As for Scotch, I saw a nice bottle of 25yr. old Laphroaig in a Calgary Airport jar store. Alas, I was a bit short coming up with the $568.00 to make it mine.
Well, it was Calgary, so what did you expect? The good stuff?
I was killing time in Heathrow on a stopover to Madrid a couple of years ago and wandered into a Scotch shop. Not much in there for $500. Most of the bottles had 4-figure price tags, and quite a few were up into 5 figures. And that was pounds, not dollars. The biggest number I saw was £22,000. Which translates to about $35,000.
And no, it wasn't a 5,000 liter barrel, just an ordinary size bottle. Distilled by Macallan, but not recently.
Sounds like Luke has been into the scotch already...
I've been in that scotch shop in Heathrow. Shocking! There will always be a place for people with too much money to spend it. If single malt is your fancy, then 85 year old bottles that cost as much as a new pickup truck may be just the right thing for you.
How much does that work out to per drop anyway? Hmmm... 750ml bottle, approx 20 drops/ml equals 15,000 drops. 22,000 pounds sterling times 1.59 equals $34,980 CAD. 34,980/15,000 = $2.33 per drop. WOW
Why don't they have solstices on Mondays or Tuesdays anymore? If they did, I would make the trip up there and ingest the sacred fungus among us. Have a great time. Woot.
OK, time for a reality check--check--check.
All of these fine products are available at most LCB outlets.
Credit: hamie
I have sampled the Mezzomondo 2010 on several occasions, and it goes down fast and smooth. In fact the faster, the smoother. Personally I sensed more of an apple/huckleberry flavour, with smokey licourice overtones. I felt it was overrated at 88/100, and gave it 87.25/100. :)
It's amazing that these wines come all the way from Europe, sell for $10-, and everyone still makes a buck!
By way of comparison:
Calona Red. Smells and tastes like kerosene. 5/100
Thunderbird. The aromas normally associated with any squat toilet anywhere, combined with the flavours of putrid plums. 3/100
It's amazing that these wines come all the way from Europe, sell for $10-, and everyone still makes a buck!
Given that, as you point out, a lot of domestic Canadian and US wines sell for more and taste like crap, there's something fundamentally wrong. If grapes were incredibly difficult to grow here, that might explain it, but they're not.
So given that the cost of bringing wine to Vancouver from the Okanagan, or to Seattle from Yakima, is next to nothing when compared to bringing a bottle from Italy or France, why is the value-for-money equation skewed so far in favor of the European wines?
Hamish, I think we have to institute a Pacific NW/SW wine summit. You, and Glenn and Wayno and I should meet at least twice a year -- once on each side of the border -- and investigate this matter in depth.
Not sure about including Glenn in the wine-tasting. He can get pretty rowdy. I recall from the earlier posts about various pubs in BC that Glenn had visited every sleazy, bad idea, stay away from, yer gonna die pit in the province. Extra insurance will be required.
Hamie, the Periquita Reserve 2009 ($15.95) is pretty good, too. We had a bottle tonight with a friend who just flew in from Portugal. And the regular Periquita was really good about 10-15 years ago, then the bottom dropped out of the quality, until very recently.
Lots of good Spanish wines in the $10-$15 range in BC these days. Nothing in that price range from Oz is nearly as good, IMHO.
Ghost, yes, the crew you mentioned will have to get together and sample some good ones. Selection and price on your side of the border is better than ours, for sure. I'll try and keep my rowdy side well under control; won't be hard, because I can't drink 14 beers in an evening any more.
Interesting choice of words. I was thinking more like, "wine good" or "wine face with purple tongue". Or we can let it all hang out and be "wine stupid".
I do tastings at work and they can be pretentious and if I am going to a wine summit, then Gorbachev better damn well be there.
Edit- what I really mean is good wine goes better with good food and good company. Let's do it!
Ah me too. I am also a Wine conoziure. Have you guys tried the '84 Kelowna Ruby Red medium sweet? I did in '84 and it must be smashing by now. I ordered a couple of jugs for the Beckham solstice gala
Perry - you guys going to ZPZ? I'm still not sure due to schedule. They still had tix?
Yes absolutely going to see Dweezil.
There were still tickets available when I bought mine yesterday.
Should be a good follow up to the solstice party.
I met Daryl on Psyche Ledge in the spring of 76. I had just hitched up from Vancouver and was planning to rendezvous with Dave for a weekend of neophyte shenanigans (it's a wonder either of us survived that first season). It was late afternoon with the western sun finally warming the Grand Wall and the forested old highway and as I approached Psyche Ledge I saw two trolls sitting in the grass doing troll stuff. I mean, they had to be trolls, they had long shaggy hair and dirty headbands and were communicating in some hard to understand language while passing a bottle of straight Dark Navy Rum back and forth. I cautiously approached them and said hello. The red haired troll responded with a gruff but cheery, "Hi, how's it going man? I'm Daryl and this is Stewart, have a drink."
So began my friendship with the late great Daryl Hatten, aka Doug Fir, Chrome Molybdenum Man, Darly Halfweenie, PO Solo or whatever colorful moniker best suited the occasion.
Daryl and I became regular climbing partners through the late seventies and early eighties. He taught me many of the fundamentals of big wall climbing and was totally trustworthy.
Daryl was also an excellent free climber and a five hour romp up the Grand via Cruel Shoes back in the mid eighties stands out in my mind. Daryl and Eric Weinstein were the strongest rockclimbing team in Squamish at that time. Among their many accomplishments was the second ascent of the PO with Java and Kim, at that time, the hardest big wall in the world.
Daryl had a sharp wit and great sense of humour. He loved plays on words. We were bivied on the Artery Ledge while starting up a cool overhanging unclimbed wall. Daryl thought it looked just like a mini Shield Headwall and suggested we call the wall "The Panty Shield". We liked that and kicked around names for our yet unclimbed route. It was quite rainy and we felt a bit amphibious in our endeavours so a frog theme emerged. I was reading some Kurt Vonnegut at the time and he made reference to a character known as the Pan Galactic Straw Boss. As we lay there mouldering in our sodden bivi gear, smoking bunk we merged the amphibian with some Vonnegut and came up with the Pan Granitic Frogman. We laughed so hard we cried.
We left ropes fixed to our high point and before I could come back to finish the route, sprained my ankle taking a sixty footer of Rainy Day Dream Away while Daryl was holding the rope. Dary went back and finished the aid route with John Simpson.
Let us know!