Looking through rosé-colored glasses

I finally opened one of the wines I bought last year from the collective or Oregon wineries who bought California grapes that snooty California vintners wouldn’t buy after 2018’s devastating wildfires.

It’s fab; thanks for asking.

Together

Ever since the onslaught of the novel coronavirus—meaning, since people started realizing that COVID19 was not going to be “like the flu”, but was going to start killing us by the tens of thousands—anyone with an email account has been getting the online version of the corporate we’re-in-this-with-you commercials with the somber piano music and keep-us-in-mind-for-all-your-money-spending-decisions message.

In addition to such emails from United Airlines’ CEO, the Paris hotel where I stayed in 2018 and every supermarket where I have an affinity card, I’ve been getting about two a week from a fast-casual restaurant chain in D.C., who are obviously really anxious.

But I think the absolute biscuit for self-serving marketing messaging goes to Mash & Grape, from whom I bought two bottles of booze about three years ago because they have a flat-rate shipping fee. It would have been three bottles, but they didn’t have the rum in stock, and they didn’t bother to tell me that. I had to call them to find out why the total dollar amount didn’t match my order. I've never even looked at their website since.

Here’s their opening gambit:

I mean, of course: “Let’s get through this together!” is such a sincere notion when paired with four bottles of bourbon. Which I don’t drink.

Brioche and whisky

We made inroads into the uncertainties of my Project Brioche today. My colleague MG and I basically pulled the “we aren’t leaving this web page until we’ve collected all the requirements”, and I feel heaps better about it.

Well, as the meeting ended and we were leaving the conference room, I said I was glad that my terror at seeing all those empty spaces in MG’s requirements matrix helped spur this. My manager replied—intending to be encouraging, I know—“No, you’re leading Pickett’s gallant charge up the hill.”

I stopped in my tracks, goggled at him and stuttered, “Wut? WUT? That charge did not end well.”

(Actually, I’m trying to think of a charge that did end well, and I’m coming up short. The Light Brigade at Balaklava? Custer at Little Bighorn? Flaminius at Trasimene? D’Albret at Agincourt? Huh.)

Well, he recognized his error, so that’s okay.

Also—we spent about half of our weekly 1:1 catch-up talking whisky. And not only does he have no time for Laphroaig, his “spirit animal” is Highland Park 18.

I can forgive such a person much.

Cocktail party

Going back at least two years, early in the reporting or Cadet Bonespurs’ criminal acts , someone on Twitter proposed an Impeachment Cocktail. I don’t remember the specifics, but I do recall that it didn’t strike me as particularly enticing.

Well, since Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the House will be opening an impeachment inquiry, the Interwebs have exploded with recipes and photos of contenders for the beverages to be imbibed alone or at impeachment parties. America is about to get as drunk as it did on 5 December 1933.

And here are a few of the possibilities:

However, I rather agree with this guy, who owns a drinking establishment in the District They Call Columbia:

Drink now

Here’s something else I saw recently at the grocery store:

Look, I’ve been drinking wine for a long time. And Champagne (and méthode champenoise bubblies) is my substance of choice. But I do not believe I’ve ever seen “user friendly” as a characteristic of, well, any beverage.

But hey, I’m just a bozo on the bus.

Not grapes of wrath

Back in March I heard a story on NPR about vineyard owners near the Klondike fire in Oregon last year getting stiffed by California wineries whose owners said they wouldn’t buy the 2018 harvest as contracted because the grapes had been tainted by smoke. These growers had survived the fire, but were still going to lose a lot, so it was not very short of miraculous that a bunch of Oregonian wineries banded together to buy the grapes, get them harvested and make them into wines under the Solidarity label.

Something about that story prompted me to go on the Cellar 503 website and order a three-pack of the wines, due out late this summer. They weren’t particularly cheap, but I thought that if I could help out these guys and get some wine in return, why not?

Also, I really like Willamette Valley pinots, so I reckoned the chances were good that I wouldn’t be disappointed.

Then, of course, I forgot all about it—it’s been quite the five months.

Well, lookee what arrived yesterday:

I can’t say I know anything about the Rogue Valley wines, but I’m looking forward to learning. And I’m glad I was able to support the effort, even in a small way.

One for the road

While I was in Ireland the past week, I decided I would not check US news. I did get some updates through Twitter, but only once did I click on a WaPo story about Commander Bone Spurs co-opting the annual 4^th of July concert on the National Mall and turning it into one of his fascist rallies. That was enough to send me scuttling back into news Siberia.

