“But, alas! The practices of whaleman soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father’s heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor: and seeing what the sailors did there, and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it’s a wicked world in all meridians; I’ll die a pagan.”
Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.
40% Touriga Nacional, 30% Tinta Roriz and 30% Tinta Francesca which 30% was aged for 12 months in both new and used French oak the remainder kept in stainless steel vats.
Aroma: Superhero black fruit particularly blackberry with pomegranate, blueberry, dark chocolate and just a hint of stewed rhubarb and blackball candy. Hint of some juiciness to come?
Palate: Absolutely no annoyance or distraction. Pure and solid black fruit. Rather Port like without the 19.5% alcohol. Perfect harmony with acids and tannins to the extent they are inextricably part of the wine not identifiable components. A smidge of juiciness.
Personality: I am a terrific Douro ambassador but not politically correct as I am unabashedly superior to so many non-Douro red wines. Solid. True. Honest. Douro typical.
Food Match: Venison or wild boar.
Cellarbility: Not meant for cellaring but enjoy up to 2027-year end.
Price: $22 CDN.
RKS Wines of Portugal Rating: 90/100. Wine Align 88.
(Grafite Tinto Douro 2021, Douro DOC, Churchill Graham, V.N. Gaia, Portugal, 750 mL, 13.5%).
Reflections on THE CONVENTION
Could be in Singapore, Hong Kong or even North Bergen, New Jersey!
Identical airwaves
Sandwiched between “networking breaks”
Not even blushingly
Inept bilingually
Majestically Christinically present
36,000 starving Ethiopians
Beg sickly, Bibles hidden
Struggling with the desire to brandish
Meanwhile the political arena presents chinless wonders
Cheered on by funeral supply salesmen
With mistresses in mink ex-wives in trailer parks
All guzzling pilsner
Dancing with the wrong WASP beat
And bare breasted skeletons sway
Emaciated and ready to collapse without the $19.99 diet drink
The sun gleams off the bones white as miracle toothpaste
Here in our own tropical destitution
The cat ravaged pigeon limps at 30 below
The cancer riddled janitor
Tosses in his urine-soaked bed
The woman twitches uncontrollably people attempting not to gawk
And the Bible failed them
SO EXPORT IT!
And you tell me now is the opportune time to be an optimist
Well
At least the cockroaches agree with a grin
And you don’t require a microscope to view
Robert K. Stephen
Vladimir Pooping
The little low ranked KGB Vlad the butcher of Bucha
Murdered rivals and opposition silenced through tasty plutonium tea
Or
“falling out of windows”
Pussy Riot isn’t in your good books
For you and your oligarch crooks
No confusion on your part with the idolatry Stalin or Catherine the Great
Transforms corruption into convenient Ukrainian hate
You talentless wiggling swine
Innate weakness bolstered by your threats of nuclear end of time
Your ass and feet postered like in a Turkish toilet
Your shit plops down
Finally looking promising you’ll be adorned with the Tsar crown
You vicious little Rogaine deprived clown
Robert K. Stephen
Optical Illusion Oasis
People sitting under the great Canadian fright
Drinking heavily in the village of neon light
Pretensions of affairs being outta sight
Really nothing more than a herd of the uptight
Things actually aren’t really alright
Such a pathetic sight
Strongest on a Saturday night
People with nothing to do
Except playing cool fools
Floundering in the human cesspool
Death should be superior
Come join me tomorrow
For you’re in fact already dead
What can you do in life I tell you
Like the pieces of gum
The black suited monsters
Crush without pity on the way to the paper colonies
Refusing the cries of the crushed innocent are needless superfluous
Come join me in the land of the insane
Everyday does not end in a futile game
Soulless butchered minds craving dead maggots
That’s what we are
No schools of respectability
Only dens of perverse sadistic crazed nobility
Souls of the living cry to join us
Yes
I’m Lucifer but which hell is better
Yours or mine
You’ll find out in due course of time
Robert K. Stephen
Piggies and politics
Look at all the little piggies
Guzzling off the through
Left piggies
Centre piggies
Right piggies
But all the same
Echoes of belches
Similar but of the same intensity
What the hell
They all wallow in the same slop
A fecal paradise
And but a few enter the slaughterhouse at re-election time
The rest
Devise menus for the apathetic innocent
Robert K. Stephen
“What could be more full of meaning? -For the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first decried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.”
Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.
“And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match the bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.”
Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.
“There weekly arrive in this town scores of Green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many are green as the Green Mountains whence they came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old.
Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”, 1851.
Ontario Cabernet Sauvignon as a single varietal seldom works unless skillful use of oak is involved and when it is it can be quite good. This one was aged in 225 litre new French oak barriques for two years.
More often you will find Ontario Cabernet Sauvignon “utilized” in a blend.
So there is always hope for Ontario Cabernet Sauvignon.
Aroma: Lordy me! Earthy or is it funky. How about earthy, funky and smoky. How about over oaked? Coffee too! Are we at Starbucks? Being somewhat charitable can I venture below the Nor wester of unpleasantness some black cherry and dark chocolate.
Palate: Some mid level tannins. Sneaky and almost threatening acidity. Uncertain what fruit involved but diffuse and let’s say nonchalant.
Personality: I am a Baco Noir after a cerebral incident.
Food Match: COSTCO Hotdog. Sodium Nitrate and this wine a match made in heaven!
Cellarbility: You won’t be buying this so no comment.
Price: $19.50 CDN.
RKS ONTARIO 2026 Wine Rating: 64/100.
Comment from the Peanut Gallery: caveat emptor.A Raging Bull with rabies?
(Magnotta 2021 Toro Nero Cabernet Sauvignon, VQA Niagara Peninsula, Magnotta. 750 mL,14.5%).
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