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Happy Thanksgiving!
I want to take a moment and wish you all Happy Thanksgiving! Even if you don’t live in US, there are so many things we can be thankful for – you can always raise a glass for that. And for those who are celebrating, all of you who are busy prepping, cooking, getting the tables ready, opening wines, greeting the family and friends – I wish you all great tasting turkey, great wines, and most importantly – great time with families and friends.
Even few days ago, the Fall was still beautiful here in Connecticut. Instead of sharing food pictures with you today, I decided to share again sunshine and beauty. Enjoy!
Happy Thanksgiving! Cheers!
Thanks, Giving, and Connection
As we set the plans to celebrate Thanksgiving next week, I want to share with you this post by SAHMmelier – we can all do something to share the holiday with those who needs it, even if it is a little bit…
At this time of year, many of us are rushing around, trying to decide on the perfect appetizer,on table settings and decor, and pairing wines that will fit the budget but still impress our guests. And some are trying to figure out where they will get their next meal. Or how to pay the electric bill. Or wishing they had an electric bill to pay. Between the destruction in the wake of the hurricane and the current unemployment across the country, the needs we see around us can be overwhelming. How can we help? How can we possibly make a difference when the need is everywhere and so much bigger than us?
Fourteen years ago, there was one man, in a dark place, with no home and very little in his pocket. He saw a family and recognized a need. A need he deemed greater than his, and he chose…
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Too Early! Snow in New England
I can’t believe that only a few weeks ago I was sharing with you sunshine and beauty of New England in the fall. Since then we had Sandy paying us a visit, and lost power, destroyed homes and closed gas stations really got in the way of tens of million of people.
Then few days ago we had…snow. Yes, it is only beginning of November, but Nor’Easter (some genius named it Athena, which is a Greek name of goddess of wisdom – where is the wisdom in the November snow storm?), not just snow, but the full snow storm, blanketed New England with the snow. We got our 5 inches, but – the “strong wind” part of forecast didn’t materialize, at least in Stamford, so we avoided new destruction. And it actually was beautiful, during and after, so I’m (again) sharing some pictures with you.
This one was taken during the snow storm:
And the rest of the pictures were taken on the next day, after the snow stopped coming down:
Isn’t he the cutest? You might remember him from before:
And here is the full team:
Here are some of the beautiful trees:
Just look at the colors:
Somehow, I love this picture:
And here is an object of our fear – what will happen with those wires if there is a strong wind…:
That’s all for now, folks. Nothing about the wine in this post, so the next one will fix this issue. Hope you still have [had] something good in your glass. Cheers!
Paintball, Halloween and Writer’s Block
If you are trying to figure out the connection between paintball, Halloween and writer’s block – don’t, there are none. I’m experiencing a writer’s block as I’m trying to create a competition entry about the Tuscan wines (if you remember, I mentioned that competition in the Wednesday’s Meritage last week). I passionately despise (yeah, see, I’m doing pretty well avoiding the heavy word “hate”) the fact that I can’t write a post about Tuscany, one of the most diverse winemaking regions in the world, so I decided ( as many times before) to share a few pictures with you, while I’m pounding myself on the head trying to get the block out.
First, here are a few pictures from the friendly game of paintball which we played on Sunday (right before the arrival of the dear f…ing Sandy). My team lost all the games, but that is not important – we had lots of fun.
Our guns:
And here is me, first in the front:
and back (after the last “free style” round) – yes, it was painful, in case you are wondering:
Then after dear f…ing Sandy departed, we found ourselves super lucky ( knock on wood as many times as possible, still going), as our street didn’t lose power, so we managed to carve pumpkins and celebrate Halloween:
The Halloween dish (clearly influenced by the post from A Detailed House):
zoom-in:
And the pumpkins (kids had lots of fun):
May you never encounter writer’s block – and never experience the wrath of hurricane, even if it’s called by a cutesy name, such as Sandy.
That’s all for now, folks. I’m back pounding on that block. Cheers!
Yes! (a short and happy post)
If anyone of you read my profile on twitter, you probably saw a mention of the martial arts. I’m practicing Taekwondo, and today I had my so called “tip test”. Yes, I passed the test, and got a green tip:
Now I “only” need to get five more tips (purple, blue, brown, red and black), and then I will be able to attempt the next big test. I guess if I would be 20 or 25, that probably would be “okay, great, whatever” kind of feeling (or not), but as I’m a bit older, and this stuff doesn’t come easy (I have a problem, people – my knees seriously hate me), so it feels great. Anyway, that’s done, and I’m happy.
