The World's Oldest Champagne

This July a remarkable find was made in Finnish waters - the world's oldest Champagne.  The champagne dates back to somewhere around 185 years ago.  Wow.

Champagne this old makes the 8-week Welch's brew look just as gross as it should look.  Everything about a 185 year-old bottle of champagne is awesome.  Not the least of which is that it was found at the bottom of the ocean... again, Wow!



Cheers to the intrepid diver who swigged a bottle expecting salt water and was instead greeted with sweet alcohol.

According to Champagne expert Richard Juhlin, the bottles could go for $135,000 each at auction depending on who shows up to bid.

The Fiery Dog

Inspired by a recipe I came across on CocktailDB while looking for variations on a Manhattan to try, the Fiery Dog is a complex and powerful cocktail.  With its odd set of ingredients, I doubt you'll be trying it out anytime soon unless you come on out to NY to visit your friendly Redface.

The Fiery Dog
1 oz White Dog Whiskey
1 oz Italian Sweet Vermouth
1/2 oz Absinthe
1/2 oz Benedectine
1 Dash Peychaud's Bitters


Shake and strain into a rocks glass.  Please don't put any White Dog in a cocktail glass. 

I've been trying to figure out Benedictine for a few months now, and this is the first time I've been able to add it to a cocktail and not have to choke it down.  Every ingredient has quite a powerful taste, which leads to a shifting feel in your mouth and down your throat as you drink a Fiery Dog.  The 62% White Dog makes itself known, but is unable to overpower the other ingredients.

Enjoy!

Davie Crockett's Speech Tactics

The ruse worked perfectly.  The crowd roared with laughter, and that gave him confidence to go on to other rough stories that only won the listeners even more.  Knowing that his opponent would get to speak after him, though, and worried that the man would show up the complete lack of substance in his speech, Crockett concluded by saying that he felt keenly thirsty and suggested that the voters join him at the whiskey stand.  Most of them did, leaving his opponent speaking to a largely empty field while Crockett continued his storytelling at the liquor barrel.  In the entire episode Crockett sold himself to the voters, while never risking alienating one of them with an unwelcome opinion on the subject of the county seat.

-William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo

 

Killing that Noxious Beast

You all know the feeling - a bottle of liquor, whether the choice was sweated over, or your typical brand was casually nabbed from your local bottle shop - sits on your shelf calling to you.  No, it's not saying your name in a frenzied attempt to draw you deeper into the sad world of alcoholism, it's just looking at you.

It's daring you, challenging you not to disappoint.  It is giving you a once over to see if you have what it takes to put up a real fight.  In the end, we all know if you go head to head with a bottle of booze, it takes at least as much from you as you take from it (I said this about martinis last week, and I repeat it again).  Instead, it works much better to sidle along, slinking from one glass to the next, offering a friend an ounce or two in between cups, perhaps quietly downing a shot in an obscure hour when there is no one to watch.

Once you have outwitted the noxious beast, it becomes less a test of wills, and more a defining of the inevitable.  As you turn the bottle up for its final pour, there is a blend of satisfaction and disapproval.  If only you'd sprung for the bigger bottle, the harder stuff, more of it, maybe the challenge would have been harder.  Yet at the same time, you have accomplished what you set out to do when you bought it.  With grim, if unsteady motions, you can put the bottle down and forget all about it now.  You are left as you were, with nothing more or less than yourself.  I just hope the guy at the bottom of the bottle has a healthy glow about his cheeks!