JEREZ ENDETH THE LESSON

.....OK. it's a bit of a pronunciation joke but never mind.

Sherry. Why is it becoming popular again?

Centuries ago it was an elegant drink for posh people and for wine drinkers who had special drinks for different times of the day or occasions.

Over time it as a category degenerated into a cheap drink that gave more bang for the buck because of the high alcohol (fortified) nature.

Excise men soon wised up and charged double tax for anything over 15% and, in the case of New Zealand (Jim Anderton's fault) buggered up the equation by classing it the same as cheap spirits and basically priced it off the market.
In the case of New Zealand the category is dead.

But, it may be coming back albeit in a minor and specilaised way.

It won't be the huge market that allowed wine producers to pump out all sorts of sweet and diabolical shit and which had a big market share.

This was the favourite tipple of the little old ladies who gradually turned yellow from the effect of the alcohol and the colouring additives.

I wonder what they drink now?


Funny enough it was old Richard of RBB when he was a young man who boosted sherry consumption statistics. This was unusual in that he was in his early twenties when he was drinking Findlater Dry Fly and Williams and Humbert Walnut Brown - definitely non-demographic.

He wasn't really the classical figure of elegant sherry sipping though.

No, his consumption style was a bit different and certainly not the way the product was adverised and promoted.

With a slight resurgance of sherry consumption a few of the better importers and retailers are stocking interesting and fresh product.
I mention fresh because the best sherries are not those over-sweetened and cloying ones with 'cream' and 'milk' in their names. These are generally oxidised to hell and held up by high alcohol and sugar.
No, I mean the Finos and Manzanillas that are very dry and have low alchol (for sherry) at about 15%.

Like White Port though they don't last very long in the bottle whether it's been opened or not. You need to know when it was bottled and hopefully buy it within a couple of months of this.

I bought a couple of half bottles of the excellent La Guita Manzanilla from Glengarry recently.

This classy sherry (15%) was imported by Glengarry's sister company Hancocks Wine and Spirits and they thoughtfully have the bottling date printed on the back label - in this case 10 July 2014.
The wine is crisp, fresh and with a lovely nutty finish (no jokes please). It is a classic example of why we should support speciality and experience importers and retailers and avoid the mass market booze peddlars. Admittedly New Zealand's backward liquor laws don't allow supernmarkets to sell fortified wines like Port and Sherry but even if it did they'd more likely stock this.

IF WINE BE THE MUSIC OF LOVE, PLAY ON

A recent study by the Heriot Watt University (from who knows where) got subjects to sort music into categories of  'powerful and heavy' e.g. Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, 'subtle and refined' e.g. Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers, 'zingy and refreshing' e.g.  Nouvelle Vague's Just Can't Get Enough or “mellow and soft e.g. Michael Brooke's Slow Breakdown.

Another group then drank either a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Chardonnay while the previous music played.

A third control group drank the wine but without any music being played.

The second group were asked to categorise the wines they tasted into the same categories that the music group categorised the wine. The music was on in the backgound. When the second group listened to Carmina Burana while drinking Cabernet Sauvignon most described the wine as being  'powerful and heavy' but when drinking the same wine with Just Can't Get Enough they described it as 'zingy and refreshing'.

The control group raated the wines entirely different.

This makes me wonder if The Prowse Boy's will serve up wine at their concerts.
The concert-goers will form different impressions of the wines depending on what music is played.
This probably won't be a bad thing though as the wines served up will probably benefit from a bit of enhamcement so that the $7.00 Pak n Save special chardonnay will variously taste 'elegant and refined' or 'funky and high spirited' depending on the song.

KEEPING UP

Good friend Richard enjoys a drop of wine, usually Chardonnay. He can start out talking English and end up, after a bottle and a half talking Italian ..... or he says it's Italian  ....a kind of archaic version derived from the early Roman settlers of Nuova Lazio.

I also like a drop, usually Chardonnay or Pinot Noir and, after a bottle and a bit end up talking gibberish.

If I drink too much, normally 7 glasses or a bottle and a half, I can't stand drinking the next day and usually go another two days before having any more.

This is why I was gobsmacked when I read about the drinking habits of Gerard Depardieu.
We know that he likes booze having heard about his pissing in the aisle of a plane and other boorish antics but in this latest report he's quoted as saying he drinks up to 14 bottles of wine a day. Fourteen bottles! That's more than a case of wine. Admittedly it's French wine with maybe some German and other European wines so maybe not as high in alcohol as American, Australian and New Zealand wine but is still likely to be between 10 and 12 and a half percent alcohol. He also says he intersperses the wine with whisky, pastis and vodka.

Encroyable!

I saw Depardieu in a film titled Mammut (mammoth) which is a pretty good description of this boozer taking in his girth and woolley-headedness.

I'M BAAAAAACK!

Old Granny Google won't let me access my original Wine Guy site.
Apparently, because I've been trying to log in from new Zealand instead of Canada it/he/she assumes that I'm a scammer or something.
Its verification system wants to send me a text message to the phone I had listed. This was a Canadian cell-phone number which I cancelled when I left Toronto. Their system doesn't seem to make provision on this.
In the next step it wants me to verify without a cellphone by telling it exactly when I started up the account - day, month, year. WTF! who remembers that? I tried by putting in the date of my first blog post. No go.
I just have to start a new blog.

I've put a link in to all the old stuff basically for any readers out there who want to revisit old times.