Tag: France
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French 75
Has there even been a better season to be a Pynhead? (May need to workshop that one a little more sorry…) Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a Vinelandish cherry on top of the Shadow Ticket sundae. And what a cherry it is! If it weren’t for certain other pressing responsibilities, I might…
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California Champagne
This post is the final in our Against the Day-Latin American adventure series (see Pulque, Chilean Riesling, Orizaba Beer, and Pox & Comiteco for previous installments). California, I realise, does not qualify as Latin American, but we headed back home to the antipodes via San Francisco, so the Golden State is getting lumped in. Late…
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Gentian Brandy in Tea
Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers. Gravity’s Rainbow, p. 251. I am pleased to inform you all I have meditated on Lt .Tyrone’s Third Proverb and concluded that “Ooh what’s this they’re drinking then?” is in fact exactly the right question.…
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Merry Christmas! (Perrier Jouët)
Merry Christmas everybody! May your parties be as glamorous as R. Wiltshire Vibe’s (and not as evil): Palm trees grew everywhere, arecas, palmettos, Chinese fan-palms, ranging from squat greenhouse specimens in wicker-covered pots to twelve-foot foyer varieties to stately coconut and date trees rooted somewhere far below and soaring to these ballroom altitudes through openings…
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White Bordeaux
Chapter 17 of Bleeding Edge finds Maxine at a disreputable tavern by the name of Junior’s Ooh-La Lounge sniffing out leads on Gabriel Ice and the fire at Shae and Bruno’s place. She meets Randy, a helpful fellow with a fondness for Shania Twain and a key to Ice’s front gate. They drive out to…
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Taittinger
Here’s a quick one; I couldn’t let the month of fifty years since Gravity’s Rainbow‘s detonation into the world fly past uncelebrated! Back to the Casino Hermann Goering, just post the Veuve and the vulgar song, where Slothrop’s a bit out of it, his drunken dissolution presaging perhaps his later existential dissolution, and the waiters…
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Chablis Punch
In the innocent days of late 2019, I ordered a box of wines of Pynchonian pedigree. We’ve since knocked off the Constantia, the Pouilly Fuisse, the Tignanello, and the Zeltinger. But the bottle of Chablis has had to bide its time. It was destined to become punch, and opportunities to break out the punch bowl…
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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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Banana Breakfast
This one’s been percolating in the back of my head pretty much since day one of the project. Parts of it have been bubbling away in the actual physical world since late 2019, creeping toward readiness. The time has come. From Mrs Quoad and her Disgusting English Candy Drill for drink ninety-nine, on to crest…
Tom Pynchon's Liquor Cabinet 