“The sad fact is that there are no natural deaths, despite what doctors say. Every death is felt by someone as a murder, as the unjust taking of a loved being. And even the luckiest of us will encounter one murder in our lives: our own. It is our fate. We all live a murder mystery of which we are the victim.”
Yann Martel: “The High Mountains of Portugal”: Vintage Canada 2016
Malivoire was kind enough to send me a few cans of Lady Bug Rosé. Yes, I said “cans”. Wine in a can is not something to suffer anxiety from however a few years ago when wine in a can was even more novel than it is now a producer sent me three different types of canned wine and all three were suffering from the “fizzies” through a flawed canning process. The next batch was flawless. So there is a science to canning wine!
There is also a science to lady bugs which are cute but are laden with stinky type of chemicals called methoxypyrazines and when those cute little insects are crushed in with the grapes those nasty stinking chemicals are released into the wine causing “ladybug taint”. Some say it gives a peanut flavour to a tainted wine.
So “Lady Bug” perhaps is a gutsy name to give a wine! The Malivoire Lady Bug 2021 Rosé comes in an attractively designed 250 mL can with a cute ladybug part of the graphics.
As for aromatics cherry, raspberry, watermelon and raspberry Dreamwhip. On the palate the fruit is much more reticent than it is on the nose. This is a firm rosé where both tannins and acids are soft. I would say these characteristics make it a great foodie wine particularly with a roasted red pepper cream sauce over fettucine egg noodles.
As luck would have it 12 cans are on sale for $59.40 and 24 cans for $118 and a 750 mL bottle retails for $17.95. The bottle is relatively ubiquitous on Liquor Control Board of Ontario shelves but the cans may be way more difficult to find so contacting the winery may be the best way to order cans. Cans do have a utilitarian purpose on summer picnics and times where simply a glass will do.
(Malivoire Lady Bug 2021 Rosé, VQA Niagara Peninsula, The Malivoire Wine Company, Beamsville, Ontario, RKS Wine Rating 88/100).
“The Haavara Transfer involved a transaction between the Reich’s authorities and a group of Zionist businesses based at the Hanotea orange plantation in Natania just outside of Tel Aviv. Whereas the British mandate restricted immigration (to Palestine) by applicants without financial means, anyone equipped with at least 1,000 Palestinian pounds was granted free entry under a so called “capitalist visa”. The Haavara Transfer was designed to take advantage of this loophole. The scheme operated by allowing German Jews to make payments into a fund in Berlin in exchange for certificates crediting them with sufficient Palestinian pounds to allow them to obtain the coveted visa. Hanotea for its part used the funds deposited in Berlin to buy German goods for export to Palestine. The emigrants were reimbursed in Palestinian pounds when German goods were sold to Jewish or Arab customers. In effect, the arrangement ensured that every Reichsmark of capital exported by a German-Jewish emigrant was matched by a compensating export order….Haavara became one the most efficient means for Jews to export capital from Germany, In total 50,000 people, one tenth of the German Jewish population in 1933 were able to use the scheme to make good their escape. “
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy: Adam Tooze, Penguin Books 2006
My work for the Central Intelligence Agency caused me no moral dilemma. My assignment was simply to be somewhat of an academic traveller. I was a student of Eastern European politics so I had every reason to be visiting Eastern Europe. I was to hang out in various universities in Eastern Europe and gauge the sentiment of students living behind the “Iron Curtain” about living there and their willingness to challenge the existing power structure. CIA operatives had already done the heavy lifting and I was simply adding a more “youthful” perspective to their findings. Over 3 summers “on vacation” I visited Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Eastern Germany. I was a popular figure in many a university campus with my Frisbee and a healthy supply of blue jeans. Just about all students once familiar with me expressed their frustration of living in a “Marxist state” that never walked the talk. Special privileges for party members whether it be special shops with western consumer goods or the best holidays and flats. Making matters worse were the presence of Soviet troops “occupying” many Eastern European countries. There were small “party cadres” at some universities but the majority of students despised these “opportunists”.
