Smokehead single malt from Islay...
Oh my, this was the coup de grace at dinner last night... Gemma had made some wonderful quiches (one of smoked salmon and broccoli, another with ground beef that was reminiscent of a tourtiere) while Nick and Silvia brought a cherry pie for dessert. I showed up with some of that barrica-aged cava... which didn't last very long... It was a good wine night: I also got to try a grape from Galicia that I had never heard of: godello. Very nice stuff and I recommend it if you can find it. Here's a review of the very same wine that Frederick opened for us... We also tasted the "house" Priorat that Gemma's brother makes (and whose winery I'll be visiting soon, hopefully for the harvest) as well as a very fine Portuguese red. Oh, and a sweet wine from Cadillac that had some rubberyness to it and maybe lacked just a touch of the acidity that makes Sauternes stand out.
So topping all of that off with one of the strongest and peatiest scotches that I've had in a LONG time was probably not the smartest thing to do, but who am I to refuse?
When I woke up this morning I seriously wondered if I had somehow swallowed a mouthful of dirt at some point during the night... the peat was still palpable... I think that next time I have Smokehead, it will not be on the back of cava, quiche, red, white or sweet wine... it'll be outside on a terrace or porch... and with Andrew, 'cause peat's his middle name.
6 comments:
i can empathise. i had a really rough and painful saturday morning and mid-afternoon, consisting of me laying in bed waiting for the spinning to stop.
enough to say that gin, pints and vodka do not mix. although i do - records, that is. i think it was the special edition sonic youth that killed it all.
Cinderella's Big Score = hangover.
: )
Charles Fourier (crazy 19th c. utopianist) was obsessed with gastronomy. In describing one of the thirteen human passions, the composite passion, in which the material is fused with the emotional, pyschic, or spiritual in what was then akin to enthusiasm and what could nowadays be considered, according to Fredric Jameson, fetishism, Fourier sees the heightened version of the pleasures of the table as what he calls gastrosophy. Is this you, Bobno?
Jameson on aesthetics in Fourier:
"Finally, there is eating in Fourier: and it is clear that that proto-aesthetic, whereby a base natural function is converted into a well-nigh structuralist _combinatoire_ of tastes and flavor modes, becomes something the very figure or emblem of the transformation of matter in Utopia--gastrosophy thus (once again?) becomes the highest form of art, in a way that perhaps reflects back on our contemporary aesthetic practices and suggests new ways to reevaluate them. (Archeologies of the Future, 252)
Hmm, yes, I like the idea that my indulging like the hedonist that I am is a form of art! Thank you E-L and merci, Fourier! Jameson, please refrain from using "well-nigh" in the future. Thank you.
yeah, well, nigh on you, you gastrophosophist!
Ha ha! Awesome use of a comma, E-L!
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