Tuesday, April 14, 2009

On Wine

In a moment of madness yesterday I bought a glass of wine from a tap. It was made by Stowells and some blonde chick from Emmerdale seems to like their stuff. It tasted of rancid butter with high notes of WD40 and an undertone of vomit. How on earth does anybody get grapes to taste like this? Perhaps grapes were not involved, only rancid butter etc.. Never, ever, drink wine from a tap.

12 comments:

  1. Surely you remember those ghastly Stowells of Chelsea wine boxes in the 1980s? I'm astonished they're still in business. For sheer foulness, however, nothing beats the "British" wine we could buy for 80p a bottle at our College bar. It was made from grape concentrate shipped over from the continent and then diluted to its 'drinkable' form in the UK. It smelt of sour milk and tasted worse and was the only bottle that you could predict would remain undrunk at student parties.

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  2. Sophie, that'll be 'Concorde British Wine'. An alcoholic version of pub blackcurrant cordial. I drank it. The effects were not pleasant. But even then I would not stoop to drinking from a Stowell's box.

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  3. I had the selfsame epxerience of inadvertently ending up with a glass of tap 'wine' the other night - by the time I realised what was going on it was too late. I helped it down with dryroast peanuts, but it was a struggle. It called itself Australian 'Chardonnay'...

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  4. Ooh, hark at Jilly Goolden and Oz Clarke here. La dee da the high notes, the undertones. Here's a tip: you can't accidentally order an Australian chardonnay if you just ask for a beer.









    Ponces.

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  5. Plonk as a substitute for tricoethylene
    It all started back in the austerity ridden fifties, Spanish Sauternes, Lacrima Christi, Mateus rose, my fathers peapod, all guaranteed to satisfactorily degrease the inside of a ships engine, and exorbitantly priced, except the pea-pod which was cheap as chips.
    Them was the days, miraculously we all survived intact and fortified ready for the onslaught of overpriced shitty Margaux that Oddbins told me was "a good investment for the future"

    I mean, further east, have you driven on the A6 past all of those tin factories on the outskirts of Macon, supposedly producing fine wine, by the 15,000 litre tanker full.

    Spoilt we are today, Bruichladdich at 28 quid a bottle, who needs watered down grape juice.

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  6. Ah yes, Recusant - it was indeed Concorde British Wine. I gag at the memory.

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  7. Winter champagne is what you need or in other words red sparkling Shiraz. And the Aussies excel in them as they are the only ones to take using reds in the same champagne process seriously.

    It has to be a bottle if it has bubbles.

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  8. where was this and didn't you send it back? that's one good thing about beer, if it's iffy you ask for something else - it's a given. I was told the three things to avoid ordering in a pub; curry, pasta, and wine.

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  9. My dear english blogger,

    Why are you drinking wine when you have those amazing real ales available on your shores?

    Anyway, greetings from Novasibirsk;
    or, a gulag in the east.

    van D

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  10. The horrible alcoholic beverage of my teens: Boone's Farm Strawberry wine. My mouth is pursing at the memory. College booze more deadly, though: Grain alcohol mixed with fruit juice. Tasted like punch, could land you in the ER.

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  11. I can see you now Susan, 1 gallon stone jug balanced on the forearm, corn pone pipe clamped between teeth, sleepy John Estes playing in the background, tattered dungarees looking the worse for wear, pigtails swinging, happy days.

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  12. The UK's favorite wine brand.That's all I need to know to stay away.

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