Pass the whine please, somebody?
Wine. Whine. What a difference an ‘h’ makes. Though it could be a natural progression. If you’d indulged in too much of the first, say, you could end up armpit-deep in the second. No? Hmmm…
Well anyway, as the saying goes, there is wine and there is wine. And while I probably couldn’t tell my Chablis from my Chardonnay, Oi knows wot Oi loiks and it woiks fer moi! For instance, did you know that Cyprus produces a great white (no, not shark, doofus, WINE!) called KEO Hock, which is wonderful chilled, on a hot summer afternoon as you pick at a big platter of nifty nibbles, whiling away the time when you should actually be Doing Something Productive? Or that Yugoslav reds are a darn sight more finessed than your average, over-rated French table wine, 'apellation controllee' be hanged, and a whole lot cheaper, too? Or that South Africa produces some kick-ass wines, and I didn’t even know you could grow grapes there?
Apart from the whole Romance of Wine thing, though, which is big business I might inform you, there’s all that other kerfuffle to deal with. The cobweb-festooned cellars with bottles dating back to the Neolithic Age, and the whole fuss and foobabble about uncorking it and letting it breathe (what??? all this pollution will RUIN the bouquet!) and then ceremoniously pouring 3 drops into an enormous glass and sniffing at it (atchoooo!) for ten minutes, making polite little society noises all the while...well hell, I’d just as easily just drink it straight off the bottle, and often do. Which is probably why my last 3 applications for French citizenship have been consecutively turned down. Hic.
Now, I was thinking, if I could somehow convince the Italians that having me on board might boost the anti-French-wine lobby, and considering I haven’t said a nasty WORD yet about Chianti, they would probably reward me in the customarily generous Mediterranean way. I could then buy an island in Greece, nothing too opulent, mind you, just a villa or two with the Elgin Marbles strategically placed amidst the topiary, and a sweeping expanse or two of private beach, a schooner with a gorgeous captain and a Learjet with a hunky pilot standing by, for quick weekend visits to nearby islands or even the Hebrides, if the mood should suddenly take me...hic...ahh yes...
But no, to get back to reality, what I do find more than a little upsetting is my latest discovery. I was absolutely aghast to find that some pretty damned GOOD bottled wines now come with a PLASTIC cork. Here, let me say that again. PLASTIC CORK. It doesn't even make sense. A cork is a cork, right? Wrong, it isn't, not any more! Soon they'll be selling wine in plastic jerrycans, and let me tell you, that will pretty much be the end of THAT.
And then you have Aussie wine, which comes in bladders made of aluminium foil with a plastic tap attached! Well of COURSE you don't get to see the bladder because it's disguised...cleverly encased in a fancy cardboard 'cask', butbutbut foil?!? Doesn't that change the specific gravity of stuff and mess with the molecular composition and cause horrid green warts in places I dare not even mention?!? No? Well, it SHOULD!!!
SO as I was saying, about the wine. Hic. And did you know that in Greece, it’s called krassi: kokkino (red) and aspro (white) and isn’t that a SILLY name for a headache pill?!? Hic. ANd in a Greek taverna, you don't order wine by the jug or carafe, they'd think you were daft. You order it by the KILO. How macho is that?!? Or if you're a lily-livered coward, by the half-kilo, or even the glass. Be warned, however, that if your metric system is congenitally defective like mine is, it could cause you the beejeezus of a hangover next day.
So anyway, no matter what they say about wine being good for you/not good for you/good for you/not good for you, the sad fact of the matter is that it actually gives a lot of people severe heartburn... myself included. This is a documented scientific fact, by the way. Hic. Apparently, it rips into your stomach, causing it to unreasonably squirt hydrochloric acid at every shadow that passes by your window. It does all sorts of damage to your GI (as in Gastro-Intestinal) tract, including murdering the villi (go on, look it up in the dictionary you lazy sod) and insulting the transverse colon. It also causes you to giggle hysterically once you've crossed the one-kilo mark, but who's counting. Hic. And does any of this stop us from imbibing it? No way, Jose! Which is probably why whine is spelled the way it is. Hic.
