I'd like to get away from Great Wine for awhile

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Lou Kessler:
Final exam existentialism 1A consisted of 20 questions I returned the exam paper completely blank, received an A.= Woody Allen
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I thought he flunked that class because the teacher caught him looking into the soul of the boy sitting next to him.
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Was that before or after Marshall McLuhan merged Dissent and Commentary together and founded Dysentery?
 
That was The French Fine Dining Destination. Over at the Japanese Fine Dining Destination I learned a little something else. Which is that folks have an idea of what luxury is, and mistakenly try to have MORE luxury by heaping one luxury on top of another. This is what I called the Caviar on Top of the Louis Vuitton Suitcase syndrome. You see it sometimes. Sure caviar is great. Sure a Louis Vuitton suitcase is great. But please, for my sake and for yours, don't spread caviar on top of your Louis Vuitton suitcase in the hopes of making it even GREATER. This is what people do when they, say, try to drink that Premier Grand Cru Classe Bordeaux with marinated blowfish. Really. Please. (Please!) Don't do this. It is a waste of great old Bordeaux, and a waste of blowfish. Don't do it. And yet people do. In fact, that's usually just exactly what they want to do. Because Great + Great must = GREATER, right? Try as I might people just wouldn't go for the tremendous riesling and white burgundies I would lay before them in all humility. Here was Singerriedel for less than $200, but instead you would rather have Mouton for several times that amount. Really? With your horse mackerel? Really? One guy said the Clos Ste. Hune I served him was "too sweet". Dudes will sometimes come up with any excuse not to like something if they aren't prepared to.
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Not just limited to the show-off segment of the market, either. I was at Blue Point Grill on Saturday, an excellent classic seafood restaurant in Princeton that, like most places in NJ, is BYOB. Probably a quarter to a third of the tables had brought a bottle of Jacob's Creek or similar commercial shiraz to have with their oysters/mussels/scallops/crab cakes/sea bass/etc. Interestingly, I didn't see any beers. This isn't progress.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Lou Kessler:
Final exam existentialism 1A consisted of 20 questions I returned the exam paper completely blank, received an A.= Woody Allen
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I thought he flunked that class because the teacher caught him looking into the soul of the boy sitting next to him.
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I thought that was the class on comparative religions?
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Probably a quarter to a third of the tables had brought a bottle of Jacob's Creek or similar commercial shiraz to have with their oysters/mussels/scallops/crab cakes/sea bass/etc.
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Maybe we're missing something?
 
originally posted by Levi Dalton:

This is what I called the Caviar on Top of the Louis Vuitton Suitcase syndrome. You see it sometimes. Sure caviar is great. Sure a Louis Vuitton suitcase is great. But please, for my sake and for yours, don't spread caviar on top of your Louis Vuitton suitcase in the hopes of making it even GREATER. This is what people do when they, say, try to drink that Premier Grand Cru Classe Bordeaux with marinated blowfish. Really. Please. (Please!) Don't do this. It is a waste of great old Bordeaux, and a waste of blowfish. Don't do it. And yet people do. In fact, that's usually just exactly what they want to do. Because Great + Great must = GREATER, right? Try as I might people just wouldn't go for the tremendous riesling and white burgundies I would lay before them in all humility. Here was Singerriedel for less than $200, but instead you would rather have Mouton for several times that amount. Really? With your horse mackerel? Really?
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I am not sure why it took me until tonight, 2 years after the fact, to realize that I should have just told people that the tannins in red wine increase the toxin level encountered when digesting fugu, and that by drinking Bordeaux with their blowfish, people were risking death by gradual paralyzation of the facial muscles.

"Smile, that may be the last Bordeaux you ever drink!"

Seriously, riesling would have been flying out the door.

Hindsight is 20/20.
 
excites111.jpg
 
originally posted by Levi Dalton:


Really, people, Shakespeare doesn't need the help. Ch. Latour doesn't need the help. If you go around saying Shakespeare or Ch. Latour are worthless, obviously you are a loon. But to go on and on about how great they are, I mean, at this point, who are you helping? This is KNOWN already. Move along. Isn't it of rather more assistance for people to say, hey, you know, Congreve can be good. I'm mean worth looking into, if you haven't already?
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And yet high schools are still teaching Shakespeare over and over again every year. And there are lot of people who don't know yet that Chateau Latour is great.

Though any English literature scholars in that position can be forgiven for getting tired of teaching the same things about Romeo and Juliet every semester.

Speaking as someone who can't afford Latour anyway that end of things is sort of irrelevant to me. And my definition of great (as is most people's here) extends far beyond the "classics".
 
It's disheartening that so many seem to have fundamentally misconstrued what I said. People hear what they want to hear, I guess.
 
You said a lot of Different Things, and with a surplus of Unnecessary Capital Letters, so you can understand The Confusion. [allegorical punctuation goes here]
 
"No it isn't perfection we need to look for; it is imperfection, because the assumption of imperfection is the precondition for the miracle."

-Terry Theise

The above has become a quiet motto of mine. I think finding great wines, if you have the money, is easy. And often, people like them because they are great wines, but not because they are great to drink (which they may be.) They know they are supposed to like them, and they are: these are the wines that calibrate compasses.

But there are wines that are joyful to drink, that make good meals into great ones. There are wines that open up the connections between land and tradition and people and life. These things don't require a well-calibrated compass, much less a map - just terrain, just an open door...

Often, I open wines for people and people just criticize what's in the glass. 'It's fine, but it's no [insert great wine here.]' This gets tiring to hear, but it must be more tiring to believe.
 
Often, I open wines for people and people just criticize what's in the glass. 'It's fine, but it's no [insert great wine here.]' This gets tiring to hear, but it must be more tiring to believe.
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You need new friends :)
 
So people don't want the "perfect turbot dish". Or if they do, once they've eaten it, they will want turbot cooked in a different way. Because what drives people in these fields is innovation, difference, development, fashion, trend. Those concepts will always trump the notion of a static perfection, and that's why restaurants which innovate, even for the sake of it, will always be more hightly rated amongst dining hobbyists than those who do the "simple" things well.

-- Tony Finch RIP
 
originally posted by jack hott:
"No it isn't perfection we need to look for; it is imperfection, because the assumption of imperfection is the precondition for the miracle."

-Terry Theise

The above has become a quiet motto of mine. I think finding great wines, if you have the money, is easy. And often, people like them because they are great wines, but not because they are great to drink (which they may be.) They know they are supposed to like them, and they are: these are the wines that calibrate compasses.

But there are wines that are joyful to drink, that make good meals into great ones. There are wines that open up the connections between land and tradition and people and life. These things don't require a well-calibrated compass, much less a map - just terrain, just an open door...

Often, I open wines for people and people just criticize what's in the glass. 'It's fine, but it's no [insert great wine here.]' This gets tiring to hear, but it must be more tiring to believe.
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Thank you for posting this.
 
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