Aussie red wines are better than american red wines

Some of them represent remarkable value for money - which is to say they haven't built up a reputation yet.

-------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Wolf Blass makes wines for Republicans - they are made to taste good if you drink them up as soon as you buy them, and they don't usually get better as they get older, which is exactly right for people who think exclusively in the short term.

It isn't the way you make the very best wines - Penfolds Grange (was Hermitage, until the French objected) should not really be drunk before it is ten years old, and in a twenty-odd year vertical tasting that I once attended, some of the oldest bottles were still getting better.

------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

[snip]

ROTFLMAO!

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Frank Bemelman wrote (in ) about 'Anti-freeze nonsense (Re: Aussie red wines ...)', on Tue, 4 Oct 2005:

Well, it IS an anodyne. (Traditionally useful if your prototype superheterodyne proved to be a very inferior heterodyne.)

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
If everything has been designed, a god designed evolution by natural selection.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

I read in sci.electronics.design that Al wrote (in ) about 'Aussie red wines are better than american red wines', on Wed, 5 Oct 2005:

Try paying more than $1 a bottle. (;-)

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
If everything has been designed, a god designed evolution by natural selection.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

Yes, that is part of the story that I omitted (as too arcane; little did I know ...). The episode was 30 years ago, and we were not nominally using anhydrous or "absolute" alcohol (which could have the benzene residue in those days) but rather the common 95% industrial product. Despite this, it could sometimes happen that someone shipped or used the anhydrous version, which was dangerous. Thus the labeling change was to protect the people drinking it as much as to protect the purity of our alcohol. (I don't even know if mentioning "benzene" would have discouraged the drinking. But "Final Anode Cleaning Solution" -- no thanks!)

Of course part of the background to this is that ethanol, costing at that time around USD 0.50 per gallon (four liters) industrially, required federal tax if sold for drinking, which would raise the price (from the raw industrial product) circa 100 times. (Of course if someone pilfered it, it was cheaper yet.) This big spread in prices is why industrial ethanol is not sold to the general public in the US.

Thanks for particulars, Mark. (This recalls the late Larry Lippman, one of the most constructive contributors in the history of newsgroups. During their Glory Days -- before HTTP tools, when newsgroups were THE fora on the Internet -- he hung out on sci.chem and quietly added useful, informed comments there and to other newsgroups, including sci.electronics.)

;-)

Red wine comes in a bottle and not in those plastic jugs in a cardboard box??

Al

I read in sci.electronics.design that Max Hauser wrote (in ) about 'Anti-freeze nonsense (Re: Aussie red wines ...)', on Thu, 6 Oct 2005:

You carefully disguised the FACS?

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
If everything has been designed, a god designed evolution by natural selection.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

:-)

It isn't a plastic jug, but a plastic sack - as you take the wine out, the sack collapses, so you don't expose the wine to atmospheric oxygen, and it doesn't turn to vinegar. IIRR this is a patented Australian invention, and - in my experience - only the Australians sell decent wine in these casks.

About six months ago, our local (Dutch) supermarket starting selling casks of Lindemans (Australian) Shiraz and Chardonay, and we promptly started buying them. It isn't great wine, but it won't give you a headache (unless you drink the Shiraz and have the wrong sort of bile acids) and it is streets ahead of the stuff you find in the other casks on offer at the supermarket, which we run into at student parties and other poverty-stricken events.

--------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Agreed. We don't buy Grange. I did buy a case of Magill Estate back in the 1980's, when they first introduced it, but that is as close as I've got. I think we've got a couple of bottles of Grange laying around somewhere - my wife got them as presents back when Grange wasn't a status symbol.

Probably the best red in our cellar at the moment is a Tim Adams Aberfeldy, which we bought in the Netherlands (!) from New World Wines, who import that sort of Australian wine, mostly to sell to up-market restaurants.

----------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Most winemakers worldwide are doing precisely that right now, not just Wolf Blass.

Grange is very good, but far from the best red made in Australia. It's massively overpriced compared to some wines preferred by more knowledgable folk, and is consequently only actually *drunk* by complete tossers. Many others use it as an investment however, as there's not likely to be a shortage of said tossers anytime soon.

Clifford Heath.

At those higher prices I can't afford a headache.

Hmm - I just realized I work at a factory, and we use lots of solvents, since they do machining and welding on exotic materials for military aircraft and stuff; so I thought I'd look it up and see if I can find any vendors - The first page of Google hits is about alternative fuels!

But then you'd have to pay road tax. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Q: Do you know the difference between a connoisseur and a wino?

A: The connoisseur takes the bottle out of the paper sack before he drinks it.

--
Cheers!
Rich
 ------
  A nasty old drunk in Carmel
  Thinks it funny to piss in the well. 
      He says, "Some don\'t favor
      That unusual flavor,
  But I don\'t drink the stuff -- what the hell!"

Decent wine, perhaps (but that definition likely will beg the question). The $5/5l boxed wines have had mylar bladders for *years* here. Bars have similar setups, but under CO2 pressure and "pour" through a gun. I'd be really surprised if there is an enforcable patent on such a thing.

--
  Keith

$5 for 5 litres is too cheap to be worth drinking (unless you are an alcoholic).

I was told about the patent on the collapsible bag in the box sometime around 1980, so it has certainly expired by now.

----------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen