The Fino road

Recently I tried some fino sherry. Straight from Jerez Spain, it was a white wine. I was surprised by this; I expected a sweet red. I usually don’t care for the white but this was good. I think it more of a summer wine though. Now I am looking for a cheap sweet dark red wine to warm me this summer.

Changes

Will wonders never cease? WordPress has a mobile version of this page. If you view it from a phone it automatically loads a web version.

Not sure if I will continue to write on this venue, but we’ll see. The writing app is cumbersome for entering text, but if they fix that with an update I may go back.

fun while it lasted

I have a blogger app, so this blog is redundant.  Ahhh, life in the 21st century.

What to drink with type o negative?

So I have been listening to copious amounts of Type O Negative this summer, and it is good drinking music, but I am not sure what to drink with Type O? It isn’t whiskey sort of music. My first reckoning is Jagermeister. However, I am not a big Jagerdrinker. Maybe vodka? I don’t drink vodka too much anymore because whiskey is cheaper and better, and I reject this premium vodka craze. For a while vodka got more expensive, but now it is back where it should be.

Still, other than Jager, any Type O drink suggestions? I once had Blavod, which is black vodka. Seems logical to get that, and have black vodka tonics. But isn’t that a tad silly?

Revolution

This train of thought began with a drink. I find coffee to be repellant. Yet I can’t help be envious of different coffee drinking cultures around the world. The French drinking at cafes. Italians drinking espresso after dinner. English with their silly tea ceremonies.

Wait, the English drink tea, not coffee. I like tea. And then isn’t it interesting how so many cultures around the world have these wonderful rituals around drinking caffeine? America has pretty lousy drinking rituals altogether, and caffeine is one of them. People line up in the morning around the break room perculator, small talk for a few minutes, and then retreated to their cubicles to drink the worst coffee in the world. Don’t get me started on the aweful beer culture.

So we don’t have good coffee rituals, though that is changing. Afterall, people go to Starbucks and drink marginally better coffee and sit around reading or in front of their laptops pretending to write a novel. Repellent, but more interesting.

It may surprise some people to learn that Russia has a strong tea culture. There is a ritual of drinking tea from a samovar.

Samovar is a strange word for a fancy Russian teapot warmer and water boiler. I encountered it often reading Chekhov. You see I am a fan of the great Russian Romantic literature. Gogol, Tolstoy, all are my friends but Chekhov most of all. I love the way he paints such a clear picture of his characters in such a short narrative. His stories are gritty, common, and full of the vigors of life. It is like street photography in short story form. I love the surreal way Gogol tells a story, like a waking dream. And yes, one day I will finish War and Peace.

I suppose you could call me a fan of Romantic art. After all, I love the Revolutionary music of Beethoven. I love the Romantic music that followed: Schubert, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Greig… such music.

Wasn’t the Romantic era revolutionary? Beethoven’s third symphony, the Eroica, changed music. It is written with such passion that still resonates in today’s world of synth beats, vocoders, guitar fuzz, screamo, and whatever they invent next week. Written during the age of Napoleon, it was originally given the title Buonaparte; a title that Ludwig crossed off the original manuscript so hard that it tore a hole in the page when he learned that Napoleon crowned himself emperor. Instead it was dedicated to the memory of a great man and named Heroic. Strange that the funeral march comes in the second movement instead of the last. What did he mean by that?

Napoleon. The conqueror. We tend to revile him in history here in America. History is, after all, written by the winners. I like Napoleon. We was daring. A dreamer. There are no great rewards without great risks. He enshrined ideals we still respect today: liberty, equality, and fraternity. He caused the eventual death of monarchy in Europe even though he tried to become one himself. Perhaps that inspired the famous Neitsche quote?

Some think of him as a great French warrior. He was a Corsican of Italian extract.

Wandering off into this dreamland of a heroic revolutionary era; a place of aristocrats and peasants and craftsmen and change was starting to increase at a frightening pace; yes I think that is a fair assessment. Didn’t it all end with World War One? The end of the Heroic era?

So I am going to start my own tea rituals. It probably won’t go well. After all, I don’t really believe in rituals myself. I don’t keep any rituals. Some people think they are a necessary part of human culture. I don’t like our culture so I suppose that is why I don’t keep any rituals, even those I invent myself. Too bad, I sometimes believe that tea would catch on if it was marketed better.

Vinegar

Well I had a less than week old jug of wine in the fridge, and last night it was already starting to skunk and turn into vinegar. Such a waste. I wonder if it will still be good for cooking?

Still not a good pirate

The local liquor warehouse has a large selection of rum. There isn’t anything fancy about most rums. It is simply fermented and distilled juices of the sugar cane. However, there are some interesting rums that are aged in oak barrels. That distinction is usually saved for whiskey and brandy. Curious?

So I bought a rum that was pure pot still (though I’m not sure that makes a difference) and aged in oak four years. It is different than your Captain stock. More like brandy. Most rums get their tawny color from “spices”, but this has it from the tanins in the oak.

I’ll be honest, I like brandy more than rum. But the selection of brandy around here is light. The only good cheap stuff is Stock 84. I am too afraid to try the really cheap scummy stuff on the bottom shelf. It reminds me of the aweful vodkas at the bottom; Five O’clock and Arrow and Heaven Hill. That stuff is only good for making yourself sick.

At any rate, if your liquor store has the selection and you feel like a pirate tonight, try to find some good rum. Rhum was maybe less than fifteen dollars and pure pot still, aged in oak four years. A much better deal than Bacardi or Captain Morgan. Cheaper, tastier…who could ask for anything more?

My old friend

These days I cannot afford to always branch out with something new. Sometimes the tried and true is the best course. So for this week my old friend, Carlo Rossi has been in my refridgerator. I am specifically referring to a jug of Carlo Rossi Paisano, a nice red wine.

Paisano is a deal. A four liter jug will run you about seven or eight dollars. The glass jug alone is worth about half that.

The wine is a decent red. Sweet, but not overly sweet. Not rough, even though it is cheaper than water.

What will you do with a 4 liter glass jug when you are finished? What I prefer to do is save it for brewing. It is large enough to use as a carboy for brewing your own drink. Or if you have a carboy already, it can be used for bottling your prescious juices.

Overall it is inexpensive, but solid wine. I try to minimize the amount of plastics in my life. I think you can tastes the plastic in your drink. So that cuts out box wine, which I recall being a bit too sweet and readily giving headaches. Though if you find you don’t get box wine hangovers, by all means.

In fact my old roommate Vince Neilstein was a fan. He used to keep a box of wine in his backpack at all times and take it to parties with him. “Who wants box wine?”. Usually at some point you have to ask “who doesn’t?”

Wine and song

Drinking and music are two related items. What sort of song goes well with red wine in the summer? Well, I’m partial to Andrea Bocelli’s opera music. I also dig Vivaldi. My moment of zen is sitting outside on a pleasant summer afternoon drinking red wine, eating pizza, and listening to some well sung arias. It is hard to find well sung arias, by the way. So what about you? Any particular drinking music you’d like to share? Type O Negative and Jagermeister? White Russians and Bob Dylan?

Sweet Sherry

I am a big fan of Osborne brandy. Veterano is really good, especially for the absurdly low price. With that in mind, my first day of wino summer starts with Osborne’s Sherry; sweet Oloroso cream.

It is a sweet wine. It also has some bitter tanins that don’t agree with me. Anyways, it was like Robitussin mixed with Jagermeister. I am trying it on ice to see if that helps. If not it is back to good old Carlos Rossi and Paisano for me. Seven bucks for a gallon…mmmmm!