Raisins Gaulois

S

Saina Nieminen

Saina Nieminen
Marcel Lapierre Raisins Gaulois 2009
A new vintage of this wine that I love became available here today (the '08 hated by some on this bored never arrived here). Not a VdP de Gaules anymore this year, but simply Vin de France. But otherwise this is a repeat of all the wonderfulness of the '07 VdPdeGaules: lovely, natural Gamay fruit, refreshing and lively. The fruit is a darker than in the '07 and it doesn't seem quite as ethereal, but this is still an awesomely joyous wine. I love it.
 
I am sitting here after a vertical of Clos des Lambrays, which was great, but I do wonder why I'm drinking this IX Gaulois I opened twice as quickly.

Delicious, frank, pure, great fun.
 
MMIX Marcel Lapierre Raisins Gaulois VdF 12.5%
Sappy sweet strawberry confit with a halo of minerality. Light but well-toned body, wearing an easy smile. Well-balanced, but the ADSR decay, after the initial burst of irrational exhuberance, is precipitous, sending a clear "I am no scholar's pierre" message. As I am about to pigeonhole this as little more than a screwcapped bundle of joy, food makes it step into a phone booth and change into a floozie with an uzi. All of a sudden, seldom in the history of gustatory papillae has pleasure come so unbundled with complexity. Joyous, bursting into song, the juice belts out the first bars of honi soit qui mal y yum.
 
Wondering stupidly, the oenological description for this wine in comparison to the basic Lapierre Beaujolais, which I've happily downed several cases of. From over here the price point difference is minimal. What is the raisins' raison detre that distinguishes itself? The 08, simply put, was like my take on the cartoon: simple, seemingly attempting cute, but (given Lapierre's other releases) unneccessary...at least from my pov.

Glad you're 09 uzi'd the house though.
 
In the US, the Raisins Gaulois goes for a measly twelve bucks while the regular Morgon goes for like twenty-one. So the QPR is rather exceptional. Given the lukewarm response around here to the regular 09 Morgon (which I haven't tasted), I even wonder if this is more pleasing.
 
Apparently the original meaning is one who daintily insists on a glass, rather than raising the jug to his lips like the rest of the demotic fellows.
 
Yeah, like many painful stylistic choices in the '70's.

God bless him tho, Ricky does have the pipes, and the slide and guitar work do have their own rewards.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by Joel Stewart:
getting above it's raisin'?
Click to expand...
That is one hilarious but obscure expression. Where did you encounter it?
Click to expand...

Shakespeare would also have pronounced "reason" as "raisin," hence the line "if
reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I'd give no man a reason upon compulsion."
 
originally posted by Joel Stewart:
This is a spoofed + blow dry version, but hard to not appreciate what they're doing

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Great band, totally at ease with the song and seemingly enjoying each other's performance. I love Ray Flacke's guitar playing, but as good as he is, he's still only the second-best country guitarist to come from the UK- it's tough to top Albert Lee, whether in pyrotechnics or overall style: http://bit.ly/cKsEWB and/or http://bit.ly/8Yq95L.

-Eden (but then there are those of us who reckon that the freak from Accokeek Maryland named Danny Gatton was the most gifted Tele-slinger of all time: http://bit.ly/aEfNNo)
 
Shakespeare would also have pronounced "reason" as "raisin," hence the line "if
reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I'd give no man a reason upon compulsion."
Click to expand...

Ah, the great vowel shift that still hasn't quite finished shifting. One Shakespeare sight-rhyme that I have wondered about is the "Blow, blow, thou winter wind / Thou art not so unkind". Was this also pronounced as a rhyme back then or is it a genuine sight-rhyme?
 
originally posted by Otto Nieminen:
Shakespeare would also have pronounced "reason" as "raisin," hence the line "if
reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I'd give no man a reason upon compulsion."
Click to expand...

Ah, the great vowel shift that still hasn't quite finished shifting. One Shakespeare sight-rhyme that I have wondered about is the "Blow, blow, thou winter wind / Thou art not so unkind". Was this also pronounced as a rhyme back then or is it a genuine sight-rhyme?
Click to expand...

The great vowel shift was over sometime before Shakespeare, as I understand it, whose English is considered modern. I'm not an expert in Shakespearian pronunciation, though I had a prof once who did know about it, but I expect "wind" was pronounced as we do. This is the kind of rhyme that occurs regularly in English, as with Blake's "What the hand and what the eye/ Could frame thy fearful symmetry."
 
I'm sure you have better info on it since we only discussed the shift as a side-topic in the history of Semitic languages (in the general outline of what historical/comparative linguistics is). But the reason I asked about this verse is that our professor told us that the major changes of the GVShift lasted well until the 18th Century and aren't completely finished yet (e.g. "broad" still isn't pronounced /broud/ but /bro:d/) and was one of the reasons why poetry during this period has "sight-rhymes" (i.e. they were actual rhymes then). But apparently the Blake would defy this.
 
Well, pronunciation keeps shifting unless population groups are isolated. There's a reason that the closest approximation to Shakespearian pronunciation is in Appalachia. I do not claim any expertise at all in the great vowel shift. All I know about it, I learned in a class in English Lit. from Beowulf through Spenser that I took as an undergraduate. As I understood it, it was tied, despite its specific sounding name to the change in the language from Chaucer to Spencer, in pronunciation, orthography and vocabulary that makes Chaucer far harder for a speaker of contemporary English to read, say, than French Arthurian romances for a speaker of contemporary French. But I have never specialized in this area of literature and beyond having learned to read and pronounce Chaucer, don't know much more about it than that. And that course is a long time ago, took place at another University, and besides the wench is dead.
 
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