While it is technically very early Saturday on the East coats, it is still Friday in may places in US – and this Friday, October 26th was 3rd annual Champagne Day (#ChampagneDay in Twitter terms). The way to celebrate #ChampagneDay is to open a bottle of Champagne and talk about it. Problem is, I generally don’t stock up on Champagne, so I didn’t have a bottle to open (and was publicly ostracized by thedrunkedcyclist, who really is in love with Champagne). As I wanted to honor the noble wine at least in some way, I decided to go for deconstructed Champagne:
Yes, this is the bottle of Burgundy and not Champagne, but this means that the wine is made from the grape which is a part of many Champagne wines – Pinot Noir, hence it is qualified for the “deconstructed Champagne” play.
This 2004 Domaine Dennis Carre Savigny-les-Beaune was exactly the type of Pinot Noir I love – light, smokey and earthy, with the light cherries profile, perfectly balanced with fruit , tannins and acidity, the wine with finesse and elegance. Drinkability: 8+
That’s all I wanted to share with you. Happy Friday (or may be already Saturday) to you. Cheers!
Sharing Sunshine And Beauty: Fall in New England
We had been blessed with such a magnificent weather today that I couldn’t help a strong urge to share that feeling with you. Fall (I guess the word Autumn will be more appropriate for my European readers) is a very special time in New England. People plan special sightseeing tours and getaways to immerse into this spectacular fiery of colors.
For those of us fortunate to live here, in one of the north-eastern states which comprise New England (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont), such an immersion comes easy – it is enough to step outside and walk around the street, and all the beauty will surround you.
This year the colors had been beautiful (last year, unfortunately, the trees went from green to empty), so let me share with you a walk around my street. And before you will scroll down the pictures (by the way, my daughter helped me to take some of those), let me mention the wine. You know, you can pair wine and weather, right? So the beauty of this weather is that both white and red wines will pair equally well with it. It is the Fall, so you know that red wines are appropriate, but it is so sunny and beautiful that you want to get a little sunshine in your glass too.
Enough words – enjoy New England Fall colors!
3 Days in Vegas – Day 1: Total Exhaustion, Part 2
This is the continuation of the post about our 3-days Vegas adventure. In case you missed the first post, below is the link for you:
Sure, some 25 minutes later and 2 or 3 stops to ask for directions, we managed to get to the train. Short ride, another walk, tram – and we finally arrived at Mandalay Bay.
Our “small meal” at MGM buffet (hope you sense the sarcasm) finally started to wear off, so we were ready to eat – which brings us to the subject of food, which in Las Vegas definitely deserves its own special coverage and attention.
I think that Las Vegas has highest in the world concentration of the high end restaurants per square foot. Can you think of a famous chef? Doesn’t matter who you came up with, I can practically guarantee that he or she will have their own restaurant in Las Vegas. What you should also expect is that those restaurants will be priced accordingly. I perfectly understand that visiting a great restaurant is an experience, and as such, it has its own price – but, in the end of the day, Las Vegas is a tourist, holiday town, and it is not for nothing all those casinos refer to themselves as resorts (by the way, they also charge resort fee, if you care to know). When you walk around the vacation town, what do you often see advertised on the doors of the restaurants? If you said “happy hour”, you are corrrrect! Considering the level of the restaurants, I think it is somewhat unusual that they offer happy hour specials, but hey, everything is possible in Vegas, right?
Taking advantage of my prior experience, I was determined to visit Stripsteak, one of Michael Mina’s restaurants (I ate there a few years back during the happy hour, and I had happy memories – oops, happy = happy, interesting). On the way to Stripsteak, we passed by Aureole, a Charlie Palmer’s restaurant, and stopped by to admire the wine tower:
Yeah, one day [may be, may be] I will order some wine there, but not now… Then we had to stop by the restaurant called Red Square and take look at the Lenin’s statue – very appropriate, right? Too bad we had no time to visit their Vodka cave – considering everything we didn’t do this time in Las Vegas, I think we already have full agenda lined up for the next visit.
At most of the happy hours, the restaurants are offering beer, wine and cocktails at some reasonable price ($6 wine and cocktail, $3 beers) – all with limitations, of course, plus some food items. At Stripsteak, I had a glass of Oberon Cabernet Sauvignon (very good!), and my wife enjoyed the cocktail. We also got a couple of small plates from the bar menu, and sliders were particularly good.
