Salut/Hi Max Hauser,

A fishy post if ever there was one!

le/on Thu, 1 Apr 2004 03:24:16 -0800, tu disais/you said:-

>1. OK. I know little about wine but want to learn.

Excellent. For a start, there's Mr Hawkins book, "A brief history of Thyme."
It details the way in which thyme has affected wine growing world wide.

>be grateful if someone could brief me. Completely please. You know, about
>varietals,

Well varietals are a bit like people, you know, some are blonde and some are
redheaded. But they can all get on more or less well and if you know how to
treat them, they can all make a contribution.

> and Shiraz vs. Syrah vs. Sirah,

Ah yes, that was once a town in Persia, but it got bombed by mistake, so
it's now in Australia making wonderful raisins. It was the home of Omar
Sharif. You know, the guy who said "A glass of coke and a thou, and thou,
and thou and thou beside me." Though I may have that a touch wrong.

>and why Alsatian wines have so many German names if they're actually from France

Well, the alsatians are always barking, you see. And they cultivated them
first, and anyway they speak it.

>are all those numbers on German bottles,

The Germans are so proud at being allowed into the Common Market, that this
has gone to their heads, and from time to time their printers slip a cog and
print enigma code series.

> and why doesn't everyone put the grape name on the label

They do. All except the french, who never do what anyone else does on
principle.

> and use English like normal people.

Ah, but only Americans use english line normal people, Orstrilians speek
crook, and Brits can't speak english, everyone knows THAT. Who else is
there?

> Also vintages and stuff.

Well, that's when they were picked, loike.

>to ask follow-up questions, if I have time for those. Oh yes, also, where
>can I get exceptional well-aged but inexpensive wines that few people know
>about but with high ratings. (Those will impress my friends.)

Ah, that's easy. You go to an auction house and pay cash.

>2. We have a bottle of Silver Oak Cabernet

That's the Ernie Arfterburn bottling isn't it? He was hooked on minced
habaneros, and so he sometimes put a few Red savinas in his bottlings. I
have also heard it called "Red Rim Cabinet."

>that was absolutely definitive. The wine got 96 points which means it must
>be near perfection, yes?

Absolutely.

>wine with the advice of the newsletter. The bottle is unopened, it's been
>carefully on its side behind our refrigerator and not too hot (except a few
>weeks each summer), some stickiness outside the bottle but I can clean that
>off, and still almost three-quarters full.

Well, with really old bottles like this, I strongly recommend re-corking,
this is much easier than you may think. You get one of those corkscrews
called "Waiter's friend" or less politely "Dishonest Butler", it has two
prongs which you push down the side of the cork. So take the foil off (it's
useless and not even decorative by the time it's got a bot corroded). Take
out the cork, and very carefully pour in a mixture of brandy and some
cabernet, to top it up again. This is most important and it helps the cork
to seal again. Then using your cork screw again, push the cork back into the
bottle. Don't worry too much about the capsule, many good winegrowers don't
use them nowadays.

> I've heard that bottles of this age (five years storage!) can be worth big money.

As long as you've recorked it, and topped it up, yes, that's right. Just put
it into auction. Actually, thinking about this you could always have a look
on the auction website and see the wines that seem to sell really well, and
print up a nice fresh label with its name on. You might get a lot more that
way, and as no one ever drinks these old wines, but only keeps them for
showm it won't matter, will it.

>I want to do something nice for my nephew from the proceeds. (After his
>layoff and the trouble over payments, he was living in his car when we last
>heard from him.)

I hope I've given you a couple of ideas.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
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