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I guess this says it all. I asked Suw, my partner in blogging and in life, to marry me last night. She said yes!
And I guess she’s OK with it, if her instant message response is anything to go by. We’re both happy. Well, that’s a bit of British understatement. Ecstatic. Yes, that definitely describes it.
I had planned to propose in Porto where Taylor-Fladgate, the famous port house, has a brilliant restaurant that overlooks the Douro River. But, we couldn’t get there until later this spring, and she told me not to propose in a restaurant. Also, it was getting to the point where there wasn’t going to be any surprise in it at all, which didn’t seem right.
Last night was Dydd Santes Dwynwen, Welsh Valentine’s Day, and Suw and I usually go out to have a romantic dinner to celebrate. It’s as good excuse as any. We went to Andrew Edmunds, which is both our favourite restaurant, and the place we went the first night we said we loved each other. It was magic and excellent as usual, although the dinner took a little longer than I had expected. I’m sure noticed that I was getting a little eager to move on after we ate.
I had planned to propose along the Thames because we took a walk after that first dinner at Andrew Edmunds (I agree with this review. One of the things we love about Andrew Edmunds is the wine list.) The London Eye was lit up beautifully that night when we first exchanged ‘I love you’s‘. But last night it was freezing, and I didn’t want my teeth chattering when I popped the question. My knee would have just as likely frozen to the pavement.
Instead, we headed over to the American Bar at the Savoy. It’s listed as one of the world’s best bars, and I agree with this:
If it was good enough for Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and Ira Gershwin you should manage.
We still had a great view of the Thames minus the freezing temperatures, and to top that, there was a great bar jazz piano player there. I wish I had got his name. Wonderful. I went over, told him I was going to propose to my girlfriend, asked him to play something nice and gave him a tip. He suggested the Frank Sinatra classic: The Way You Look Tonight. Perfect.
Some day, when I’m awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you…
And the way you look tonight.
Magic. Just magic. Beaming and effusive, he came over and congratulated us. Suw and I were a bit more than gushy. The staff were lovely and brought over strawberries to go with our Pol Roger champagne, which was perfect. They told us that we had to come back on our first, fifth and whenever anniversary. After the set, the piano player came over and told us that we’d made his night. Well, he made ours. We’re both still tearing up just looking at the lyrics.
With each word your tenderness grows,
Tearing my fear apart…
And that laugh that wrinkles your nose,
It touches my foolish heart.
Just the way you look tonight. Here’s to the love of my life, Suw.
It’s been one of those days. One of those days when I think the Amish were onto something, when I think that all of this technology (well definitely some of it) is more trouble than it’s worth. I generally have a lot of patience with technology, but I’m also really choosy with the technology that I buy or use. I don’t buy the latest and greatest just to have keep ahead of the Joneses. As a matter of fact, the Amish and I are alike that way. The Amish aren’t completely anti-technology. They first discuss and debate what technology they will actually adopt. For instance, they don’t like telephones in their homes because it interrupts their dinner and their conversations.
Howard Rheingold asks in that article about the Amish:
What if modern Americans could possibly agree upon criteria for acceptance, as the Amish have? Might we find better ways to wield technological power, other than simply unleashing it and seeing what happens? What can we learn from a culture that habitually negotiates the rules for new tools?
I’m not about to become a Luddite and eschew technology. It’s all about balance. But I really am thinking about how this plays into the balance of my life. I don’t want to wake up in the future and think of how much time I gave to fighting technology when I could have been talking to friends and loved ones.
What has brought up this spate of techno-philosophical nazel gazing? I’ve just had one helluva day, at the end of a couple of hellish weeks, largely down to technology not working. Arthur C Clarke’s Third Law is:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
But too much of our technology attempts so much and delivers so little. I favour simplicity and functionality, but too often, we get complexity and fragility. I’m just writing here because out of the blogs that I actually write for or edit, this is the only blogging system that I can actually write on because the software that runs the others, Movable Type, has broken.
technorati tags:technology, simplicity, Amish, Howard Rheingold
Suw and I spent Christmas 2005 in Brugge, and just off the market square, we found a brilliant little wine shop, Cuvee. The owner had that wonderful balance of knowing the wine he stocked without being intimidating his customers. Most of all, he just loved to talk about wine. Suw reckoned that the owner was impressed with my pronunciation of the Portuguese red wine that we bought, which is why he was so gracious. I think he was one of those wine shop owners who truly loves what he does and enjoys talking wine with his customers.
