has jumped into the net or shellfish pots a few hours before.

Dungeness is a wilderness in the truest sense.  Unique and unrepentant.  The beach is vast and decorated with boats that look abandoned but are all in use at some point during the year.  There’s the odd single-storey house, flocks of turkey-sized seagulls and the power station looks on in a way that doesn’t blight the area like you think it would.  

Catherine looked at the menu and ordered the flatbread, decked with a supine plaice fillet, crisp salad with soured cream and chilli.  I went for the lobster roll, plump and meaty, around half of the beast in a brioche pocket, and dressed in homemade lemon mayonnaise listed at £11.  A side order of sauté potatoes and I got change from a £20 note. 

The picnic benches were taken, no surprise, so we put a rug on the pebbles and opened the assyrtiko.  The Shack serves soft drinks, traditional lemonades and such, but as it doesn’t have a licence so you are free to take whatever you like as long you provide your own glassware.  I took the trusty ISO tasters, which don’t do a great deal for aerating a wine but are stubby and have the resolution to withstand the occasional calamity.

It could have been the sunshine and the proximity to the sea or the simple realisation it was a good wine and a romantic instant.  The assyrtiko was zesty and aromatic, briny and acidic.  Succinctly perfect for the freshness of the lobster and plaice.  Food, wine and life-matching needn’t be complicated.

By 1pm The Shack was reaching its peak trading hour and out of the woodwork came walkers, dogwalkers, sun-chasers and passing motorists, queueing around the container with hopeful looks for scran.  As far as we could see everyone was fed and everyone delighted in this little, unpretentious, chocolate box of maritime pleasure doing good business and, rather righteously, knowing we were all contributing to its permanence.  You feel this is here for the right reasons, it’s not a 2-starred chef wanting a way out from behind the stove to do TV work, it’s not an orthodox fish and chip shop, it’s not a restaurant tripling the margins of supermarket plonk, it’s not faux chic, it’s not reliant upon prescribed menus, it’s not expensive, it’s not patronised by any demographic in particular.  Honest, is what it is. 

The Shack is a place you want to tell your friends about and, paradoxically, tell no-one at all.  These little trinkets should be on a culinary protected species list, where they are free from the overawing masses who will crowd it unbearably and push the prices in one direction.  If you want to find it, then you can rely on your own resourcefulness; Google it, Facebook it, scope the area with a drone if you must.  In spite of the preceding 1300 words, I will now be keeping schtum.   

MWB