So all in all it was easy work. I was keeping an eye on corrupt governments and their student victims. I also gained invaluable academic knowledge about Eastern European regimes. Waiting regularly in lines for food was a common occurrence in several Eastern European countries and yes you could read about it in the comfort of a North American campus but to have to line up for a loaf of bread or chunk of cheese was one of those unique real-life experiences. On occasion I was tailed by local security forces but my movements were unhindered unlike in the Soviet Union where visitors had to be at certain destinations at certain times and regularly report to local police offices to “register” themselves.
It is amazing how many spaghetti dinners I cooked in student kitchens. Many had never had a spaghetti dinner before. Sometimes the ground horsemeat gave it a heavy flavour though.
“Love is a house with many rooms, this room to feed the love, this one to entertain it, this one to clean it, this one to dress it, this one to allow it to rest, and each of the rooms can also just as well be the room for laughing or the room for listening or the room for telling one’s secrets or the room for sulking or the room for apologizing or the room for intimate togetherness, and, of course there are rooms for the new members of the household. Love is a house in which plumbing brings bubbly new emotions every morning, and sewers flush out disputes, and bright windows open up to admit fresh air of renewed goodwill. “
Yann Martel “The High Mountains of Portugal”, Vintage Canada 2016.
Ontario can make great Sauvignon Blanc and if it could only break the neck hold of New Zealand perhaps, we might taste more of it. There is some atrocious Zealie Sauvignon Blanc out there where it masquerades as a best seller but that is another story for another day.
Nyarai Cellars is a virtual winery meaning (under the stewardship of Steve Byfield) it has no winemaking facilities and actual vines in the ground it can call its own. But it uses the facilities of West Avenue Cider House in Freelton, Ontario quite nicely thank you.” Virtual winemaker” in France might be called a “negociant”.
On the nose it is different than most Zealie Sauvignon Blancs because it doesn’t grab you right off the bat with that herbal greenness and cat’s pee. This one has a good deal of tropicality to it with pineapple, guava, honey, passion fruit with that Sauvignon Blancness buried deep in its core just enough to tip you off you are indeed imbibing Sauvignon Blanc.
On the palate you can pick up some gentle tannins with a smidge of honey. Apple, baked pear with cinnamon and brown sugar. Acids are gentle making this a sippable wine but Nyarai suggests green salads with fresh herbs and goat cheese, steamed shellfish or asparagus risotto. Given the poor quality of winter Peruvian and Mexican asparagus I would let that risotto wait until local asparagus is out in May! Given a miniscule amount of local Swiss Chard is still available I might try a Chard/Butternut squash risotto prepared with two cups of this wine of course. The slight sweetness to the wine would suit the butternut squash and its acidity would be a nice play on the Chard.
Serve chilled but not cold. The wine gains complexity and length when served cool as opposed to cold!
This wine is available online at www.nyaraicellars.ca
Ninety cases were made.
(Nyarai Cellars 2021 Sauvignon Blanc VQA Niagara Peninsula, Nyarai Cellars, St. Davids, Ontario, $23.95, 750 mL, 13%, RKS Wine Rating 88/100).
This year I wrote a serialized novel “Reggie the Egyptian Rescue Dog”. Reggie was a small pet kept by his master Anwar in Cairo. Anwar was arrested for writing articles critical of the government and was never seen again. Reggie led a harrowing life on the street hunted down by animal control whose ideas about animal control were poisoning and shooting dogs. Reggie was attacked by another dog and found unconscious in the street and taken by an animal loving policeman to an animal shelter and survived later being transported to Canada to a happy life. So in writing about Reggie I had to be Reggie and feel his terror, anxiety and fear. So I connected with this documentary immediately. If you want to read about Reggie here is an early chapter https://setthebarlifestyle.wordpress.com/2021/07/20/reggie-the-egyptian-rescue-dog-my-life-in-egypt-a-childrens-story/
“Free Puppies” can mean there is no charge for a rescue dog or by taking them from unsafe and neglectful situations they are free. In Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee there are groups of ladies that rescue stray and neglected dogs and do their best to find homes for them whether it means driving vans full of them 16 hours to Wisconsin or putting them on a jet to Rochester.
I must hand it to the filmmakers for not making this a depressing and tawdry work that overwhelms the viewer with images of suffering. It is an informative film explaining why there is such a huge amount of rescue dogs in the southern United States. Much of the problem is caused by poverty and ignorance rather than intentional cruelty.
