Wine is Bottled Poetry

--Robert Louis Stevenson

By and large, it is best to avoid making speeches. You always underestimate how much downright thinking is involved.

Nevertheless, we did send the generally unthinking Proprietor off to the beauteous Barossa Valley last month to sp eak at our distributors Negociants’ conference at Yalumba. This involved buckets of meticulous research on the extremely serious topic of actors and wine (or in some cases, any old  alcohol will do). Suffice it to say, the association of the two  has been a long and satisfactorily  dishonorable one. We will not bore you with the contents of he said speech (you had to be there), but it has got the Prop chuckling over aphorisms, quotes and so on.

The above quote from Stevenson, not so much funny as just true, was occasioned on tasting the marvelous Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz 2005 at Henschke on the same jaunt. The sort of wine that brings a tear to the eye. The same kind of tear shed on tasting in the following week, along with all the top management at TPHQ, a bottle of the heavenly La Tache 2000 – a gift from the generous bunch at Negociants  for having made said speech . (Merci beaucoup, mes amis.)

Anyway, we love an aphorism or two here at HQ...

“I drink to make other people interesting .”   --George  Jean Nathan

And we love to quote things attributed to better actors than ourselves.

“Drinking problem? Good God no. I never had a problem drinking. It’s the easiest thing in the world” --Peter O’Toole

And so on.

So here’s one humbly submitted by the Proprietor, which was prompted by an interview on TV in Vancouver, and which met with some disapproval in some quarters...

“It is just possible to enjoy life without wine. But only just.”   --The Proprietor

What’s wrong with that?

Thanks to our friends at Negociants, Robert Hill Smith and all at Yalumba, and our good pals Peter and Margaret Lehmann. We’d live in the Barossa if we didn’t already live in Central Otago.