02023-02-23 | Food
After I posted Dymo Zin I found this article about the founder of The Prisoner Wine Company. Very interesting story.
“The style of both the label and the wine were fearless. I don’t believe Dave set out to say, ‘let’s see what I can do to cause a commotion in the wine industry,’” says Karen Williams, a former wine buyer at the restaurant Tra Vigne and now owner of Acme Fine Wines, both in St. Helena.
“But he was trying something new and uncommon, because that is what he wanted to do, as the creator. His fan base was built on The Prisoner and there are very few brands out there that I have witnessed that can say the same.”
Dave Phinney, the Prisoner and the Birth of a Wine Trend – Pix
02009-07-09 | Photos
I was up early, at 06:00, and while I was not yet packing, I was thinking about it.
Here are before and after pix of my headphones.
Before:
and After:
I mentioned these headphones before – here and here. For some silly reason the headphones come in a box with two interchangeable cables, one curly and one straight, when instead one cable should have a 1/4″ plug and the other a mini-plug. I don’t care about curly versus straight, but I know I don’t want to plug that monster (first image) into my iPhone! Anyway, problem solved. Alan Behr came over this morning and soldered the small Neutrik plug I had ordered, to one of the cables – in exchange for a couple of Caffe Shakerato to fuel his bike-ride back to the hotel…
This sounds gross: Cafe dVine, Wine-infused Gourmet Coffee
02009-04-08 | Uncategorized
I think this would make a very nice album cover.
Watched this interesting report on Californian wineries catering to two powerful critics instead of the terroir or their customers. For years I have said to anyone who cared to listen that I think Californian wines are often too big and have to much alcohol. Glad to find that quite a few people agree. Or, as one man says in the report, these wines are made for tasting and spitting (tasting and rating), not for drinking.
I like the feeling of words doing as they want to and as they have to do.
– Gertrude Stein
Ah, and could hat not be said about music as well? I like the feeling of music doing as it wants to and as it has to do.
Found that quote in the book Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, which a friend gave me to read. I am only a few pages into the book, but I love what I am reading.
Another book I am looking at is A Day at elBulli, an amazing book about the best chef in the world… the recipes are called formulas and they read like something one might encounter in the world of Anathem. The food looks findishly hard to make, but even the descriptions are evocative and poetic.
If you have a Mac and sometimes lose sight of the tiny cursor – on the busy ProTools screen for example – here is a solution, a big green target you can turn on and off. Nice!
In Japan, Buddha’s Birthday is celebrated on April 8, but is not a national holiday. On this day, all temples do celebratory events/festivals called 灌仏会 (Japanese: Kanbutsu-e), 降誕会 (Goutan-e), 仏生会 (Busshou-e), 浴仏会 (Yokubutsu-e), 龍華会 (Ryuge-e), 花会式 (Hana-eshiki) or 花祭(Hana-matsuri, meaning ‘Flower Festival’). The first event was held at Asuka-dera in 606. Japanese people pour ama-cha (a beverage prepared from a variety of hydrangea) on small Buddha statues decorated with flowers, as if they bathe a newborn baby.
– Wikipedia
And then there is this news item from Saudi Arabia, a bit funny actually:
Saudi Arabia Claims Climate Talks Threaten Their Economic Survival : TreeHugger
On the sidelines of recent climate change talks in Bonn, Germany, Saudi Arabia expressed concern that any major global shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy would threaten its economic survival, Reuters reports. Calling itself one of the most vulnerable countries economically, it said that it wants support for developing alternative sources of energy, specifically developing its vast solar power potential:
[Climate change] is a matter of survival for us, also. […] Saudi Arabia has not done that much yet to diversify.
We have a lot of sun, a lot of land. We can export solar power to our neighbors on a very large scale and that is our strategic objective to diversify our economy; it will be huge.
We need the industrialized countries to assist us through direct investment, transfer of technologies.
Transfer of technology and investment is one thing, but the idea that Saudi Arabia classifies itself in the same tier of countries, such as Bangladesh, the Maldives, any of the Pacific Island nations, or countless places in Africa, which could well be thrown into environmental turmoil and have far, far less domestic capacity to deal with it seems utterly ludicrous to me.
Hmmm, maybe more diversified investment into the country and less Bentleys and golden taps in every bathroom?
02008-12-22 | Environment
What should we do with all of the corks from the bottles of champagne and wine we’ll be drinking this and next week?
Wine Cork Recycling
Wine Cork Recycling as of November 15, 2008
Wine and Champagne corks are now being recycled in the USA. Send your wine and Champagne cork stoppers prepaid (paid by sender) to Yemm & Hart via UPS or USPS:
Wine Cork Recycling
Yemm & Hart Ltd
425 North Chamber Drive
Fredericktown MO 63645
Recycle Cork USA, LLC
Recycle for Children is a charitable 501 (c) 3 organization committed to engaging consumers, retailers and manufacturing organizations to donate recycle scrap material to our Recycle for Children programs so that proceeds from the recycling of this material is contributed to charities helping children.
The Recycle for Children Programs are listed below:
Korks 4 Kids – this program collects cork material from consumers, retailers, manufacturers, restaurants and other entities that dispose of wine corks or cork material.
Unrelated – another use for cork:
Cork on your laptop – Mac and PC
02008-11-23 | Travel
Long journey. Bumpy ride over the Atlantic. Read this marvel of an insightful poem by Gary Snyder:
As the crickets’ soft Autumn hum
is to us,
So are we to the trees
As are they
To the rocks and hills.
Arrived in Barcelona, where my friends picked me up at the airport and drove 1 1/2 hours in a South-Western direction. The Priorat is contained in a large bowl of granite, a handful of small towns – some with less than a hundred residents – that produce grapes, almonds and hazelnuts. Because there is only dry-farming, meaning that there is no irrigation, and the ground is not rich dirt, not even dirt really, just rock into which the vines drop roots up to 30 feet down to obtain water, the fruit is very concentrated and intense. Similarly the nut-trees are small, but with very flavorful almonds and hazelnuts.
On my last day in the area we drove to Corbera D’Ebre, a town which was the location of the last and deciding battle of the civil war. We took the long route and briefly visited a cave that served as a makeshift hospital. Coming to Corbera we crossed a river in which many of the retreating forces drowned because they could not swim. The town abandoned the buildings bombed during the civil war, which recently have become an art project, the alphabet of liberty.
Route to Peace – LIME
Like most medieval towns, Pinyeres is situated on the highest point of land in its valley, the better to see danger approaching. Throughout the centuries, the more modern town of Batea grew up around it. When destruction came in the 20th century, it came not by land but from the air, delivered not by invading foreigners but by Spanish countrymen.
