Light relief

The Lib-Dems having toppled the Tories here in Epsom, I thought I would offer some light relief from the world of booze. More titbits from reference 1, following the taster at the end of reference 2.

Starting with Mouton Cadet, the go-to red for aspirant winophiles when we were young, half a century ago. They have clearly come on a bit since then, although their website at reference 3 has none of the tasteful shots of vines out in the country that usually infest these websites. Perhaps reflecting the fact that the wine is actually assembled in a place which looks more like a chemical plant than a farm? But actually, no. The birds and the bees are out in full force at the French version of the site, 3b rather than 3a.

I then read that the Cono Sur operation in Chile (reference 4) is pushing hard on the green-eco-orgo front and is doing very well with something called frequency inversion in their irrigation.

I am not much the wiser after gazing at the figure above, taken from reference 5, but it does appear that you can achieve impressive electricity savings by micro management of the motor driving the irrigation pump.

Then Trinity College Dublin have run a major project to recreate 16th century beer, consumed in large quantities by some workmen, perhaps in part a response to the poor quality of the available water. The heritage brews were coming in at between 2% and 5% alcohol by volume, very much the same as modern beer. The recipes were, it seems, mainly drawn from the household accounts of the Lord Deputies of the time, the chaps who lived in Dublin Castle.

A lady in China has been caught at Zhuhai trying to smuggle 10kg of a fancy baiju under her skirt. For which see reference 6. Probably something to do with nearby Macau, but it is not made clear exactly what was going on. All I can say is that she must have been well-built and strong.

There are quite a lot of pieces about wine tasting masterclasses where lots of winophiles are lined up at desks in front of the master who drones on about this or that sort of wine, perhaps his very latest discovery, perhaps some amusing little terroir in the depths of the Isle of Wight. Lots of samples available, but it all looks pretty deadly to me. How on earth do all these people stay awake?

No.1 Great George Street of reference 7, opposite the GOGGS building where I used to work, seems to figure in quite a lot in these events. Lots of grand rooms, rather grander than those of GOGGS, although this last did try, and the main conference room did run to marble pillars and all that sort of thing. I used to impress visitors by taking them around. And the next best conference room ran to quite a decent piano.

The snap above shows one of the rooms at No.1 dressed for a wedding. Just a touch fancier than our own.

And now I am off to breakfast.

References

Reference 1: Drinks Business No.250 - Anthony Hawser - May 2023.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/trolleys-721-722.html.

Reference 3a: https://www.moutoncadet.com/en/.

Reference 3b: https://www.moutoncadet.com/fr/.

Reference 4: https://www.conosur.com/en/home/.

Reference 5: Application of a frequency inverter in irrigated perimeters: A case study for irrigation automation - Eloiny Guimarães Barbosa, Maria Joselma de Moraes, Marcos Eduardo Viana de Araujo, Delly Oliveira Filho, Elisa Guimarães Barbosa - 2021.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baijiu.

Reference 7: https://www.onegreatgeorgestreet.com/.