Author: mjhorn
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Zeltinger
Like probably everyone, I’ve been finding reading lately involves a constant underlying outrage that characters are going about pursuing such extravagances as associating in groups of more than two, coming within 1.5 m of each other, leaving their houses, and washing their hands for less than forty-five seconds… I’ve been putting the extra quiet time…
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Constantia wine
Despite above appearances, this wine did not sprout one afternoon alongside my tomato plants. It grew further afield, in the Constantia vineyard of South Africa, and I imagine hitched a ride on a ship or two on its way to me. Messrs Mason and Dixon let the wine stay put and did the seafaring themselves.…
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Pouilly-Fuissé
My sister described this Louis Jadot 2015 Pouilly-Fuissé as tasting of peach followed by buttery toasted pastry. Her palate must have developed some since last year’s bottle of Graves, where she managed “fruity.” This wine, a Burgundy chardonnay, comes to us from not only the same book as the Graves, but the very same sentence.…
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Opium Beer
I sit drinking this opium beer on my roof, and Australia’s current apocalyptic choke of bushfires has certainly leant the scene an opium den-esque smokiness. But that might be as close as we come to actual opium here. On Googling “opium beer”, one mostly uncovers tales of homebrewers getting arrested and genetically-modified morphine-producing yeasts. The…
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Pommery (Merry Christmas!)
Merry Christmas, Pynchondom! I hope you’re enjoying it with good friends and family and that your relatives’ paranoid conspiracy theories are at least entertaining. Here, we’ve pulled a festive bottle of Pommery Champagne from Against the Day to celebrate. The company is more sinister there — Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe drink some after Vibe…
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Hpnotiq
A little while back, the ever entertaining and always insightful masochists at the Pynchon in Public podcast published the final episode of their Bleeding Edge season. More recently, I had the pleasure of catching up with Bo to record an episode for the interregnum before their V season begins. Last time we got together, it…
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Some vermouth concoction
Often here, I’ll pluck a drink from a page of Pynchon based primarily on my ignorance of it. Tommy boy has introduced me to a vast array of new favourites thusly. (Hell, back when I started this, I don’t think I even really liked whisky). Sometimes though, it’s more like I’ll find the exact liquid…
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An abominable imitation of Munich beer
On page 203 of V, two fellows named Godolphin and Mantissa who I will not pretend to have any memory of meet in a German beer hall in Florence. The place serves, of course, krugs of genuine Munich beer. That delight I will save for a later date. Twenty-five pages later, the good stuff is…
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Irish Whiskey and Water
When we last met here, you were humouring my rambling on at unprecedented length and pretentiousness about fermented horse milk. Let’s maybe settle back down with something a little simpler. Drugged drinks are a bit of a theme throughout Pynchon, if one we’re mostly yet to tackle here. Beer spiked here with LSD, there with…
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Kumis
Some in the past have had the gall to suggest that this project is nothing more than alcoholism dressed up in exotic hats and tweed jackets. These scurrilous individuals should take careful note of today’s post and the extravagant lengths I’ve gone to to track down what is the least alcoholic beverage we’ve drank here…
Tom Pynchon's Liquor Cabinet 