Suppose it were Friday clxxii: The night they invented champagne

The phrase comes from an obscure
Broadway musical from an equally
unremarked century, the previous 
one. But we take heart, the wine
is still recognized, even as the
turtleneck and the pea coat have
vanished, with much more finali-
ty than the male waistline. Hope
for a song extolling long pants,
then, if you favor your moorings
in the present era. Now the pro-
fession of basketball is the on-
ly serious threat to the reputa-
tion of champagne, but while its
pants do keep getting longer, it
asks too much to expect to see a 
break concealing an endorsement.

But LVMH, who produce more cham-
page than anyone else, also cer-
tainly hawk shoes as well, so we
must soon see our czars of cham-
pagne consumption sipping from a
shoe with the same logotype. Dom
Pérignon sneakers are inevitable.

How providently, then, we subdue
the past. Back when we had Gigi,
the aromatics of a gym shoe were
thought to signify a wine fault.
How elegantly our status symbols
ascend from the soles of virtue. 













Mathias Lauridsen
  Cerruti 1881

Nine over 10

What is the religion
of the Italians?

They are Roman Cath-
olics.

What do the Roman
Catholics worship?

Idols and a piece
of bread.

Would not God be
very angry if He
knew that the It-
alians worshipped
idols and a piece
of bread?

God is very angry.

Recalling that on this date, in

2010, I started writing red mug

blue linen on the pretext of be-

ing under development, I'm heart-

ened to notice that although the

blog has appeared over 10 years,

it is still only nine years old.

I don't know why, but I feel this

is a sign that there's still time

for it. Meanwhile, the dialogue

borrowed above, from a Christmas

Cracker anthology by John Julius

Norwich, can stand for two impres-

sions I've never tried to subdue:

that I'm lucky in what I admire -

worship being a condition which

has discredited itself too much

for emulation, in this land in

which I write - and that what I

do is no more than superfluously

disadvantageous in God's eyes.

But this is to address only one

of the senses. As in the famil-

iar Summer towel, drying on the

rack at such length, one or an-

other of the unblinking senses

may question the freshness of

the thing. This consideration

is akin to fretting the opinion

of God, when He is an audience

I haven't pretended to address.

Flippant as this defense may be,

it deflects a hovering smell in

the air of public comment today,

of an antagonistic struggle for

the soul of the nation. We hear

a gruesome trumpet on all sides,

from Falwell's Liberty Univer-

sity, to Joseph Biden's latest

postures for the Presidency, to 

Pulitzer columnists flogging

us to do the right thing. It's

a hideous abuse of any concept

of liberty, by the foulest

simplifications and reductions

of political importuning, this

grab at the autonomous soul, to

the telling neglect of bread.

Something strikes me as malfunc-

tional in addressing each other,

to remonstrate as if grievances

endow anyone with divine judgment.

Now we are challenged to make mer-

cy popular, and who will grow it?

A student rejects this cant with

grateful resort to invigorating

refreshment in the assets of the

senses. Here I take delight in a

picture I acquired with the trade

of a bottle of Champagne, from an

artist of clarity and strength. I

think of the senses in development,

and admire the company of being.

iv   Valéry Lorenzo

John Julius Norwich

More Christmas Crackers

  being ten commonplace

  selections, 1980 - 1989

Viking, 1990©

I don't care for wine at the sea

     One has to be able to enjoy a dis-
     crimination notwithstanding a wave
     of popular feeling these days, for
     the proposition that anything good
     is good anywhere. The sea and wine
     share a context in common, called,
     the air, in which an inhalation of
     the one is irreconcilable with the
     same gesture toward the other. The
     complication imposed on breathing,
     then, is not the least of the con-
     siderations to be invoked in favor
     of keeping them apart. They antag-
     onize each other in numerous other
     ways, with the deck heavily stack-
     ed in favor of the sea, but I need
     cite only one more to satisfy this
     observation. The quality of solit-
     ude with the one is so immeasurab-
     ly finer than with the other, that
     it would never occur to us to say,
     I don't care for the sea with wine . .

Origins of Wednesday xciii: What strategies has Spring?

These are this season's weeks of

vulnerability in northern hemis-

pheric viticulture, when only

right-wing ostriches deny an es-

calated costliness in storm and

other weather patterns, includ-

ing prospects for deadly frost.

Technicians of the vine are al-

most powerless to mitigate this

exposure, and in many communit-

ies - often named for saints -

the interval before mid-May is

one of suspense, and much re-

sort to superstition. The real-

ity of the impartiality of the

season remains strangely over-

looked, but then whose seasons

are, any more, uncorrupted by

ourselves? Meanwhile, it will

be remembered, it wasn't until

the height of Summer that Rich-

ard Nixon was run out of town,

with his Pence gone before him.

This is a moment of awkward

experience for Americans, be-

ing governed by only one res-

ponsible Party, certain to be

savaged by a domestic polit-

ical combine the world hasn't

seen since the last of the Ro-

manovs, an axis of political,

judicial, media, and occult

institutions in league with a-

lien powers to block the path

of justice and reform - wily

enough, to goad patriots with

the specter of autocracy, and

not to fail to bribe clients

committed to the most noxious

and unsustainable policies in

every field of public interest.

What strategies has Spring, de-

spite appearances of passivity,

apart from its benign exposure?

