Category: drink

A wine recommendation

June 17, 2021 • 2:30 pm

I don’t have much to say today, but at least I can offer you a wine recommendation: a bottle that I’ve had in multiple vintages and have always loved. It’s this one:

I haven’t tried the 2020 version of the Pine Ridge Chenin blanc/Viognier yet, but I see it advertised by my wine store for $11 a bottle, which is pretty much what you should pay for it.  It’s a California blend of two grapes that are rarely combined, one of which, viognier, can be a classic, world-class white (as in Château-Grillet). The viognier here isn’t of that quality, but the blend of the two grapes is luscious, a tad lemony and melon-y, and a bit off dry, which is good because it means you can drink this with nearly everything but heavy red meat. It will pair well with Chinese food and spicy food. It’s the perfect summer white, one of the best wine values I’ve ever found, and if you can find it for under $12 a bottle, you should buy a case.

It’s not a wine for keeping, so get the latest vintage and drink it within a year or two. This used to be my house white during the summer, and I look forward to replenishing my supply now that the pandemic is over.

If you aren’t sure, try a bottle before you consider buying a case. Then store several bottles in the fridge to crack (there’s a convenient screw top) when the mood strikes.

Sunday: Hili dialogue

June 13, 2021 • 6:30 am

Welcome to Sunday, June 13, 2021: Cupcake Lover’s Day (again, the apostrophe implies that only a single lover of cupcakes is being honored). It’s also National Children’s Day, Weed Your Garden Day, World Softball Day, and Race Unity Day.

Wine of the Day: I wanted a good heavy red to go with my weekly steak, and I had a hankering for my first love: the Rhones. Lord knows when I bought this bottle, but the price is written on the label along with the advice “decant”, meaning the wine store guy probably told me that this would have a sediment. Well, it had better, being an 11-year-old southern Rhone.

I just looked up my favorite wine guy’s assessment of this wine, which is this:

Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
The powerful, rich 2010 Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee Anonyme reveals an off-the-chart level of extract, lots of glycerin (nearly 16% natural alcohol) and copious black cherry, blueberry, forest floor, lavender and graphite characteristics. This full-throttle red requires 3-4 years of cellaring and should keep for two decades.
Rating: 95+
(For Parker, a rating that high means a spectacular wine.) I’m not going to say I detected lavender and graphite, but there was a hint of loam from Northern Ireland, damp grizzly bear fur, and, seriously, dark black cherry. The wine was dark ruby, could evolve for some additional years, and the second glass was much better than the first. I put it under vacuum and left it for tomorrow, when I expect it will be even better.

News of the Day:

Yes, there were three mass shootings on Friday night in three separate states, with two killed and at least 30 injured.

Austin, Texas: 14 wounded, two critically
Savannah, Georgia: one killed and seven wounded
Chicago, Illinois: one killed, nine wounded

As Neil Young sang in “Ohio,” “How many more?” Or to quote Bob Dylan, “How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died.”

CNN reports that a scuba diver got swallowed by a humpback whale and spent 30 seconds in the whale’s mouth before the leviathan spit him out! Michael Packard, a lobster diver, was ingested about 45 feet down before the whale realized it had bit on something it couldn’t chew. This situation seems to be a first, though there wasn’t really any danger of Packard being swallowed since the throat of humpbacks are too narrow to accommodate humans.   (h/t: Bill, who adds, “I’m sure those in the Abrahamic tradition will use this story as affirmation of the story of Jonah.”)

An op-ed by Timothy Egan in the NYT, “Biden may be the calm between two storms“, warns of Democratic wokeness sabotaging our chances of governing the country by losing elections in 2022 or 2024. The message: stay on positive accomplishments like economics and vaccination, and stay away from defunding the police and forcing schools to teach CRT.

Bad idea of the year department: An old plantation in North Carolina tweeted this, canceling the Juneteenth event meant, as reader Ken says, “commemorate the hardships that Emancipation visited upon plantation owners and returning Confederate soldiers.” OY!  You can read more about this misstep, and the troubles ahead for Latta Plantation, here.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 599,678, an increase of 384 deaths over yesterday’s figure. We will pass 600,000 deaths by tomorrow or Tuesday.  The reported world death toll is now 3,811,523, an increase of about 9,700 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on June 13 includes:

Here’s a portrait of “Die Luterin”, as von Bora was called, painted during her lifetime by Lucas von Cranach the Elder.  She helped Luther develop important elements of his new doctrine, and they even had kids (are there any Luthers left?)

  • 1774 – Rhode Island becomes the first of Britain’s North American colonies to ban the importation of slaves.
  • 1893 – Grover Cleveland notices a rough spot in his mouth and on July 1 undergoes secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw; the operation was not revealed to the public until 1917, nine years after the president’s death.

Here’s the last known photograph of Cleveland, taken the year before he died (1907). Note, though, that Wikipedia says it was not a cancer but a benign epithelioma. Fix it, Wikipedia!

  • 1898 – Yukon Territory is formed, with Dawson chosen as its capital.
  • 1927 – Aviator Charles Lindbergh receives a ticker tape parade down 5th Avenue in New York City.

Here’s a film of that parade, though the sound cuts out after about five seconds (it resumes after a minute):

Here’s Marshall in 1957. As a lawyer, he’d successfully argued the case of Brown v. Board of Education, which eliminated segergation in public schools, before the Supreme Court.

Here’s the Times’s front-page article about the papers:

  • 1997 – A jury sentences Timothy McVeigh to death for his part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1831 – James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist and mathematician (d. 1879)
  • 1865 – W. B. Yeats, Irish poet and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1939)

Here’s Yeats (one of my favorite poets) as a young man; there’s no date for this photo. Irish poets learn your trade!

  • 1897 – Paavo Nurmi, Finnish runner and coach (d. 1973)
  • 1918 – Ben Johnson, American actor and stuntman (d. 1996)

I will keep showing this scene from The Last Picture Show with Ben Johnson starring as Sam the Lion. This is his Soliloquy at the Water Tank, just as good as any soliloquy of Shakespeare. (Johnson won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for this role).

Those who “passed” on June 13 include:

  • 1965 – Martin Buber, Austrian-Israeli philosopher and theologian (b. 1878)

Buber!

  • 1986 – Benny Goodman, American clarinet player, songwriter, and bandleader (b. 1909)
  • 2010 – Jimmy Dean, American singer and businessman, founded Jimmy Dean Foods (b. 1928)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn: Hili is impatiently waiting on the windowsill to come inside (Andrzej has to go out and carry her in; she refuses to walk in on her own!)

Hili: Could you let me inside?
A: Wait. I will just finish this sentence.
Hili: You always have excuses.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy możesz wpuścić mnie do domu?
Ja: Zaczekaj, tylko dokończę to zdanie.
Hili: Zawsze masz jakieś wymówki.

 

From Facebook:

From Bruce:

A groaner from Nicole:

This tweet was sent to me by reader Jay (I retweeted it; do read the article), who adds “Twitter is now hiding links to the article as ‘potentially sensitive content.'” What the hell?

Two tweets from Ginger K.  The first is via our friend Masih, showing the natural reaction to being forced to cover your head for school.

And some science:

Tweets from Matthew. This quote comes from a contrarian “scientific” journal:

This is a modern day ripoff of Winsor McCay’s fabulous cartoon strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend:

Matthew tweeted one of his beloved optical illusions:

I’m curious about whether a plane will even start after 435 days of inactivity.

This isn’t exactly true. For instance, you can swap “rectangular” with “green” or  “little” with “old” without changing the meaning: