Kids are okay; jams and jellies around the world clamor for vintage dates

I am happy to report that eating last century's apple jelly has not harmed my darling nephews, Kieren and Dayden, nor has it inflicted my adorable niece, Kiersi, with some kind of unpleasant gastrointestinal distress.

So now I'm thinking that wine collectors around the world should start rethinking that expensive hobby and converting their cellars and caves into jelly-storage facilities. I can just imagine what the tastings would be like, with the cool air below ground redolent with the smell of toasting English muffins and bagels. Ahhhhhh! A rotund man picks up a piece of toast, enjoying the sensation of melted butter dripping down his fingers, and inhales the sweet scent of a nice 1999 cherry preserve. "Notes of almond!" he says rapturously. "Fruity, with a hint of oak! Made from cherries picked at the height of the season, just after the morning dew evaporated from the tree's leaves!"

He would then bite into the toast and roll it around in his mouth, which could possibly lead to unfortunate choking incidents, so we'll have to be careful with that.

I also like the idea of jelly sommeliers presenting diners with those dinky little jars of jam and sophisticated confiturophiles tasting and then elegantly drawling, "Myself, I prefer a nice, sharp 2002 Robertson's lemon curd, although I did have an extremely piquant currant once that was quite tempting, and I believe it was just a 2005 Knott's Berry Farm. But on the other side of the coin, I had the most delicate fig preserves last year. It was at my mother's house on Christmas morning and I asked her where on earth she'd found it. Turns out, she'd snapped it up in the international foods aisle of SuperTarget a couple of years back. Bonne Maman! Product of France!"