Who is David Williams?

my perfect day would begin with...

An enormous full English fried breakfast, followed by an equally enormous plate of exotic fruit, eaten slowly while making my way through a big pile of Saturday newspaper supplements and a pot of coffee, before taking a stroll by the sea.

the most beautiful wine region I've visited is…

Cafayate in Salta up in the north of Argentina is an astonishingly spectacular place, but a misty Piedmont when the leaves are turning in late autumn is probably my favourite wine place.

if I wasn't a wine writer I'd be a…

… conceptual artist, making weird, incomprehensible art and installations with gnomic titles out of enormous pieces of metal and bits of old rubbish. I can't draw or paint, but I've always fancied being an artist – and conceptual artists seem to have a lot of fun without needing to, well, draw or paint.

the last bottle of wine I drank (not just tasted) was…

A bottle of Errazuriz Merlot with my father-in-law. He's Chilean, and will never knowingly buy wine from anywhere else.

my favourite restaurant(s) is/are…

Probably The Company Shed in Mersea Island on the Essex coast. It's very rough and ready, and you have to bring your own wine (actually a bit of a bonus that), but it has the best fish and chips and seafood I've had in the UK in really beautiful (if you like East Anglian marshes) surroundings.

my cellar is mostly composed of…

Wine tends to get drunk as soon as it arrives in my house, but I do have a few bottles of Northern Rhône Syrah, Barolo and Port in the cupboard under the stairs.

if you were coming for dinner I'd cook…

A roast of local pork – where I live in Suffolk there are little pig farms full of Anderson shelters everywhere (they look like suburban piggy housing estates) and the quality of the meat is something else.

and to drink with it I would serve…

A cru Beaujolais – I can't get enough of that at the moment.

and other dinner party guests would be…

Larry David, Haruki Murakami and Eric Cantona. For some reason, I think they'd all get on quite well.

my biggest blind-tasting faux pas was…

Judging a wine competition in Moscow a few years ago I gave a tiny mark to a Brunello di Montalcino calling it "unripe" and "borderline faulty". Later the wine was revealed as something I'd described as "delicious, authentic, beautiful" when I'd tasted it with the wine's Russian importer the day before.

the blind-tasting moment I would prefer to concentrate on was…

When I was just starting out as a wine journalist, I guessed the vintage of the port served at the end of a meal with the Cockburn's port people. Pure luck, but the other guests thought I must be some kind of blind-tasting natural. I wasn't (see above).

one thing that might surprise you about me is…

When the mood is right, I can do a very convincing impression of Bono Vox.

if I was a winemaker I'd make my wines in…

Argentina. The climate's great, there's plenty of old vines and different grape varieties, but there's still the freedom to do something new.

other than wine, I have a secret passion for…

Not exactly secret, but I am very fond of cricket. I can spend hours at a time looking up players' averages in Wisden.

my favourite holiday destination is…

Pretty much anywhere in France.

I think restaurant mark-ups on wine are…

A bit of a pain obviously – I almost always drink better at home because I can't afford to buy anything decent in a restaurant. Having said that, I can see the restaurateurs' point of view: it's a tough business, and they need to make their money somewhere. I just wish more of them would do flat-rate cash rather than percentage mark-ups so the more expensive bottles didn't cost so much.

the best movie or TV show of all time is…

It changes all the time. The last film I saw that really blew me away was Let the Right One In, a Swedish teen vampire film. Very moody and moving.

in Summer in the garden I'd drink…

Something from the Loire – a Chenin or a Cabernet Franc.

my favourite piece of music would have to be…

Judging from the amount of times I've played it over the years, Leonard Cohen's Greatest Hits.

my best bottle of wine ever was probably…

The bottle of Krug I had the night my son was born. Not my normal drinking, but it was a special night.