I have to say that it was a wise decision. I just fired up the newspaper’s website and just sank under the crap that schmuck and his toadies are flinging around.

So here’s a photo of the last whiskey I had the night before I returned:

It was gorgeous, truly. But it’s not enough to wash the taste of this administration out of my mouth.

Walking meditation

I went to Christchurch (Anglican) Cathedral yesterday to walk their labyrinth. The concierge at my hotel promised me it wouldn’t rain, so I thought I’d chance it. He was right, yay!

The labyrinth is directly in front of the entrance to the church, and was therefore overrun with what we at William & Mary used to refer to as tourons. But I walked it anyway.

  

(This was at the center.)

The cathedral grounds aren’t very big, but here’s a shout-out to the first performance of Messiah in Dublin, which was held there.

And a nod to homelessness (I assume).

There was a very small bed of flowers:

Wouldn’t you know, someone added to the décor:

In light of that, on my way back to the hotel (which took me through the happening area of Temple Bar), I came across this bit of rage against the man:

Here’s a close-up of the graffiti:

Dubliners, man.

High spirits in Dublin

Today’s post is about whiskey. If you’re teetotal, walk on by.

I’d booked a tour at the Pearse Lyons Distillery in The Liberties essentially on the recommendation of the head concierge at my hotel. The barman here seconded it, and both of them are well known to the PLD folks.

I believe it was a good choice. As it turns out I had a private tour, as no one else seems to have booked for that time slot, so I had Bernard, my guide, and James, the tasting master, to myself.

And it was a good choice because of the history of the enterprise. Pearse Lyons was an Irish biochemist and entrepreneur who built a multi-billion-dollar business in fermentation science and animal nutrition, based in Lexington, Ky. Part of his empire was brewing beer and distilling whiskeys, and he decided to bring his experience to bear on Irish whiskey. He bought a deconsecrated church across from the Guinness brewery and, with his wife, set out to build a distilling business.

The Liberties has a history of making booze; it contains the Golden Triangle of distilleries—more than 40 in a one-mile radius at one time (including the big guns, Powers and Jameson). Lyons (who died last year) viewed PLD as more than a business operation; it’s an investment in Dublin and The Liberties. Bernard told me that the St. James church cost €700K about five years ago, and there’s been several million spent on renovating the dilapidated structure and building out the whiskey business. While Lyons’ first enterprise, Alltech, made a profit in months, his distillery here may not for a long time, but its mission was to revive local history, and not to drive revenues.

Okay, that got my attention.

Not a small portion of that multi-million euro investment is archaeological work in the graveyard, uncovering centuries of burials:

The original church was part of an abbey complex constructed by Henry II as part of his penance for the murder of Thomas à Becket, in 1177. It was a point of origin for pilgrims headed to Santiago de Compostela, and the distillery honors that in some of the stained glass windows they put in. If you have a pilgrim’s passport to Santiago, you can still get a stamp there.

(There’s another St. James church down the road—the PLD one was converted to Church of Ireland in the time of Henry VIII, when its associated abbey was dissolved. That church seems to have taken over the pilgrimage business:)

All that history was before we even walked into the distillery. The instant we walked into the building, I was hit by the odor of the mash fermenting. As it happens, in this vat:

The two pot stills were brought over from Kentucky; the larger one (initial pass) on the left is Mighty Molly, the smaller one (finishing) is Little Lizzie.

Evidently it’s the custom to give stills women’s names. I don’t make this stuff up, I just report it.

Two thousand liters of mash from that vat go into Molly; eventually 190 liters emerge from Lizzie. They go into bourbon barrels (and some on to sherry barrels) from the Lexington distillery (since you can only use a bourbon barrel once for making bourbon but you can re-use them several times for making Irish whiskey), and age.

At that point, Bernard handed me off to James, and I sampled five whiskeys (plus a bit of in-process stuff that the distiller brought over). I liked one of them very much, and another couple okay. Two were not “my profile”, as my whiskey mentor would say.

Turns out they also make gin, and I tried their rhubarb gin, which was surprisingly good. (I’m not a gin drinker.)

Sadly, it didn’t occur to me to take pictures, so you just have to imagine.

However, I really was only partly there for the tasting, as it happens. I mean—trying a new whiskey is attractive, but the history really took over the tour for me and the tasting was just a perk. The most impressive thing about this was that every single PLD employee I spoke with, from the pensioner class to the 20-somethings, was absolutely, joyfully passionate about what they and the company are doing. I don’t know when I’ve come across that.

So I’m going to leave you with shots of the chandeliers, which—in keeping with the history of pilgrims—have the Templars cross on their sides (visible in the third photo), who protected those traveling to holy places.