The break is over, and we need to get back to our program. Next on the list? Cirque de Soleil “O” show at Bellagio. First, of course, is getting there. This time we decided on the taxi. Excellent choice, took us only 25 minutes to drive about 2 miles. Note to self – “it is Friday night, stupid”. Once at Bellagio, you start getting acquainted with the place by admiring amazing glass chandelier which is literally the first thing you see after walking in. It is created by the world famous glass artist Dale Chihuli, and you can spend quite a bit of time adoring the magnificent exuberance. My pictures will not do justice to it, but remember, I told you before – I took pictures and I want to share them, so here you go:
and a little zoom:
Our next step was to pickup tickets for the performance – I ordered tickets in advance over the internet. Yes, you might be able to get the tickets when you are in Vegas (they also offer half price tickets, similar to New York’s Broadway tickets at TKTS) – depending on the show, you might or might not be successful getting the tickets exactly when you want them, so if you plan your trip in advance, I also recommend getting tickets as part of your trip planning. Yes, there were few empty seats at that “O” show we watched later on, but very few of them.
We had a little time left after we got the tickets, so we went to see the Conservatory – a free attraction at Bellagio which definitely should be on your “must see” list for Vegas. The Conservatory is changed a few times a year, depending on the season, and now theme was “harvest”, and it was absolutely magnificent, with talking tree, pumpkin swans, grape presses and many more elements pretty much forcing a “wow” or “just look at that” sensation out of you:
The Cirque de Soleil “O” was amazing, an incredible combination of water, acrobatics and breath-taking movements you can’t even believe a human can do – but you can find plenty of references and professional reviews for that without me, so let me get back to the description of our day (now evening, to be more precise).
As soon as we walked out, we saw the taxi line. Let me tell you – it was endless. We walked and walked and walked alongside of it, and we couldn’t understand where does it actually start. Okay – but we still had our monorail day passes, remember? So monorail it was.
And you know what? Whatever happens is for the better (at least I think that this is a very helpful attitude in life) – as we started making our way towards monorail entrance, first we could fully admire Las Vegas at night. Las Vegas is beautiful during the day, but it is simply stunning during the night, the way all the buildings are lit:
And then – music and the “wow” exhorted by many people at once – as Bellagio fountains came to life. These pictures will not do the justice to the art of water, light and music, but at least you will get an idea:
About 15 minutes later, monorail entrance was reached and (mini quiz – how long did it take us from the “monorail” sign until we got to an actual train? If you said “about 25 minutes”, pat yourself on the back as you are correct!) we are finally on the train.
Another walk (much shorter) and we are at the tram entrance – before we get inside, I simply had to take one more picture – this is Excalibur, which looks simply like a giant toy, isn’t it?
We got on the last tram (yay! I’m not sure what we would do if we would have to walk to our hotel) – and then we were finally back in our room. We both felt like our legs simply don’t belong to us and are hurting just to remind us that they exist.
We had to have a very early start next day, as we were taking a tour to the Grand Canyon, and considering our level of exhaustion, using an alarm clock was in order. My wife refused help I offered with the alarm clock and set it up on her own (she actually set an alarm both in the bedside clock and her phone), for us to wake up at 5:30 AM (we had to be at the “Tour and Travel” lobby by 6:05 AM for our tour pick up. After that, our tired bodies accepted sleep as a long anticipated blessing, without even saying “thank you”…
When I opened my eyes in the morning, the first thing I did was to grab my phone.
To be continued…
3 Days in Vegas – Day 1: Total Exhaustion, Part 1
Don’t know how many of you paid attention to the tag line in this blog – “wine, food and life”. Most of my posts are about wine (sometimes it is a life through the wine glass, but still). Some of my posts are more about food with some occasional wine inclusions. And very few of my posts here are just about life as it happens. Actually this is what this blog post is all about – and I’m pretty sure that one post will not do it (or it will be veeeeery loooong), so get ready to suffer. Besides the desire to share tons of pictures with you, I also want to share our (I traveled to Las Vegas with my wife, the trip was her birthday present) personal experience in Las Vegas – may be someone, somewhere, sometime, will find it useful. And without much ado, here we go.
