Category: Wine
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Dom Pérignon
We have, I suppose, a bit of a conspicuous consumption problem around here sometimes. Pynchon’s drinks may more than occasionally point to the capitalistic excess of the drinker. If we find Scarsdale Vibe guzzling Pommery, we might be best not to take that as an authorial endorsement of the Champagne house. In other instances, the […]
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Jurançon White
A bit over a year ago, I was in lockdown drinking a very tasty German white wine from Gravity’s Rainbow. In 2021, things are looking totally different, where by totally different I mean exactly the same except the wine is French and the book is Against the Day. This year’s lockdown white is the 2017 […]
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Lafite Rothschild
Well so I got bored of joking that someone should buy me a Lafite Rothschild bottle and just went and did it myself. Let’s not dwell too long on the fact that it maybe cost more than every other wine I’ve drunk here put together. It’s our ninety-ninth bottle pulled from the Pynchon cabinet: we […]
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Watered pink wine
Perhaps after a weekend of global celebration following the Americans’ step back toward sanity, I’m not the only one who could use some gentle Monday hair of the dog? My glass is half wine half water and I make no apology. If Pynchon is to be believed, the key constituencies for watered-down wine, other than […]
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Sherry
No one thus far has drunk sherry in a Pynchon novel that I have noticed. But sherry’s ghost does linger by a window during the Rathenau séance early in Gravity’s Rainbow. Milton Gloaming is telling Jessica about his statistical analysis of the paranormal investigations; Jessica’s “mad young gentleman” Roger is off in another room with […]
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Tignanello
Bleeding Edge doesn’t see to be many people’s favourite Pynchon. A bit too narrow in its concerns maybe, or a little too careful with its tone; not grand enough to compete with the bigger books, not zany enough to stand up to Lot 49 or Inherent Vice. Not saying I dislike it though. The tender […]
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Something dark and fizzy
Last night—or actually, at 2 AM this morning, thanks to the magic of time zones—I had the pleasure of hanging out with the Pynchon in Public podcast crew for their upcoming 100th episode, reprising my role as token podcast drunk. Having previously inflicted Hpnotiq and vodka with vegetable soup on those fine people, I this […]
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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. […]
Tom Pynchon's Liquor Cabinet 