I like the way you think
Tell her wine is best enjoyed in big swigs.
I like the way you think
Tell her wine is best enjoyed in big swigs.
Hold on a sec – your mother was walking along the beach. In the middle of fucking WINTER?
For a reisling? Ginger ale would be better. Or (Og forbid) Zima.
[nutpick]That’s oenophile. [/knitpick]
That’s sick, and you should be arrested. It’s not like the oen can give consent.
It’s midsummer in NZ.
It’s the middle of fucking SUMMER in New Zealand, it being on the other side of the equator and all.
If it isn’t for drinking, maybe you should christen a ship with it. Your mother may find that a more appropriate use for fine wine that isn’t drinkin’ wine. Or better yet, christen a bike with it.
“You didn’t drink that wine I gave you, did you?”
“No, mother. I didn’t.”
“That’s good.”
“I smashed it over the handlebars of my bike instead.”
THUD
“Mom?”
There are expensive Rieslings to be had, and as there is a significant portion of oenophiles who eagerly consume this varietal I assume there are some very good ones, though I’m personally not much for sweet wines.
Rieslings aren’t collectable wines, though. The high sugar content and low initial tannins make them unsuited to long-term aging. Except for the eiswiens (desert wines that are processed to remove water and concentrate the sugars) they should be consumed within a few years of bottling, so your mother’s cryptic comment about it not being “a bottle to drink” is confusing to say the least.
I vote for drinking the wine and then admitting to having succombed to temptation. I’m not much of one for maintaining a collection of undrinkable wines in any case; wine is meant to be drunk.
I’ll also take this opportunity to get up on my hobbyhorse and rail again against screwtops on good wine. It may be more convenient, but damnit, I like the ceremony of removing the cork. Kids these days…
Stranger
Unimportant climatological details aside, I don’t know how it is in NZ, but in my part of the world, winter is one of the best times to walk on the beach. Nobody’s there, it isn’t torn to shreds. It almost looks like a wilderness again (if you keep your back to the condominiums.)
Have you asked her why it’s “not just for drinking”–? She might mean you are supposed to save it for a special occasion.
Two bottles a week isn’t too much. Two glasses of wine a day is good for you, and there are only 4-6 glasses per bottle.
What Stranger said. There’s an optimal interval within which wines should be drunk, unless it’s an exceptional collectable saved as an investment. This doesn’t sound like such.
Choose either a celebratory event of when someone is visiting that appreciates a good wine and just enjoy the dang thing. You don’t want to become the 40 year old wine virgin.
If it’s not for drinking, try snorting it.
Or piss in it.
“Ah, but whose?”
Personally, I’d use it to make a dessert risotto, and if she asks about it, say ‘You said it wasn’t for drinking. I assumed that meant it was plonk and used it for cooking.’
(Note: I don’t actually cook with wine I wouldn’t drink.)
I always thought they were ice wines.
Huh. Learn something new every day.
Seriously, ask your mom what you’re supposed to save it for. Maybe she wants to share it with you?
Oh, winter walks on the beach are great here, especially on the Tasman side: rug up for the wind, and just wander along under the cliffs and watch the huge waves crashing in - if you’re lucky, the only people you’ll see are a few like-
minded hardy souls who wouldn’t dream of disturbing your walk.
calm kiwi, does your mother hide food for “special occasions” like mine does? I don’t mean putting it at the back of the cupboard, I mean actively concealing it under the bed - even though she’s 65, the last kid flew the coop 10 years ago, and there’s no-one to hide it from except my dad, who presumably knows where it is anyway.
Er, they are. That’s just the German spelling of it, but it means the same (and for all intents and purposes, sounds the same as well.) I’m not sure about the etymology; I suppose, being sweet wines they must be served cold, i.e. on ice. Personally, I like a nice, lightly chilled (60F) pinot or a room temperature sangiovese, but to each his own.
Stranger
The grapes for an Eiswein are left out on the vines past the first frost. The frost crystalizes some of the water inside the grape but not the sugars, so when they are crushed (carefully so as not to break up the ice too much and therefore be counterproductive), the resulting juice is very concentrated.
I think the joke was on the spelling of “dessert” as desert. The term is used because the way eisweins/icewines are made is that the grapes are left on the vines until the first frost and the grapes freeze. They are then harvested and the grapes pressed, squeezing out the water as ice crystals, which are discarded, leaving a very concentrated, sweet juice to make the wine from.