Day 1 was Friday. Actually, the first day was Thursday, but by the time we arrived to the hotel, found out that we used the wrong lobby, waited for check in and then dragged ourselves through the whole casino floor and got to our room, it was pretty late (don’t forget to account for 3 hours time shift for our trip from East Coast). For those who are curious, we stayed at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay. THEhotel offers a full retreat from the casino noise and crowd, and rooms are extremely comfortable – if you are planning your own Vegas escape, I highly recommend it as a place to stay. Thus the only excitement of the day was my wife’s first encounter with the slot machine (she never been to Vegas before), which ended up very peacefully (actually, I’m still surprised that she didn’t win anything – I had drawn pretty big plans well in advance – oh well…).
So the real Day 1 started on Friday. Of course it started from breakfast. Let me digress for a second. I’ve been to Vegas numerous number of times before – but always on business. What it means is that I never really explored the town – but at least I had some ideas about food and ways to get around. Let’s go back to our day now. Based on my prior knowledge, I decided that buffet at MGM Grand would suit the breakfast bill quite well – and it did. At about $22 per person, the selection and quality was unbeatable. And all the deserts – yeah, I needed a lot of will power…
Breakfast is done, and let the explorations begin.
First decision you have to make is how to move around the town. While the distances are not huge, you have to take into account the weather – 100F is 100F – despite the fact that it is dry (!!!) heat, it is still a heat, so you need to make your selection wisely. Basically, your choices are: on foot, taxi, monorail and tram, which has very limited connectivity (of course you are right – there are private cars and limos of all shapes and sizes – but considering our uneventful/non-winning casino experience, this was really not an option). There might be buses too, but that is something which requires way too much knowledge in my opinion, so this option was out. If I would look back on our Day 1, here are few notes which might be useful for you. Taxi is probably the fastest way of transportation, and it is reasonably inexpensive outside of peak hours (6-9 PM) – about $10 – $15 will get you between any of the casinos on the strip. This is not true during peak hours, as you will wait quite long in line, and it will cost you more due to the wait on all the traffic lights. And this is especially not true if there is a big convention in town (CES, for instance) or if you need to move around on Friday or Saturday night (the wait in line will be killing).
Here is a view of the strip for you, not very busy as you can see:
And here is another view – casino New York New York:
If you are going to explore on foot – make sure your shoes are super-comfortable, you have plenty of water and you are in a good physical shape – your walking will include not only the street walking, but also walking to the different attractions inside the casinos, where the distances can be quite overwhelming.
Monorail is probably the most misleading type of transportation in Vegas. Before your eyebrows hit the ceiling, let me explain. When you look on the huge street sign “Monorail Entrance”, you think you are actually going to walk in and within a minute or two you will find the train? Nooooo. You are simply entering the casino. A huge one in most of the cases. And then inside the casinos, I think the way signs are done is to make you wonder around for as long as possible – they don’t want you to get from point A to point B unfrustrated. You get inside, and you see a directional sign for Monorail. You follow that sign until you get to the next one, most likely with the change of direction. And then… yep, you see no signs for Monorail anymore. It’s there, but now you are on your own. Figure it out. Or else… So remember that monorail is not just monorail – it also includes lots (and lots) of walking. Otherwise it is very reasonably priced ($5 single ride, $12 is unlimited day pass, and three days unlimited pass is $28) – if you don’t mind lots of walking and good amount of frustration, it is great.
And tram? Actually I think tram is the best – it is free, the train is actually located within less than a minute walk from the entrance and it is easy to find. But – there are few short tram routes, connecting casinos which are located near by in any case, and it has limited hours of operation (stops at 10:30 pm) – still, it can be very convenient.
Considering amount of explanations I gave you here, you can figure out that our first day included all of the above mentioned “getting around” methods. First we walked from Mandalay Bay to MGM Grand. Then we took Monorail from MGM Grand to Bally’s, as our destination was The Venetian near by – a famed casino with gondola ride inside.
Now, this gondola ride is listed in the “attractions” section of any of the Las Vegas guides – so let me share with you a few thoughts about attractions. We can split Las Vegas attractions into two groups – free and paid for. Pretty much every casino has a free attraction. A number of casinos have also attractions you can pay for. No matter what attraction you want to visit, my advise to you is simple – RTFM! Not familiar with the term? Use google, it will help you. What I mean is that even if attraction is free, it doesn’t mean that it is open when you want to visit it. We wanted to see Sirens of TI at Treasure Island – walked all the way from Venetian to Treasure Island only to find out that Sirens of TI operates only after 7 PM.
At this point I became smarter and checked the guide regarding Volcano at Mirage (that was our next planned stop) – yep, also open only in the evening, so at least we managed to avoid some additional frustration.
