The other night, my wife and I watched a couple episodes of the Campion mystery series.
Our hero is poisoned by the baddie in an odd way.
They have brandies at the baddie’s home (the baddie doesn’t drink) and then go to a restaurant for dinner. The baddie has the restaurant serve a special vintage bottle of wine he’s had sent to the restaurant earlier.
They both drink from the wine. Our hero gets seriously woozy, but the baddie is unaffected. The waiter mentions something (accursed English accents, and no captions ) about how the wine is especially lethal (?) if you’ve had other liquor less than 12 hours earlier.
So is this plausible? Are there wines whose effect depends upon whether you’ve had other drinks beforehand?
Margery Allingham wrote these stories in the 1930s. I think that the idea of a wine that has a terribly intoxicating effect if taken after spirits was pure invention.
The episode in question is “Death of a Ghost.” Here is a clip (the relevant part starts about 2:50). I can’t quite catch the name of the wine. It sounds something like “con-tee-nay-tee”. You can catch a glimpse part of the wine label at 1:30. The novel depends on the same point. My guess is that it’s something the novelist made up to fit the needs of the plot.
Wow, what a sneaky way to kill someone you know is a covert drinker! :eek: Everybody knows that I rarely drink, and don’t eat shrooms because I have an allergy but am willing to cook them for people who like the slimy little bastards - so I really can’t identify shrooms. I would cook a basket of shrooms that my friend martin brings over because he is an agronomist that works with mushrooms. So if he has a thing against a guest of mine he knows to be a drinker, he could very easily slip in a few of these little beauties and bump off my poor guest :eek:
Well, one problem. These “little beauties” are in fact repulsive in real life. The wiki picture really doesn’t do the foul bastards justice. The reason they’re called “ink caps” is because they ooze/melt into deliquescent black goop throughout their life cycle. Trust me, mate, if you can’t spot these dodgy bastards in your friend’s complimentary basket of ceps, you’re not paying attention. And if you think nothing of tossing oozing fungus tar into your stewpot, I’m not sure anyone’s coming for dinner who doesn’t drink heavily beforehand :D.
) about how the wine is especially lethal (?) if you’ve had other liquor less than 12 hours earlier.