Trollope contra cheap Champagne
Monday July 28, 2008
Categories: Varia
Let's say you walked into work today and found out that your company is going through yet another round of buyouts/forced downsizing -- the third or fourth in five years, you can't remember. This, on top of a daily beatdown...
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Advertisement
Advertisement
Search This Blog
Recent Posts
About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
Subscribe
Archives
Blogs Worth Reading
- Front Porch Republic
- The American Conservative
- Patrick Deneen
- Conventional Folly
- The American Scene
- First Things
- Andrew Sullivan
- The Plank
- Eunomia
- Get Religion
- Postmodern Conservative
- Alex Massie
- The Corner
- Contentions
- Sharon Astyk
- Barry Ritholtz
- The Oil Drum
- Mere Comments
- First Principles (ISI)
- Brian Kaller
When I was in college, we had a joke about "Andre, the champagne that never saw a grape."
Aside from that, there are drinkable cheap and imported domestic champagnes, as long as you remember that "brut" is drier than "extra dry," suitable for celebrating a crappy week at work.
So I believe, but made a poor selection tonight: Gruet Blanc de Noirs. It was brut, yea, but also brutally sweet, at least for my palate. That's what I get for buying bubbly from New Mexico.
Basically, I like my Champagne, or methode Champenoise, absolutely bone dry.
Aw. Well, now I really wish I hadn't bristled at you a few minutes ago. In lieu of a better drink, I hereby award you a free pass to be as sarcastic as you please. I'll suffer it with lamb-like patience if it will help you forget your squid overlords for the evening. And yes, always go for the brut. (And if you want to talk about demonic possession, Freixenet would be a good place to start. Ugh.)
Hmm, for something sparkling I like hard apple cider, but not the sweet junk they sell in beer bottles. The good stuff is usually sold in champagne bottles and it quite dry but still tastes like apples.
I also make it myself by fermenting cider with champagne yeast and conditioning it in the bottle with a little extra corn sugar to carbonate it.
Are you somehow dismissing Roget Fuel?
(Note for the pun impaired: Pronounce every letter in "Roget".)
Loved this post Rod.
Now there is nothing wrong with some of the domestic sparkling wines. In fact many of the great champagne houses have an American branch, Moet and Chandon has Domaine Chandon (a superb restaraunt attached where the wife and I celebrated our honeymoon after I came home from Iraq) Taittinger has Domain Carneros. And if you haven't tried Schramsberg you, sir, are missing out.
That being said, there is nothing better than vintage Krug, it tastes like autumn.
Chris
Rod: I know this post is supposed to be about everyone's favorite champagnes (I don't drink the stuff; tight budget, no class, Baptist upbringing, who knows why? My favorite wines are the local ones from vneyards in the next town over. What a blessing to be in the Niagara Wine Region.) Anyway, my question is about another post concerning your work. Didn't you mantion that your paper was "outsourcing"? Can you outsource national news to another country? Is that what you meant? And who is buying out DMN? Will it end up in the supermarket "swindle sheet" section? What is going on?
Of course nothing beats the good stuff but I did manage to choke down a bottle of Yellow Tail Bubbles last night which did the trick for me.
This is a bit off the subject, but hopefully amusing enough. My church went through a period of having the bread and wine (i.e. communion) in people's homes. It would be just a small gathering around a dining room table, we'd enjoy fellowship, and then eat the bread and drink the wine to remember the Lord. All very casual and enjoyable.
One time the person in charge of bringing the wine completely forgot. So while we continued our meeting, he went out looking for wine. But it was Sunday, and he couldn't find anyplace selling wine. So he bought some MadDog 20/20.
That was what we drank for communion - MD 20/20. It did not taste good, but it's the thought that counts.
Rod:
Feel your pain. A toast to our misbegotten profession (although I am soon to jump ship). May it find its way. Somehow.
Andrea
Good riddance, Old Media. Keep swirling down that drain. We don't need you or want you anymore. Your narrow-minded warped views of the world have done enough damage.
Sorry people like Rod get hurt in the process, but that's what blogs are for. Keep the faith (online).
Papers have been buying each other out for years, and now it's much like the rest of the media, a few massive conglomerates own everybody, while the peons at the wholly-owned subsidiaries squeak by with a skeletal staff and minimal pay. It's all pretty demoralizing at times. My Dad dealt with this - we moved more while he worked in the newspaper business than we ever did while he was still in the Army.
It's a shame, because the profession can be great fun, and really there's no replacement for print media (even if posted online), in my opinion. It's a good mix of local and not-so-local. It's written on a level where you can process it quickly, and yet is far more in depth than the fifteen second newsbyte on CNN or FOX.
Try Italian prosecco instead of Champagne -- it's quite a good quaff....
Sorry you didn't like the Gruet Blanc de Noirs!! I think Gruet's Brut is a lot better.
I second the prosecco.
Third the prosecco.
What's prosecco? Sounds Mexican to me.
I find it really sad that people celebrate the downfall of a profession. Ninety-nine people lost their jobs at my paper a month earlier. About once a week down here in Florida we hear of other papers laying off staff. To me, that's nothing to celebrate.
To be clear, I'm not addressing Rod's post, but rather the anonymous poster who wished us good riddance.
My sympathies to you, Rod and Sherry. My own job was eliminated a couple weeks ago, much to my surprise. I've been in the marketing business for 12 years, newspapers before that. With the auto industry taking such a hit, business has been down for the past few years.
I'm trying to see it as an opportunity to change my lifestyle, work on building a free-lancing business, spend more time with my husband and working around the house and garden.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.