Now, when it comes to the paid attractions, such as Gondola ride at The Venetian – you will have to make your own decision. After looking at the gondola ride on the artificial channel under a painted sky with kind of artificial singers, we decided that $64 is too much for the pleasure and decided to skip it – of course there were plenty of people happily getting their share of artificial Venice.
Here are couple of flowers for you. Why? Because I love taking pictures of the flowers, and I promised to inundate you with pictures:
And a close-up:
To describe events in more chronological order, it was walk around The Venetian, skipping the gondola ride, walking to the Treasure Island, walking around and finally finding Sirens of TI, RTFM moment, canceling walk to Mirage and finally the understanding that we are sufficiently tired at that point, and we have to get back to our hotel.
“Here”, I said, “see, we already entering the monorail!”.
To be continued…
Five Traps of Oenophile
Boy, did this post took a long time… I don’t even know why – I knew what I wanted to write – but no, it still took forever. Anyway, it is finally out, yay!
If you think about it, oenophiles have not only common traits (here is my take on them) – they also have common traps. Are there actually only five traps there, tripping over and under those who loses their caution? It depends on how you will count them, but I would think that these five are the most common ones. Let’s talk about those traps, and then you can tell me of you ever fell for any of them.
1. $100 is a new $10. How many of you out there started your love of wine with Yellow Tail or Frontera, for $5.99 or so? That wine was great, and the idea that you can buy a bottle of wine for more than $10 was completely foreign. What? $19.99? That must be for special occasions only, I can’t believe people spend that kind of money on the wine. See, I’m very happy here with my Frontera Cabernet.
Little by little this situation changes. Why this $6.99 Bordeaux tastes like you are chewing on the tree branch? This is Bordeaux, right? So it is supposed to be the best wine in the world? As you keep reading books and magazines, talking and listening to other people, and most importantly, trying wines which cost a little more and maybe a little more on top, you start hitting the ”aha” moment from time to time. More wines, more reading, more conversations, more experiences at the wineries and wine tastings, more appreciation for the wine and all the labor and passion which goes into creation of a great bottle of wine, and you start letting yourself to push your limit of ”appropriate and acceptable” a bit higher, and then may be some. Before you know it, what was unfathomable to you ($100 for a bottle of wine? What am I, crazy?) becomes … hmmm, let me think about it. No, I’m not describing a birth process of a wine snob (let me digress for a second – “wine snob” has both good and bad meaning, I’m referring to the bad one here) – I think as casual wine drinker becomes an oenophile, the entire outlook on fairness and rationale of the wine prices is changing, thus eventually leading to $100 becoming a new $10 (or may be even worse than that).
2. No cellar is ever big enough. No matter what size of your cellar is, it eventually becomes full – and you run out of space for the … wait for it… new bottles, right! And this is in the lucky case when you have an actual cellar (so you can probably squeeze in a little more). When you don’t have a cellar, the boxes start piling up all over the place, which … yeah, creates problems. You start opening the bottles just so you will get space for … new bottles. You wish that your friends will come over, so you can open more bottles and … create space for new bottles. Then some of your collection ends up at, let’s say, Benchmark Wine Company, and you get a lot of space in your cellar, so … you can fill it up again.
3. Buying of the wine becomes an obsession. We all buy things. Food, clothes, gadgets. Don’t know if someone can be obsessed with food (talking about buying, not actually eating) – may be, but let’s skip it. Let’s say someone is obsessed with gadgets. Very nice – so that someone will camp out by the store and wait for the whole night for the doors to open to be among first 10 blissful owners of iPhone 15. Some hundreds of dollars, and your obsession is satisfied for the next two years, until the iPhone 18 will come out.
When it comes to the wine obsession, situation is quite different. With the wine, oenophile is constantly afraid to miss something – miss on a big scale, miss irreparably and then regret. Ahh, 2007 was a great vintage in California, so I have to make sure I have enough 2007 in my cellar, because the time to buy is now. What if I will never see this wine again? 2009 was a great year, and this is a great producer – I have to get at least a few bottles of this wine. And that one. Ohh, and what if tomorrow this wine will disappear from the store? So there are only 200 cases of this wine made, and it has such a high rating, and, ahh – this price is incredible – should I get 3 or 4? Yes, yes, I know – I will get 5 and drink one now, but I will still have 4 left for the future, right? I can go on and on, but I think you got the picture.