Already a fated uproar of tech-

nicians can be heard, claiming

to translate it in their voice.

What strategies has Spring, but

to be overwritten by technique?

Return of the native

 Fine wines do the same
 thing. They hide for a
 while.  

 Then suddenly they are
 back. This is true. At
 the revival, we should
 know better than to be
 amazed, but nobody ob-
 jects to the sensation
 of a reprimand of awe.

Tiger Woods
Augusta, Georgia
2001

Myron
Greece
5th C BC
Discobolus
  Bronze
Rome
2nd C AD
  Copy
Glypothek, Munich

Suppose it were Friday clxix: A very good light for Volnay

  Here you will find a poor but beau-

  tifully exposed, very stony, reddish

  soil of Bathonian origin on a rocky

  base, on quite a definite slope fac-

  ing to the southeast. It is the light-

  ness of the soil throughout the Volnay

  vineyards that largely contributes to 

  the delicacy and finesse of this com-

  mune's wines.

Although I have argued here, before, that taste is a human right, it isn't from care that I haven't rejected the reality that it can be educated, with all the risks of coercion that process can inflict. It's in weather such as this, in backlighting of earlier days like this, that I look with gratitude upon the qualities of a wine which is less probable to discover today, without a push such as I was given as a student, and the house red wine was from an appellation not then expensive, also not hotly flogged by hired authorities. We don't experience those conditions in these times, but I do not regard them as indispensable to loving an extraordinary treasure for itself. I apologize as much for speaking its name, as for withholding it. 

Clive Coates

The Wines of France

  Revised Edition

Wine Appreciation Guild

1999©

i  Alexander McQueen

   Bazaar UK

Much agit, no prop

 It was Gérard, someone reminded us last evening, 
 who advanced a notion so captivating to our lit-
 tle band, as to engage even the Republicans' be-
 loved general population. Oxford and Cambridge 
 have their dueling wine tasting teams, Laurel 
 and Hardy their slapstick slaps, Jekyll and Hyde 
 their Susan Collins. Why shouldn't we have a twit-
 ting society, for contestants who get up from the 
 wrong side of the bed, to spend the day refuting 
 themselves? It could only elevate our name for wit, 
 and make us all illustrious. Alas, an unknown de- 
 fect in this fad, was that it had already worn out.

 Gérard then proposed a game of chance, but with
 the twit still at large, nobody was taking any.

Origins of Wednesday lxxxv: Réflexions sur la question Bush

I opened a much-too-young vintage from
Graves - a favorite appellation - the
other night, and I told my excellent
wine merchant that I'd spend a little
time revisiting the writings of one
of its earliest vignerons. My impetu-
osity in tampering with a 2012 was
only doubly edified, in samplings of
sound and balanced discernment.
Where possible, I take that style of
commentary on our time as a favorite.

Several days ago, in a country house where 
I was staying, I came upon two scholars who 
enjoy a wide reputation here. Their charac-
ter struck me as admirable. The conversa-
tion of the first, when properly weighed, 
came down to this: "What I said is true be-
cause I said it."  The conversation of the 
second dealt with other matters: "What I 
did not say is not true because I didn't 
say it."

I rather liked the first man: that a man 
should be opinionated doesn't bother me 
at all; but that he should be impertinent, 
that does bother me, and a lot. The first 
man defends his own ideas; they are his own 
wealth. The second attacks the opinion of 
others, and that constitutes the wealth of 
everyone.

Oh, my dear Uzbek, how badly vanity serves 
men who have a stronger dose of it than 
they need for the preservation of nature. 
Those fellows seek to be admired by dint 
of displeasing. They strive to be super-
ior; they are not even equal.

Charles de Secondat
  Baron de la Brède et
  de Montesquieu
The Persian Letters
  144: Rica to Uzbek
1720
J. Robert Loy
  editor & translator
World, 1961©

1    Château de la Brède

iii  5th Avenue
      from the St Regis
      1905

Wine routes of Iberia, 2nd ed.

The half-life of meticulous scholarship,

when devoted now to the regions hereto-

fore praised for sustaining a distinctive

form of life -- as opposed, say, to the

American South's fetish for a way of life

-- has shrunk perceptibly under the novel

strain of climate adjustments, almost as

unforeseen as the transformation of Chic-

ago under the pressures of Jim Crow, asy-

lum seekers fleeing sharecropping's desert

for shelter in blue collars. There are e-

even those who say, Honduras is going out

of business under terror's pre-emption of

drought and rising sea levels. But have

these Cassandras reckoned with our Little

Father's genius for slamming the door, and

discounting the price of military hardware

to suppress the locals in situ? I fear not.

Now the chaos written on the vine of Iber-

ian viticulture has its reverberations a-

cross the vinous continent, as growers

scurry to plant varietals in spontaneous-

ly misplaced habitats, and investigate

the higher predictability in bottling Co-

ca-Cola. So much for the antiquated "chât-

eau" system, and on to the conglomerate's

dispassionate virtuosity with synthetics.

Is it the fault, strictly speaking, of a

Gamay to take on the attributes of Cab-

ernet Sauvignon under rising heat levels

and higher winds? One might as well insist

that it's the fault of an orphan, to be

suckled by wolves. Can Rome turn on a dime?

Joan Miró
Blue II
  [from a triptych]
1961