With New Year’s just around the corner, I thought we should get some champagne He had a great selection, but he suggested Larmandier-Bernier. I don’t know much about champagne. In the US, we yanks only drink a bit of bubbly – usually a splash at New Year’s and then at weddings. It’s purely for celebrations and special occasions. Here in Britain, it seems any ‘ole excuse will do. Leaving do’s, birthdays, big dates and rainy days in London all seem sufficient reason to pop the cork. But I’m learning. Suw and I went to a champagne tasting last autumn with a representative from one of the major houses – Ruinart. I wrote about it over on Suw’s blog.
Larmandier-Bernier is a grower’s champagne, one of the smaller vineyards that produce champagne. The owner of Cuvee told us that it usually is only found in 5-star restaurants and rarely is found in wine shops. In fact, last March, I did find it for $90 a bottle at Colors restaurant in New York. Ouch.
Suw and I bought a bottle of LB Blanc de Blanc for only €31, which to be honest is a steal. It is without a doubt, the best champagne I’ve had at any price. Champagne is sweet, fizzy and fun, but as a wine, I don’t usually come away impressed. Maybe that’s
the point. But why not have a bit of sweet, fizzy, fun with a little bit of elegance and structure? That’s what we got with Larmandier-Bernier. Vanilla, brioche and almond with enough behind it to not only drink as an apéritif, but also to drink right through dinner.
We searched long and hard for it when we got back to Britain. About the only place where we’ve found a place to buy it is Vine Trail in Bristol. Alas, we couldn’t find a place where we could pick it up on an impulse buy, until I changed jobs and found Flâneur, which is ever so conveniently on my way home from work. Unfortunately, they only have the Brut and not the Blanc de Blanc. Fortunately, for our wine budget, it’s not closer to hand. Top tip: Keep an eye out for it when you’re out at restaurants. It will dent your pocketbook there, but it’s worth it.
I originally wrote this during a work trip last year with the programme I worked for at the BBC. I thought I had posted it, but for some reason, it either was live and later taken down by an editor, or more than likely, I was just so tired I never posted it. But if you ever are on a United Express Flight and have Grant as your flight attendant, you’re in for a treat.
After flying several times, the flight safety demonstration usually washes over you like the white noise during flight. But not with Grant our intrepid flight attendant on the trip from New York to Detroit.
You first got a sense that things might be slightly different as Grant gave the details of our brief flight.
“Total flight time will be about one hour and 23 minutes, and we’ll be cruising at an altitude of 30,000 feet. Basically really high and really fast.”
And it just got funnier from there. Weather in Detroit, he said “is cloudy and cold”.
But once he got into the flight safety demonstration is when he really got rolling.
He told us that we would have to turn off all “cell phones, iPods, blackberries, strawberries and basically anything else with an on-off switch.”
And his delivery was so dry that you really had to pay attention to catch that he was saying anything out of the ordinary from the standard safety demo.
I don’t think that many in the plane actually caught when he said that failing to take your seat cushion – which doubles as a floatation device in the event of a water landing – renders it useless.
But then again, it would have been hard to miss when he said:
“If you are seated next to a child or anyone exhibiting child like behaviour, put on their mask before putting on your own. If you are seated next to more than one child, you’ll have to pick your favourite.
“And if a mask fails to drop down, I will gladly sell you one.”
I wonder if the price was slightly more than the $3 snackbox or the $5 bottle of wine or beer.
And like all good comics, Grant threw in a bit of self-deprecation.
“I will now dim the cabin lights for takeoff and to enhance the appearance of your flight attendant.”
Thanks Grant. After a rather stress filled 36 hours, we needed a bit of light relief.
