What shall I open?

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 19:45 Fri 27 Feb 2015

I've just got in from work, I've gnawed a leftover chicken leg and have some shepherd's pie I could warm up, the end of this bottle of wine will last me a few minutes, Rachel's working late and the Ulster Rugby is on TV.
WHAT SHALL I OPEN? Bear in mind I want to drink it NOW so 6-hour decants please.

Post by **flash_uk** » 19:56 Fri 27 Feb 2015

Warre 94

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 19:58 Fri 27 Feb 2015

There's no Warre 94 here. I have Graham 94 and Vesuvio 94 but I don't think either of them are looking good right now.
Hurry, the wine's nearly finished. And I'm sober.

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 19:59 Fri 27 Feb 2015

Vesuvio 92? Or shall I just open another LBV...?

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 20:00 Fri 27 Feb 2015

Surely it's not a Graham 55 evening..?

LGTrotter · Post by **LGTrotter** » 20:06 Fri 27 Feb 2015

Something red, a Rhone, an LBV. Nothing too great, your taste buds need to come to equilibrium.

LGTrotter · Post by **LGTrotter** » 20:08 Fri 27 Feb 2015

At the instigation of my shiftless nephew I've been getting into Brewdog's stuff. American hops, a bit surprising to us old 'uns but tasty. Have a beer.

benread · Post by **benread** » 20:11 Fri 27 Feb 2015

Ramos Pinto 2003 LBV looking very good in the decanter here - a Virgin Wines deal a month or so ago!

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 20:11 Fri 27 Feb 2015

I like Brewdog. But I've already had a large glass of something red, I think it was the dregs of a Languedoc. Beer may not be a good idea now. And have I got any?
Investigation shows I have a bottle of Kinnegar Yannaroddy Porter from Donegal.
Experiment begins. The mag of W77 is safe for another night.

LGTrotter · Post by **LGTrotter** » 20:12 Fri 27 Feb 2015

Champagne is cheering to the spirits and reviving to the enervated.

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 20:13 Fri 27 Feb 2015

benread wrote:Ramos Pinto 2003 LBV looking very good in the decanter here - a Virgin Wines deal a month or so ago!

Somehow I think that later this evening I will end up on one of Offley 07 LBV, W 84 or 86 LBV or QFUR.
I was going to say G Cr98 but they've all been rubbish lately so I'm leaving them be for a while.
Maybe that half of Cr 04 LBV that seems to be all that was left in Northern Ireland..??
Yes!
Perfect.
Donegal Porter followed Croft LBV. That sounds good!

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 20:22 Fri 27 Feb 2015

Glenn E. · Post by **Glenn E.** » 22:09 Fri 27 Feb 2015

Brown sticky stuff. It's all pop-n-pour, and goes better with your cheese course (you are having a cheese course, right?) than ruby Port.

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 22:10 Fri 27 Feb 2015

Tawnies next then!

Glenn E. · Post by **Glenn E.** » 03:07 Sat 28 Feb 2015

Perhaps something like this, which I opened at work this afternoon?

: 2015-02-27 13.49.24.jpg (233.39 KiB) Viewed 40097 times

Post by **PhilW** » 08:26 Sat 28 Feb 2015

Glenn E. wrote:Brown sticky stuff. It's all pop-n-pour, and goes better with your cheese course (you are having a cheese course, right?) than ruby Port.

Surely that depends on the cheeses? The harder nutty style such as an aged Comté I would definitely be more inclined to have with a tawny, but the softer and bluer style such as Castello blue I would have with ruby; and some such as an Ossau Iraty could work well with either.

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 09:10 Sat 28 Feb 2015

I'm rather intrigued by 'which I opened at work this afternoon'. Is that what your workplace is like, full of half-sozzled roués opening their recherché bottles to help speed the afternoon? I have a line of old port bottles on a shelf in my office but I didn't drink them there!

Post by **flash_uk** » 09:14 Sat 28 Feb 2015

PhilW wrote:...such as an Ossau Iraty could work well with either.

By coincidence, when I got home last night, my wife had bought some Ossau Iraty and I tried some for the first time. We both thought it was very fine cheese.

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 09:25 Sat 28 Feb 2015

It is rather nice. We used to get it all the time, but for some reason we stopped. Nowadays it's all coastal Cheddar, which is rather wonderful, very salty.

