A Chinese tourist was visiting Switzerland a few months ago and he fancied a drop of vintage Scotch whisky. So, he went into the hotel bar and had one and it cost him nearly €8,000. He didn’t even get to keep the bottle for that, he only had one drink.
The tourist was a millionaire so presumably the price didn’t bother him. He spotted the bottle of 1878 Macallan single malt behind the counter and decided that would do him. If the bottle was genuine, it would have carried a bar-value of €250,000. But it wasn’t.
The tourist and the hotel manager were photographed together with the bottle and suspicions were raised when whisky experts spotted discrepancies in the bottle’s cork and label. Tests later proved that the Scotch was distilled after 1970, almost one hundred years later than the year stated on the label.
The bottle had been in the hotel for about twenty-five years and it appears to have been a genuine mistake. The hotel reimbursed the customer in full and all’s well again. So maybe it doesn’t pay to be a connoisseur.
I’m very partial to a pint of Guinness, I like the taste of it. I don’t know how it’s made and I haven’t a clue about hops or barley. I have no idea what temperature the mixture needs to be at or how long it takes to ferment.
I do know that you don’t want to be drinking it if it has been sitting around since Italia 90 not to mind 1878. That wouldn’t be good for the internal organs.
If you don’t get a nice pint, you shouldn’t drink it because the consequences could be unpleasant. Fortunately, there are a couple of tell-tale signs that should alert your senses to the possibility that the pint is dodgy. The first might seem obvious but it’s the taste. The first mouthful of a bad pint should send a message directly to the brain. An experienced stout drinker will get it straight away.
The second sign is in the appearance. A good pint will leave rings on the glass as you drink it. If the glass looks as if it has just come out of a dishwasher while you are still drinking, then you have probably left it too late. It’s time to prepare for a dicky tummy and a bit of quality time on the loo. Make sure your phone is fully charged.
Best advice, if you’re not sure about it, is to leave it alone and have a pint of beer instead. One of the unfortunate aspects of being a stout drinker is that you must have your homework done before you go for a pint. Gather the local intelligence and select the right pub first.
For all that though, it’s not rocket science. Just find a bar that serves a decent pint and make it your home. Chances are that there will be other like-minded souls occupying the stools there who have also done their groundwork.
That got me thinking about wine drinkers and how they manage. On the face of it, choosing a wine seems like a complicated business. There are even people trained professionally, Sommeliers, to help you choose your wine and to make sure you don’t use the wrong wine with your food. Heaven forbid.
I was in Slovakia one time and I was brought to a well-known establishment for a wine tasting session. Session is probably not the right word, but you know what I mean.
The wines we tasted were apparently, top of the range. There was a ritual we had to follow. We had to raise the glass and look at it, hold it up to our nose and smell it, put it up to the light and look at it some more. Then slurp it, swill it around in the mouth, make some funny noises and then swallow. Then pour what’s left into a small bucket and rinse out the glass to be ready for the next round.
I got nothing out of the experience. There wasn’t any single outstanding wine for me and to be honest, it all tasted the same. I was a little concerned though for all the wine that was in the bucket. It seemed a waste to be pouring it down a drain.
Wine is a serious business but there is a huge amount of snobbery attached to it.
I’m not convinced that you need to know what country the grapes come from or how they were squashed before you buy a bottle. What difference does it make whether they were squeezed by hand or stamped on by a heap of maidens dancing barefoot as long as they washed their hands and didn’t have athletes foot.
Does it really need to be locked away in a darkened cellar in Transylvania for a thousand years before it tastes good? Is there really such a huge difference between a cork and a screw on cap? Will we wither and die if the red wine is chilled and the white is served at room temperature? Quite possibly, according to the wine gurus.
There is something very irritating about watching these people in action especially when they love to hear themselves. At the end of the day you beat some grapes to a pulp and pour the juice into a bottle and stick a fancy label on it. How complicated can that be?
Wine drinkers could make life a lot easier for themselves by going to a pub for a decent pint of stout. It comes in one colour, it won’t be covered in dust and cobwebs and you get more in your glass.
If you want to make a noise, you can belch when you’re finished and that’s perfectly acceptable.