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The Life of a Wine-osaur by Phillip Silverstone
You're probably wondering what a bloke who talks about wine on the telly, on the wireless, in newspaper columns, and in books does when he isn't wining about the good life. Chances are you're probably not wondering that at all, but it was a great opportunity for me to do a spot of self promoting. Anyway, if you are slightly curious as to what I do for kicks…. I…um.. I go to wine tastings and hang out with wine aficionados.
Being married to me is absolute magic - it's like a waiter presenting
you with a comprehensive menu of one item, somewhat reminiscent
of Monty Python's spam sketch.
"Well we have spam and chips…. spam , spam and chips…..
spam and chips and spam…. And chips with spam and spam…"
or something like that, you get the gist of it. So I thought
I'd devote this month's award deprived column to the life of a
"wine-osaur" sharing some of my recent adventures with
you.
We began with a pair of sherrys from Seppelt, and a couple of
late harvest wines from Lindemans. Late harvest wines are affected
by a fungus called botrytis, or noble rot, that shrivels the grapes
and fills them with an overabundance of natural sugar. The tea
colored nectar it produces is a credit to Mother Nature and the
genie in the bottle. The final wine in our tasting was an 1896
Seppelt Para Port.
The six ounce wine glasses were whisked away and replaced by a
pathetic, insultingly minuscule piece of stemware suitable only
for the ingestion of medicine. And into this meager vessel was
poured the 100 year old wine. After being told the cost of the
bottle, I felt a little embarrassed that I'd thrown a tantrum
over the size of the glass. This single bottle was $2,000, so
my ounce of liquid treasure was worth about $80! I've never before
made so little last so long.
The wines were stunning. In fact they were so gorgeous I was
tempted to ask them out, but being rejected by a bottle of wine
is a devastating experience. As you know, I never pay more than
$15 for a bottle of wine, but I'll drink whatever I'm given.
Well, these wines weigh in at around $70 a bottle, so I let my
hair down, which in my case is an oxymoron, and polished off several
glasses of the Cabernet from the Volcanic Hill Vineyard. And
just as everyone was preparing to dash out to their favorite booze
shop to buy this incredible wine, we were informed that it was
no longer available… it was in fact, an ex-wine, and had
gone home to meet its maker…. Or for you Python lovers out
there…. it was wining for the fiords…. So we spilled
out into the night, happy in the knowledge that we had tasted
a true masterpiece stomped by the nimble feet of a truly gifted
vintner.
Now that I've finished yet another action packed column, I'm going
to do something terribly out of character ….. kick back and
have a slurp of some vino. See you next month. Cheers!
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Of course, I didn't really want to be a wine chap… I wanted
to be a lumberjack…. But that's something completely different…
and I've cooked up this column about my activities, so I'll get
back to it. You may have heard my recent chat with Spencer Christian
of Good Morning America. I popped up to New York not only to
talk with Spencer about wine - a subject he truly enjoys - but
also to attend a wine tasting. It was supposedly an exclusive
soiree, yet surprisingly, I was invited. The event was organized
by an Australian conglomerate which controls many of the leading
wineries Downunder. We tasted through a range of stickies as
they're known in the trade. Stickies are the luscious, rich,
seriously sweet dessert wines which many of us believe are a wonderful
alternative to lascivious activities.
Back home, I attended a wine dinner at Morton's Steakhouse where
we were served three different Cabernets from Diamond Creek Vineyards
of Calistoga, California. Steak has never been at the top of
my food chain, but its marriage to the wine was a perfect union,
and I managed to convince the restaurant to cremate my piece of
meat rather than have it arrive only slightly dead.
Phillip Silverstone is a syndicated broadcaster and columnist. His book, "Cheers! The World of a Wine-osaur" (Camino Books, $12) is available in bookstores everywhere.