High finance in Northern Ireland

Second report from Belfast, on just miscellaneous stuff.

I started out my day with the Irish breakfast at my hotel:

Scrambled eggs, bacon (looks like ham to Americans), pork sausages, blood sausages and sourdough toast. I told my server to forget the baked beans. Even if they’re “chipotle baked beans”.

Sadly I had not anticipated the quantities, and left about half of it. I hate wasting food, but I had reached the vanishing point.

All the GBP I had have been made obsolete by HM government some time in the 10 years I was last there. I had £35 that wouldn’t spend. Stevie, my taxi guide, told me that any of the banks in the town center could swap them out for current-issue notes. The first bank I came upon was Barclays. The queue for “counter service” was almost out the door. And there was a total of exactly two windows, so the maximum bandwidth of customer service their counter could give was two. But for part of the time, there was only one person working.

Seriously, I was in line for 20 minutes. During which time I saw a notice to the effect that, starting last November, if you want to pay cash into your account at the “counter service”, you have to have a preprinted cash payment slip or (I think) an ATM card. I thought this is an extraordinary position to take by an institution that basically deals in money. “No, no—we’re British. No cash.” The Barclays motto seems to be: you're our customers now. Suck it.

When I got up to the counter and pulled out my notes, the guy wasn’t best pleased. Where was I from? The US. Where do I bank? Scuse me? I bank with a credit union. Not Bank of America? No. Apparently they have some kind of reciprocal agreement with BofA, but I have absolutely no notion of what that might have to do with swapping old British currency for new British currency.

Anyhow, after a bit of faffing about, he counted out a twenty and three fivers, counted my twenty and three fivers, and recounted the twenty and three fivers.

(And now, Twitter is recommending that I follow Barclay's Investment Bank. Eat dirt and die, Twitter. And you, too, Barclays.)

But later, when I was paying the server at the bar at the top of the hotel, I discovered that my pound coins are also obsolete. WTF? Who does that? (Apparently the Brits.) But my two pound coin was still valid, so I used that.

That bar, on the 23^rd floor, has very nice views of Belfast. Here, for example is the City Hall.

And here is another building that clearly doesn’t get much sun; that green stuff is moss.

I do not know what’s up with that bar. They serve afternoon tea (for £10 more than the £30 charged at the bar on the first floor), but you have to book 24 hours in advance. Also, the only way you can get up to the bar is to be escorted in the special elevator by one of the concierges. I don’t know why.

The fella who took me up, the older by far of the two I’ve seen working, had recommended earlier that I visit St. Malachy’s church. I’d asked about a residential area nearby, which seemed to flummox both of the concierges, but St. Malachy’s was near such a neighborhood, so I stopped in. The exterior of the place was unimpressive; looks like all the inner city churches I’ve seen in Chicago or Boston. But the interior was indeed pretty, although I didn’t get any pix because I got there just as the 1300 mass was starting.

Anyway, on our way up to the 23^rd floor, we chatted about St. Malachy’s. He said he likes churches. He mentioned the Clonard monastery, which I’d seen as part of my taxi tour. During WWII, the Redemptorists offered their basement as an air raid shelter. Protestants refused to go there because: Catholic. The head Redemptorist pointed out that Luftwaffe bombs don’t distinguish between Protestant and Catholic, so they eventually agreed to seek shelter there. But they had to be kept separate from the Catholics.

During the 80s, groups representing Unionist and Republican factions met there in secret to lay the groundwork for the peace process that eventually led to the Good Friday Agreement.

Stevie told me I should check out the organ, and it was impressive:

The walls also had very interesting mosaics, which isn’t something I usually associate with Irish ecclesiastical decorative arts:

And here was one of those little details you come across: an air freshener device in the priest's confessional booth. What stories do you think prompted that addition?

After Clonard, the concierge fella said St. Anne’s church is quite nice, and then muttered, “They charge a fee.” I told him I got in for free because I walked the labyrinth. I don’t think he knew about the labyrinth, and I do think he leans more towards Catholicism than Church of Ireland.

I decided to try the Observatory bar at the top of the hotel basically because my room still hadn’t been cleaned by 1430, and I needed somewhere to think and write. The views there were indeed impressive, and the place was practically empty. They had a lot of what looked to me like expensive froofy cocktails, but there was also a list of Irish whiskeys. I was going to go with the Bushmills 12-year (Bushmills being distilled somewhere near Belfast), but the barman brought out the triple distilled, and I thought, why not have a go at that.