Glenn E. · Post by **Glenn E.** » 21:49 Sat 28 Feb 2015

djewesbury wrote:I'm rather intrigued by 'which I opened at work this afternoon'. Is that what your workplace is like, full of half-sozzled roués opening their recherché bottles to help speed the afternoon? I have a line of old port bottles on a shelf in my office but I didn't drink them there!

There's a group that has been holding a Thursday afternoon tasting every Thursday at 2:00 pm since 2003. They primarily drink sweet wines such as Port, Tokaji, and Sauternes. Sadly, I only found out about it two weeks ago.

My group has an ad hoc Whiskey tasting on Friday afternoons. It's technically the CAT (Core Architecture Team) office hours, but it usually devolves into a Whiskey tasting. I've started attending with a tawny Port and have been welcomed heartily.

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 22:28 Sat 28 Feb 2015

Nope, I'm still confused. This is a 'workplace'?

Post by **DRT** » 23:32 Sat 28 Feb 2015

djewesbury wrote:Nope, I'm still confused. This is a 'workplace'?

Daniel, surely you remember what it was like to work in an office environment in the 1980s?

Clearly Microsoft are still living that dream, which explains a lot about their software

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 23:38 Sat 28 Feb 2015

Suddenly I understand why my university PC stops working every Friday at 1400 PST.

LGTrotter · Post by **LGTrotter** » 23:42 Sat 28 Feb 2015

I think this is wonderful, you have slayed a bit of bigotry in me. America, and Americans I assumed were rather dry, Europe on the other hand having drinking habits teetering on alcoholism. But now I hear that drinking at work, something frowned on, nay unheard of, in Britain is alive and well in America.

Builders had a tradition of drinking, a couple at lunch, a lot on Friday afternoons, those were the days. Oh and young farmers, the combination of casual alcohol misuse and industrial scale machinery being particularly pleasing.

LGTrotter · Post by **LGTrotter** » 14:29 Sun 01 Mar 2015

PhilW wrote:
Glenn E. wrote:Brown sticky stuff. It's all pop-n-pour, and goes better with your cheese course (you are having a cheese course, right?) than ruby Port.
Surely that depends on the cheeses? The harder nutty style such as an aged Comté I would definitely be more inclined to have with a tawny, but the softer and bluer style such as Castello blue I would have with ruby; and some such as an Ossau Iraty could work well with either.

There are many English cheeses now which match any continental variety. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century English cheese was the envy of Europe. I hope that America has proper cheesemakers too.

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 14:32 Sun 01 Mar 2015

Owen, I'm reading about Eric Hobsbawm and Hugh Trevor-Roper at the moment. Inspired by these historiographic debates I'm trying to read across your threads today and estimate the trajectory of your comments. I don't know where you're going, but I know it's somewhere good. I hope you have something ready to open this evening.

LGTrotter · Post by **LGTrotter** » 20:45 Sun 01 Mar 2015

Trevor-Roper, well known lickspittle and fawner-in-chief to the aristocracy. Think Starky, ie not an original idea of his own but renowned for being bitchy. Did well out of 'controversies', mainly consisting of him getting his friends to publish articles in which he was terribly amusing about people who had at least tried. Finally took a purler over the Hitler diaries. A shining example of what makes England mediocre.

Tchah! Back to cheese. I like cheese.

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 20:57 Sun 01 Mar 2015

I think that's Hugh covered fairly comprehensively. Up Eric!
Next time I come over for a tasting I should bring some Irish cheeses.

Post by **jdaw1** » 21:15 Sun 01 Mar 2015

djewesbury wrote:Eric Hobsbawm

I really liked his idea of the invention of tradition. But disliked his pejorative tone about it. We are a traditional country. We should do things traditionally, even if we haven’t done them before. If the Americans can invent electric lights and Miller Genuine Draft and rounders and Late Bottled Vintage, we can invent traditions.

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 22:10 Sun 01 Mar 2015

Ah, yes, we have a lot of invention of tradition where I live. I'll introduce you to some people when you come over in November.

Post by **DRT** » 22:16 Sun 01 Mar 2015

I am about to open a bottle of The Balvenie Caribbean Cask 14 year old.

Am I doing anything wrong?

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 22:19 Sun 01 Mar 2015

DRT wrote:I am about to open a bottle of The Balvenie Caribbean Cask 14 year old.

Am I doing anything wrong?

Is it a tradition?

