Quotulatiousness

November 3, 2017

Don’t fall for the biodynamic woo in wine propaganda

Filed under: Business, Europe, Italy, Wine — Tags: — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’m not a believer in the pseudo-mystical bullshit of biodynamic wine and I’m very strongly of the opinion that it’s 100% New Age marketing bafflegab to excuse jacking up the price of a mediocre-or-worse bottle of wine and to deflect criticism of faulty or inexpert winemaking. “Organic” wines are too often just adequate wines at a higher price point than their quality would otherwise justify. Michael Pinkus reports that he had to put up with a full-on biodynamic bullshit storm on a recent tasting in Italy:

While on a journalist junket […] I found myself at a beautiful modern winery where Daddy had obviously made a lot of euros and he wanted his offspring to have the best in their new endeavor … the winery was painfully modern and so were the levels of wines (earth, sky, air, etc) everything pointed to a winery that devotedly cared about the environment wherein it existed and did so with biodynamic winemaking techniques and practices – even the tour dripped of kale-eating and moccasin-wearing.

[…]

When it came time to taste the wines, we all sat at a long elaborate table, everything was set to impress. We started with a bottle of barely choke-downable sparkling wine … it was off-putting and oxidized, and that’s putting it mildly. I looked around the table but everybody seemed to be okay with what was in their glass. Next we tried both the whites and red from the various lines previously mentioned, with each wine seemingly worse than the next.

I turned to an older colleague and said, “Do you like any of these wines?” To which he went into an explanation about how the wines are not “typical” but laudable: “In competition these wines would not show well because they have something different about them – but once they are explained, to either the judges or eventually the consumer, these wines would show much better.”

My mind screamed “NO” while I nodded so as not to start a huge argument in front of the winemaker who had returned with yet another bottle … How in the world could this logic be true? In what world is this even right? Wine is good or it is bad and that decision is in the palate of the beholder (so to speak), but to make an argument that a wine needs a full dissertation before one can enjoy it is absurd to me and blatantly false. I’m not saying that some explanation doesn’t help in the understanding of a wine, but you should not need to fully explain a wine to make it palatable; and just because it’s bio-dynamic doesn’t automatically give the wine a pass or extra marks for trying to make the world a better place; bad wine is bad wine and no amount of explanation is going to make it better.

If you like fruit in your wine then something with lots of minerality or over the top acidity will not appeal to you, that’s a taste profile – but poorly made, off-putting, faulty or oxidized wines don’t get an A for effort just because somebody lets a white sit on skins longer, bury a poop-filled rams horn in the ground at low tide (or whatever your bio-dynamic practice may be), or because you have a fountain that swirls water in ornate patterns from a 2000 year old cistern. Ultimately taste is king.

Battle of Beersheba – Canadian Frustration – Balfour Declaration I THE GREAT WAR Week 171

The Great War
Published on 2 Nov 2017

On the Western Front this week, the Canadians under Sir Arthur Currie attempt to advance once more, whilst Haig remains optimistic about an imminent breakthrough. Following Caporetto, the Italian retreat continues, whilst the British Army enjoys success on the Palestine Front, with a little help from mounted ANZAC troops. With Lenin’s return, the revolution looms over the Russian capital, whilst the Balfour Declaration is issued in Britain.

Egyptian lawyer discovers a “duty to rape” women who wear revealing clothes

Filed under: Law, Middle East, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It may be just a vivid fantasy on western university campuses, but rape culture is real … in Egypt:

An Egyptian lawyer has sparked a controversy by saying that it is a “national duty” to rape women who wear revealing clothes. During a heated television debate on prostitution aired on a local television channel, the lawyer said it would be a “patriotic duty” of citizens to sexually harass such women.

Nabih al-Wahsh, a locally popular lawyer with strong conservative views, was among several guests who were debating a new draft law on prostitution broadcast on the Egyptian television channel, al-Assema. When the panel’s debates became more heated, Wahsh, at one point insisted that females wearing revealing clothes deserve to be punished.

“Would you accept a girl walking around with half of her thigh showing?” he shouted at a fellow panellist before quickly adding: “I say when a girl is walking around like that, harassing her is a patriotic duty, and raping her is a national duty.”

Why Does American Beer Taste Like Water?

Filed under: Business, Germany, History, Law, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Good Stuff
Published on 29 Jun 2016

Americans drink 51 Billion Pints of beer every single year. Despite the abundance of craft beers available, the most popular variety is the traditional light American Lager. But why do these mass produced beers taste so watery? And how did they get to be so popular in the first place?

Special Thanks To:
Ray Daniels, and the Cicerone Certification Program
https://www.cicerone.org/

QotD: Perhaps we were lucky that Firefly got cancelled when it did…

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

This cult classic made the list not for being overtly “conservative”, but mainly for being “not liberal”. The universe of Firefly is some other solar system with “dozens of planets and hundreds of moons”. Some of these are closer than others to the “core” planets, which are under control of the “Alliance”, a plus-sized, technologically-advanced and repressive system of government. The outer planets and moons have less technology, and even less law, i.e Alliance control, but subsequently greater freedom. Firefly producer Joss Whedon, a stereotypical Hollywood lefty, somehow (inadvertently?) imbued Firefly with a heavily libertarian sensibility, which may not be exactly conservative, but it definitely isn’t liberal. Progressive fans of the show may be tempted to fantasize about the Alliance being an oppressive right-wing government, but that would make the “Browncoat” rebels rat bastard commie revolutionaries, and that makes no sense. The Browncoats are not interested in destroying civilization and putting a new one in its place, rather, they just want to be left alone. Their motto can best be described as “Don’t Tread On Me”, not “Workers of the World, Unite”.

Almost every science fiction fan, to a man, bemoans the fact that Firefly was yanked after only 11 episodes, and their dreams are filled what could-have-beens. I, however, take the contrarian view that the cancellation of Firefly was A Good Thing, a blessing in disguise that helped preserve it when it was still a quality show. For it would not have continued a quality show. I believe that Joss Whedon’s perverse Hollywood lefty views would have eventually seeped into Firefly the way a dead rat behind the baseboard will stink up the entire kitchen. A similar thing happened with Battlestar Galactica, as Jonah Goldberg argues in this Commentary article from 2009.

“Whither Conservative TV Shows? [OregonMuse]”, Ace of Spades H.Q., 2016-03-19.

Powered by WordPress