It was truly lovely. Just aromatic, smooth, and with the tiniest hint of sweetness. I was also pleasantly pleased to discover that, at £6, it was less than half the price of all the other whiskeys on the menu.

The rest of my evening was writing my tour post, getting some dinner and reading Max Hastings’ Armageddon, a the history of the last months in the war against Germany. Just as I started writing this paragraph, I noticed I was getting a little sleepy. So time to pack it in.

Good times, man.

Upsoaring wings: Get very drunk

George Gordon, Lord Byron, was one of the big guns of English Romantic poetry. I personally outgrew Romanticism probably some time in my 20s, when it started to seem turgid and overblown. But still, never hurts to pay a visit now and again. I like Romantic music just fine, but the literature—especially poetry—not so much.

As a human, Byron was someone I would not have suffered gladly—he was the model for every self-indulgent legend-in-his-own-mind male from actors to programmers. Again—this lost its charm for me in my 20s. Interestingly, his one legitimate child was Ada Lovelace, the extraordinary bluestocking, mathematician and first computer programmer. Like a lot of self-indulgent LIHOMs, Byron lived large on other folks’ money; he ran up huge debts swanning around Europe and having multiple affairs with men and women without much consideration for anyone but himself. In 1823 he became involved in the Greek war for independence against the Ottoman Turks. An illness turned to sepsis, and he died in Missolonghi in February of the following year.

Byron wrote a lot of epic, melodramatic poetry, but it turns out he had a puckish side. His “Don Juan” is a very long satire on the whole notion of the womanizing libertine. In most of the versions we know in poetry and opera, Don Juan (AKA Don Giovanni) seduces every woman he can, ruining them unrepentantly (because he’s young, good looking and a long way from death), until fate catches up with him after he kills the father of one of his victims.

In short—like Byron—Don Juan is mad, bad and dangerous to know.

Okay, but Byron’s take on Don Juan turns everything on its head. Across 17 cantos, his hero starts out as a seducer, but he is shipwrecked, captured by pirates, sold as a slave by the pirate daughter, disguised as a woman so one of the Sultan’s concubines can get him into the harem; he escapes, joins the Russian army, is invited by Catherine the Great to join her, ah, court, becomes ill, goes to England (supposedly better weather than Russia), has some adventures with British aristos, and The End.

I mean—it pretty much is every damsel in distress of Romantic literature, only with, you know, tackle.

No, I won’t make you read the whole thing, although if you want to, it’s on Project Gutenberg. No, I’ll just share this bit, from Canto II, because it seems pertinent to our experience in 2019:

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,

Sermons and soda water the day after.

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;

The best of life is but intoxication:

Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk

The hopes of all men, and of every nation;

Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk

Of life’s strange tree, so fruitful on occasion:

But to return—Get very drunk; and when

You wake with head-ache, you shall see what then.

As little as an hour

Grocery stores have been delivering groceries since the days of horse-drawn wagons. Following World War II, at least in the US, we’d pretty well moved on to self-service, and I well remember my mom poring through Wednesday’s LA Times food section for sales and coupons to be deployed on Thursday. But then, maybe eight to ten years ago, the notion of ordering all your food online and having it delivered reshaped the whole landscape.

One of my neighbors in the Valley They Call Silicon had a regular delivery from Safeway; the driver had to schlepp crates of food up because my building had no elevator. Perhaps that’s precisely why my neighbor used the service.

These days there are multiple services, both supermarket-specific and just-in-general ones. There’s an app; of course there is.

Wegman’s, the New York-based chain, is one of the markets that will fill your order for pick-up or delivery. I often see their proxy shoppers using the app throughout the store. But recently I saw an entirely new take on the whole delivery schtick:

Now, that’s a service whose time has come.

Gratitude Monday: Tasting notes

A while ago I engaged in a rant about how someone had received a Christmas gift of Oregon wines. I was truly upset about her plan to just swill all four bottles in a night with her Women Who Wine pals—even though I acknowledged that once you’ve given the present, the recipient is entitled to do whatever s/he pleases with it.

Well, last week I got the measured judgments of the six WWW on the wines, and…

Here were the instructions:

1. Overall Score (1 to 10, 10 being high)

2. Would you buy this wine if it was priced between $15 to $20? Y/N

3. How does this wine compare to the other wines? Please compare reds to reds and whites to whites. Just write what you want below.

First of all, one of the participants doesn’t appear to have grasped point 1: her cards had no score on any of the wines.

Second—discounting Ms. No Score, the highest average rating was 7.5, for the Chardonnay. The Pinot Gris (or Pino Gris, as one of them wrote) got 4.0, the Pinot Noir 5.4 and the red blend got 3.8.