Post by **DRT** » 22:20 Sun 01 Mar 2015

djewesbury wrote:
DRT wrote:I am about to open a bottle of The Balvenie Caribbean Cask 14 year old.

Am I doing anything wrong?
Is it a tradition?

As soon as I open it, yes.

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 22:20 Sun 01 Mar 2015

DRT wrote:
djewesbury wrote:
DRT wrote:I am about to open a bottle of The Balvenie Caribbean Cask 14 year old.

Am I doing anything wrong?
Is it a tradition?
As soon as I open it, yes.

Then you can't go wrong. History proves it.

Post by **DRT** » 22:21 Sun 01 Mar 2015

djewesbury wrote:
DRT wrote:
djewesbury wrote:
DRT wrote:I am about to open a bottle of The Balvenie Caribbean Cask 14 year old.

Am I doing anything wrong?
Is it a tradition?
As soon as I open it, yes.
Then you can't go wrong. History proves it.

Live long and prosper.

LGTrotter · Post by **LGTrotter** » 22:44 Sun 01 Mar 2015

I should like Julian to expand on tradition, Hobsbawm and all that sort of thing.

I have opened a Blandy 10yo Malmsey and am all ears.

LGTrotter · Post by **LGTrotter** » 22:53 Sun 01 Mar 2015

LGTrotter wrote:I should like Julian to expand on tradition, Hobsbawm and all that sort of thing.

I have opened a Blandy 10yo Malmsey and am all ears.

Daniel can you understudy for Julian? I'm sure you could find something to say.

Post by **DRT** » 22:58 Sun 01 Mar 2015

LGTrotter wrote:Daniel … I'm sure you could find something to say.

+1

LGTrotter · Post by **LGTrotter** » 23:00 Sun 01 Mar 2015

DRT wrote:
LGTrotter wrote:Daniel … I'm sure you could find something to say.
+1

He's gone all shy now. Or perhaps he's gone to get his pipe and rough shag so he looks academic.

djewesbury · Post by **djewesbury** » 23:22 Sun 01 Mar 2015

Can I firstly just say that academics do not do rough shag any more. Changed times.
What can I say? It's many years since I read Hobsbawm on this kind of stuff. E. P. Thompson has more recently been my bag, though I have been meaning to get that collection of essays on Marxism that they published before he died.
Was he too blinkered in his view of economic factors as prime determinants in processes of social change and conflict? Yes, probably, but then he didn't have access, at the start of his career, to some of the information that we have now. The review I was reading today was looking at climate change as a factor that was entirely ignored both by Hobsbawm, the economist, and Trevor-Roper, the politicist, in shaping the 'crisis' of the mid-17th century. Why were there revolutions and rebellions and conflicts over resources? Well the 2° change in climate (this was the start of the Little Ice Age) was a lot to do with it.
I am watching Wallander.

AW77 · Post by **AW77** » 23:23 Sun 01 Mar 2015

LGTrotter wrote:I should like Julian to expand on tradition, Hobsbawm and all that sort of thing.
I have opened a Blandy 10yo Malmsey and am all ears.

I think Hobsbawm would have opened a red wine. For political reasons...

Post by **jdaw1** » 23:48 Sun 01 Mar 2015

Marxism then. Which is interesting. He is, of course, deeply unfashionable, and with good reason. But the hardened capitalists of this day forget that, though his solution was terrible, he was correct about his identification of the social problem of that era.

LGTrotter · Post by **LGTrotter** » 01:10 Mon 02 Mar 2015

I cannot hide that I am disappointed that academics no longer smoke pipes and Julian's response is short and does not mention tradition or Hobsbawm.

Glenn E. · Post by **Glenn E.** » 16:11 Mon 02 Mar 2015

DRT wrote:I am about to open a bottle of The Balvenie Caribbean Cask 14 year old.

Am I doing anything wrong?

Yes. It should be The Balvenie Madeira Cask 17 year old like I had on Friday. At work. Along with a 1976 Krohn Colheita.

Post by **jdaw1** » 11:21 Sat 28 May 2016

To fix the problem, I acknowledge that my previous reply mentioned neither tradition nor Hobsbawm.

LGTrotter · Post by **LGTrotter** » 22:02 Mon 30 May 2016

jdaw1 wrote:To fix the problem, I acknowledge that my previous reply mentioned neither tradition nor Hobsbawm.

Finally...

A year later and still no mention of Hobsbawm. Bloody typical.