Thursday, December 29, 2005

A World of Whines...

Caught the movie Sideways many moons ago, and was quite disappointed... it was so painful to watch, I wonder why it was such a "runaway hit" when it came out... the only good thing about it was getting a mini education in the world of whine wine...

I know of someone who has taken wine appreciation classes, and has gone a few times to California for a wine-tasting holiday. While watching the movie, I couldn't help but wonder how they behaved compared to the folks in Sideways, teehee!

I've always been reluctant to get involved in the world of wine, because there is such an aura of pretentiousness around it... people who want to show off what they know about the type of grapes used, the ground in which the vines grow, the weather conditions for that particular year of harvest, the mixture of tastes that only a well-trained palate could discern, etc etc etc...

If it tastes good, drink it lah! No need to show off, eh?

Anyways, the reason I'm mentioning this is article How to order wine without looking like an asshole by Waiter Rant. Check it out, it's humorously blunt advice from a waiter on this topic :-)

~~~ And while I was typing all this, my mind ran away with me and I uncovered a long-buried memory of a tale I must have read decades ago...
it's about some nasty aristocratic wine connoisseur who visits a family, decides he wants one of the daughters, and sets up a wager: if he successfully identifies a wine that the head of the family gives him (and I mean identify EVERYTHING about it: year it was made, type of grape, etc etc etc), then he "wins" the daughter. Then this connoisseur proceeds to somehow cheat by sneaking off to find the bottle of wine in question, so he already knows the answer before the wine ever touches his lips... but somehow he is found out, so the "winning": of the daughter is invalid, and he is thrown out of the house.
So, does this tale ring a bell for anyone? If anyone can point me in the right direction to re-read this tale - author, title, whatever - please please please drop me a line in the comments, ok?

In the meantime... hope y'all are enjoying the last few days of 2005!!

3 comments:

  1. I didn't completely hate Sideways. There were four or five great scenes. But yeah, the rest of it was deadly dull.

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  2. If you talk about wine, the Chinese in China will tell you that this drink is for women, meaning there is no challenge at all, so they drink like a P*G without much thought and do not appreciate it at all, as long as there's wine to get them drunk, then that is good @_@

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  3. JJ: true, there were a few good scene.. i just don't remember htem no more, LOL!

    NJ: I didn't know wine was looked down upon by the China Chinese... thanx for that info! I suppose there's none of that "wine tasting" bulls**t, just gulp it down for the effect, eh?

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about two months later...

 ... hi again. This return to blogging is really not working out, is it? Actually, I am writing, three pages of mind vomit and affirmations ...