The price point elicited some interesting responses. The Char:

“Yes if on sale for 30% off at Basha’s” (Which, tbf, means no.) And “Maybe $15 but $7 is better.” Um

Only one person would buy the PG at $15, though there was another who would grudgingly fork over $8.

Ditto for the blend—the one yes stipulated that she wouldn’t go any higher than $15.

Two said they’d buy the PN at $15-$20, although one qualified her yes with “if friends who liked lighter reds wanted to try a ‘light’ pinot noir.” I really liked this sniff: “Doubtful. Does not compare w/ Santa Ynez Valley pino [sic]”

As for the “tasting notes”, on the Westrey Pinot Gris: “Too dry too oaky too not for me as compared to any wine I have ever tasted.”

The Twill Chardonnay: “This fruity light chardonay [sic] is not as dry as others I have tasted and usually do not like. Personally I like sweet sparkling white Moscato” I have to say I’m not quite sure about this one: “Josh, Chatau [sic] St [sic] Michelle This is a very lite wine”

If the PN was too “lite”, the Pour Me Red Wine Blend was excoriated for being too strong. Ms. Moscato’s comment was “As Red Blend I like one that is not as high in alcohol [evidently 14.6%; they were keeping track]. Like white sweet wines” Ms. Santa Ynez Valley just sniffed (again), “poor choice”

So what’s this got to do with Gratitude Monday? I’ve got over my strop about my gift not being used as intended, much less appreciated. It gave six women the opportunity to come together and pronounce the Judgment of the Desert. And those comments! Bwahahaha! I have completely let this go.

I hope the cheese and crackers made up for their disappointment in the wine.

Gratitude Monday: finally over

Lordy, what a year, eh? On both macro and micro levels. How do I deal with it on the final Gratitude Monday? Um…

Well, here’s what I’m thankful for: that on the trip I took because I had to use or lose three weeks of vacation, I discovered Pousse Rapière as an apéritif. And that I bought a bottle of the orange-infused Armagnac before I left Paris. And that—although it took hitting two Nicolas wine shops, I found the last bottle in the 6^th, apparently, and the wine shop guy offered to put it in a box when I told him I was taking it back to the US with me. And that it made it here—neither broken nor filched en route.

Because it makes a lovely Kir Royal apéritif and it doesn’t look like you can buy it here.

So this is what I’ll be washing away the taste of 2018 with.

For the rest of it, here’s Dave Barry’s take on the year. I’m grateful for Dave, too.

Gift of the magi

You know what—I have had it with this crappy year.

For someone on my Christmas list, I ordered four bottles of Oregon wines; two white, two red. They were very nice bottles of wine, with high ratings, and not from the bargain rack at the Food Lion.

Apparently I made the mistake of telling the recipient that I’d not tried any of them, so I was looking forward to her opinions.

Because yesterday I received an email announcing that she’s convening a session of Women Who Wine. She and five others will gather with “appropriate cheeses, fruit, crackers and 5x8 cards for notes from each of us about each wine. We will salute you for each bottle!”

Those four wines were for her to enjoy with meals, not swilled down in one sitting by six people chomping crackers whose opinions I could not give a fucking toss about. I read that email and wanted to take back the wine.

Look, I know that once you give a gift, the recipient can do whatever they like with it, even if they like stirring ice and sugar into it. But I just can’t stop crying over this, and I sure as hell am never sending her wine again.

And bring on 2019.

Vive le Champagne!

No one comes right out and admits it, but I’m pretty sure le jour mondial du Champagne was dreamt up by a marketer. Either for a producer, importer or distributor. Whatever.

I have no boeuf with any of that, since Champagne is my substance of choice. I’m perfectly happy to fall in with the fête and pop a cork in solidarity. I’m just a wee bit surprised that there have been eight such celebrations before this one, and I did not know about any of them.

Regardless, I shall contribute to the day by opening a bottle and toasting the art and science of Champagne—even though as far as I’m concerned, every day is Champagne day. And so, here are a couple of photos for you:

Grapes about ready to be harvested at a vineyard in Épernay. Yes, I tasted a few of them. Delish.

A glass of Champagne at a café across from le tour Saint Jacques (all that remains of the traditional starting place for pilgrims headed to Santiago de Compostela—Saint Jacques de Compostelle) in Paris. It was a miserably cold and rainy day, and I was waiting for my bowl of soupe à l’oignon gratinée to arrive.

Everything improves when you’re viewing it through a glass of Champagne.