There are basic things you must do as a dog owner and do that you have a friend for life that is not simply a pet but a family member so if you are a dog owner that cares for your special canine charge this is a painful film that is bound to invoke anger.
The film is a tribute to these “rescue ladies” with their passion for offering dogs salvation. Spend some time with them and the message is clear spaying and neutering dogs is the answer and that is a matter of education that will avoid having to transport them en masse to safer states.
“Free Puppies” will be released on VOD/DVD in the United States and Canada on December 13.
A film by Samantha Wishman and Christina Thomas.
You can see the trailer here https://vimeo.com/769921775
“The meeting of 20February1933 and its aftermath are the most notorious instances of the willingness of German big business to assist Hitler in establishing his dictatorial regime. The evidence cannot be dodged. Nothing suggests that the leaders of German big business were filled with ideological fervor for National Socialism, before or after February 1933. Nor did Hitler ask Krupp & Co. to sign up to an agenda of violent anti-Semitism or a war of conquest. The speech he gave to the businessmen in Goering’s villa was not the speech he had given to the generals a few weeks earlier in which he had openly spoken about rearmament and the need for territorial expansion. But what Hitler did promise was an end to parliamentary democracy and the destruction of the German left and for this most of German big business was willing to make a substantial down-payment.”
“The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy”, Adam Tooze, Penguin Books 2006.”
As for aromatics dense black cherry, cherry cola, blackberries interlaced with chocolate covered cherries. On the palate tannins are on the light side and the acids are well integrated into the wine. Lots of blackberry with a wide swath of blueberry. The finish of this medium-bodied wine is moderately long.
The wine was aged for 14 months in 225 and 500 litre oak barrels of which 10% was new. The wine will cruise into 2026 nicely.
The warm fall weather of 2019 permitted harvesting up to November 7th!
The winery suggests roasted poultry or turkey, beef brisket, Mitaki mushroom roast, vegetarian burritos, roasted red pepper and eggplant dishes for a wine match. I can agree with that apart from the roasted poultry or turkey where I would prefer a Cave Spring Chardonnay.
1,600 cases of this tightly disciplined Cabernet Franc produced.
(Cave Spring 2019 Cabernet Franc VQA Beamsville Bench, Cave Spring Vineyard, Jordan, Ontario, $18.95, 750 mL, 14%, RKS Wine Rating 92/100).
You have read that I had been approached at McGill University by The Royal Canadian Mounted Police to act as an informant to turn in and rat on “student revolutionaries”. That idea was distasteful so I walked away from that “opportunity”. I was an Eastern European political scholar and of course I made summer plans to visit Yugoslavia Bulgaria and Romania to further my studies. One spring afternoon after having left the visa centre of the Bulgarian Consulate in Montreal with a student entry visa in hand a huge black 240SL Mercedes pulled up alongside me as I was walking up Stanley Street. I was asked to come join two men in the back seat. I refused and one of the men said, “It’s about your mother.” I couldn’t resist. They said we were going for a ride and in 75 minutes we were having iced tea at Tudhope’s Marina in the small Vermont Town of North Hero. After the iced tea the Mercedes and its men walked me down to the docks at the marina. Three men dressed as fisherman picked me up in a “cabin cruiser” and we had a nice little “fishing expedition”.
I was in the friendly clutches of operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency. Off we cruised on the placid waters of Lake Champlain. We spent 50 minutes trolling by McCormick’s Reef and Gull Island arriving at a small uninhabited island called Knight’s Island. We dropped our lines in the water and had a chat. I was informed the CIA had conducted an exhaustive background search on me and they were willing to do me a favour if I would do them a few in the context of “Operation Berlin Wall Humpty Dumpty”.
The CIA knew exactly the whereabouts of Abdul. You know the bastard brother of my former sweetie Minah who blew my mother’s plane from the sky in an errant attempt to snuff me. He had fled to North Korea then North Vietnam and now was in Tripoli operating a McFalafel franchise. The CIA would treat Abdul with “extreme prejudice” if I decided to participate in their covert operation. They had my attention as did the bass chomping on my nightcrawler hooked onto my Lake Champlain Spinner.
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