4. There is never a right time to open that bottle. When it comes to deciding on which bottle to open, boy, does that creates a tsunami of thoughts? So I only have two of those bottles left… Should I open it today? But I think this wine is still evolving… May be I should wait for another year? But what if it will be past prime next year – that would be such a pity, this should be really great bottle of wine. Okay, okay – I will open it in a month, when Michael will come over – hmmm, but I think he really likes Pinot, and this is a Cab… Okay, no, I can’t decide. Let’s put it back. Do I still have any of that Chianti left which I got last week for $9.99? Yeah, I’m tired of this Chianti, but at least I will not destroy my precious bottle before its time… Again, I think this is pretty clear (tell me you never had an occurrence of this one, go ahead, lie to the world).
5. One becomes susceptible to the charm of clever and trusted wine marketing. What is the big deal, right? That what marketing is for – to make us buy something. Problem is that unless you are obsessed with something, most of the marketing generates “hmmm, this is interesting” reaction. Once we are talking about obsession, the reaction to the clever marketing is “I have to have it”. I can tell you that probably 8 times out of 10, I want to buy the wine described in the e-mails from PJ Wine (here is a link to the sample e-mail for you – judge for yourself). The need to pay for shipping really becomes a sobering factor here. Same story with the e-mails from Benchmark Wine Company – luckily (hope you sense the sarcasm), most of their offerings are priced out of the reach. A lot of e-mails from Wine Til Sold Out lead to the similar “I gotta have it” syndrome – I know people who unsubscribed from WTSO e-mails, just to avoid that permanent temptation.
I think I warned you enough – do you still want to be an oenophile (or a wine snob – in a good sense, of course)? If you are still reading this, there is a good chance that you already are – then I hope I armed you with something useful in a fight for preservation of the family money and free space in your house. If not – I hope I got at least a chuckle out of you. Last, but not least – I want to know what do you think! This is what comments section is for… Cheers!
From Wine and Books To Wine In Books
What do you take your wine with? There are few options, I guess. One (and most obvious) would be food. Another one would be a conversation (wine and conversation – a match made in heaven?). And then there is wine and the book – both get you in the mood, both complement and enhance each other and make the moment special (take your average week as an example – how many times per week you get to enjoy a quiet moment with book and the wine? What, zero? I hear you…).
Sometimes, wine even gets into the book – and I don’t mean by spilling it all over. Today is a Wine Blogging Wednesday #79, dedicated to Summer Reading, Summer Wine. The main question you are supposed to answer in your blog post is “What wine would your favorite fictional character drink?”.
I have two problem with this question – the same way as I can’t name my favorite wine, I can not name my favorite fictional character (there are many). And the second problem? Drinking wine (or any alcohol) is not necessarily a priority, no matter what the character is doing, therefore pinning it down is far from simple.
While I thought of a few different approaches ( including writing of the short essay about a character and the wine), advancing from thinking to the writing was not getting in sync with me. But then I thought of one of my all-times absolute favorite science fiction book. I can’t tell you how many times I read this book while I was growing up – 10, 20, 50 – I have no idea), but every time it was fresh and fascinating. This book was written in 1965 by two brothers, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (originally in Russian), and it is called Monday Starts on Saturday. It is a science fiction (border line fantasy) book, talking about a research institute where wizards, sorcerers and just researchers work on exploring of the meaning of life (anyone who read the book in the original – I ask for your forgiveness for such a representation of this book). If anyone cares to read it in English, here the link to the full English text – however note that a lot of charm might be lost in translation.
So I decided to do a simple check for what kind of alcohol was mentioned in the book (using the word “bottle” as an anchor and remembering some of the key scenes). Here is the list:
- Wine (generic term, nothing specific)
- Champagne (again, nothing specific)
- Vodka (after all, this is a Russian book!)
- Cognac (with the perfect string attached: “A human might be just an intermediate element of evolution necessary to build a masterpiece of creation – a glass of cognac with slice of lemon” – note that translation is mine).
- Amontillado (pretty good, huh? This type of Jerez was mentioned by the name!)
- Elixir of Bliss (clearly a magical creation, but based on the personal experience, I would approximate it to an extremely old Pedro Ximenez Jerez)
Of course I might be missing something, but I like the list even as it is.
There you have it, my friends. My major point here? No matter what the characters are drinking, wine and books go perfectly hand in hand – hope you can find the time to enjoy both! Cheers!
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Talk-A-Vino 