Oh ughh...pleeeease pass the Alka Seltzer?
Well anyway, as the saying goes, there is wine and there is wine. And while I probably couldn’t tell my Chablis from my Chardonnay, Oi knows wot Oi loiks and it woiks fer moi! For instance, did you know that Cyprus produces a great white (no, not shark, doofus, WINE!) called KEO Hock, which is wonderful chilled, on a hot summer afternoon as you pick at a big platter of nifty nibbles, whiling away the time when you should actually be Doing Something Productive? Or that Yugoslav reds are a darn sight more finessed than your average, over-rated French table wine, 'apellation controllee' be hanged, and a whole lot cheaper, too? Or that South Africa produces some kick-ass wines, and I didn’t even know you could grow grapes there?
Apart from the whole Romance of Wine thing, though, which is big business I might inform you, there’s all that other kerfuffle to deal with. The cobweb-festooned cellars with bottles dating back to the Neolithic Age, and the whole fuss and foobabble about uncorking it and letting it breathe (what??? all this pollution will RUIN the bouquet!) and then ceremoniously pouring 3 drops into an enormous glass and sniffing at it (atchoooo!) for ten minutes, making polite little society noises all the while...well hell, I’d just as easily just drink it straight off the bottle, and often do. Which is probably why my last 3 applications for French citizenship have been consecutively turned down. Hic.
Now, I was thinking, if I could somehow convince the Italians that having me on board might boost the anti-French-wine lobby, and considering I haven’t said a nasty WORD yet about Chianti, they would probably reward me in the customarily generous Mediterranean way. I could then buy an island in Greece, nothing too opulent, mind you, just a villa or two with the Elgin Marbles strategically placed amidst the topiary, and a sweeping expanse or two of private beach, a schooner with a gorgeous captain and a Learjet with a hunky pilot standing by, for quick weekend visits to nearby islands or even the Hebrides, if the mood should suddenly take me...hic...ahh yes...
But no, to get back to reality, what I do find more than a little upsetting is my latest discovery. I was absolutely aghast to find that some pretty damned GOOD bottled wines now come with a PLASTIC cork. Here, let me say that again. PLASTIC CORK. It doesn't even make sense. A cork is a cork, right? Wrong, it isn't, not any more! Soon they'll be selling wine in plastic jerrycans, and let me tell you, that will pretty much be the end of THAT.
And then you have Aussie wine, which comes in bladders made of aluminium foil with a plastic tap attached! Well of COURSE you don't get to see the bladder because it's disguised...cleverly encased in a fancy cardboard 'cask', butbutbut foil?!? Doesn't that change the specific gravity of stuff and mess with the molecular composition and cause horrid green warts in places I dare not even mention?!? No? Well, it SHOULD!!!
SO as I was saying, about the wine. Hic. And did you know that in Greece, it’s called krassi: kokkino (red) and aspro (white) and isn’t that a SILLY name for a headache pill?!? Hic. ANd in a Greek taverna, you don't order wine by the jug or carafe, they'd think you were daft. You order it by the KILO. How macho is that?!? Or if you're a lily-livered coward, by the half-kilo, or even the glass. Be warned, however, that if your metric system is congenitally defective like mine is, it could cause you the beejeezus of a hangover next day.
So anyway, no matter what they say about wine being good for you/not good for you/good for you/not good for you, the sad fact of the matter is that it actually gives a lot of people severe heartburn... myself included. This is a documented scientific fact, by the way. Hic. Apparently, it rips into your stomach, causing it to unreasonably squirt hydrochloric acid at every shadow that passes by your window. It does all sorts of damage to your GI (as in Gastro-Intestinal) tract, including murdering the villi (go on, look it up in the dictionary you lazy sod) and insulting the transverse colon. It also causes you to giggle hysterically once you've crossed the one-kilo mark, but who's counting. Hic. And does any of this stop us from imbibing it? No way, Jose! Which is probably why whine is spelled the way it is. Hic.
Oh ughh...pleeeease pass the Alka Seltzer?
posted by Priya Tuli at
3:12 AM
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