One of the few things that Suw and I don’t really agree upon is music, although we’re both working on finding common musical ground. I’m a jazz fan – swing, bop, hard-bop, cool, some 1960s free, and hell, even a a few of the hot fives back from the 1920s.
It can be such achingly beautiful music. In 1998, when I lived in Ann Arbor Michigan, I saw Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter on their 1+1 tour. It was a transcendent experience. For the hour and a half they played, nothing existed outside the hall. I was completely absorbed by the music.
And it’s just as much fun to play as it is to listen to. I played trombone for about 12 years, and I hope to go back to playing at some point. During much of my teen years, I played in jazz bands, big bands mostly, apart from the radical experiments in my friend Chuck’s basement. For many years, music was just as important form of self-expression as writing.
I’ve been slowly trying to infect Suw with my love of jazz – with variable results. She did give me an iPod Nano for Christmas. That alone was brill, but she also went out and found jazz that she liked.
One of the songs that she included was “So What“, the lead track off of Kind of Blue. “So What” has one of the best intros in all of jazz. The way Miles slides into a shimmering cymbal shot backed by this gorgeous boom from Paul Chamber’s bass is just unimaginably beautiful. A rainy London Saturday gave way to yet another gray London Sunday, but I can’t think of any better soundtrack for a rainy morning than listening to Kind of Blue. It’s all about turning your blue into green.
Technorati Tags: jazz, Miles Davis
It’s a good way to start out a New Year and a new blog with a great port like Taylor’s Quinta de Terra Feita 1996.
Before I get into talking about the wine, I’ll mention a little bit about why I started this blog. I already blog at Strange Attractor with my partner Suw Charman, but we write about new media, journalism, public relations, blogging – in short, our day jobs. This is to write about everything else, all my other interests: Wine, wilderness backpacking, food, writing, books, travel, music. I guess it’s also to encourage myself to think about those things a little more and work a little less.
Ok, enough about that. That’s what an about page is for, right? Back to talking about wine in general, and this port in particular. I love vintage port, and a good Taylor’s vintage can be sublime. Why does sublime have to cost so much? A good bottle of Taylor’s vintage can set you back well over $100 (£60), but a single quinta vintage is usually half that.
I bought a 1985 Taylor’s vintage for a special occasion a few years back for about that. I can’t vouch for that port because it’s cellaring at my parent’s waiting for the right special occasion. Well, cellar is a bit of an overstatement. Yes, it is their cellar, but a basement in Illinois is hardly a posh wine cellar in the European vein. I have had a Kopke 1985 vintage which is good value money: Rich, smooth with the whole blackcurrant, raisin and a hint of tobacco that a good vintage promises. 1985 was supposed to be a stellar year for port, a classic year in fact, although from what I’ve heard, the wines haven’t always lived up to that promise. Fingers crossed that my 1985 Taylor’s lives up to the reputation.
My parents and I traveled to Porto in September 2005. I wanted to treat them for their 40th anniversary, and we learned a lot about Port wine as we went from port house to port house. Port makers do not declare vintage every year, only the years that meet a certain standard. It used to be that the houses declared vintage independently, but now there is a port wine trade association that determines whether a year meets the standard to declare vintage. Vintage is declared only during amazing years.
Taylor has two quintas, two vineyards, from which they will blend to create a vintage port: Quinta de Vargellas and Quinta de Terra Feita. As the Winedoctor says, Quinta de Vargellas forms the backbone of Taylor’s vintage. Suw and I have had a glass of Quinta de Vargellas at our favourite wine bar, Wine Wharf down in Borough Market. At £7 a glass, it’s a bit of an indulgence, but it was wonderful. It’s velvety and smooth, just like a good vintage should be.
It’s not as common for Taylor to make a single quinta from Terra Feita, but this 1996 was excellent, especially for £19.95 a bottle. I hate to bang on about prices, but this is a stellar, no a sublime, bottle of wine without that sublime price tag. Rich, smooth, strong. We had it with friends to celebrate a New Year and the anniversary of a couple of friends who met at the same dinner last year. It was a worthy bottle of wine for a special occasion.
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