"Old Europe" has more millionaires

Earl Evleth wrote:


Like wine, some years are better than others. Evidently
1931 Good, 1932 Bad, for people.


Well, since I was born in 1929, I hope you all will be appropriately
deferential to any opinion I may express.

-- Ron (elder statesman wannabe)

P.S. Earl, I, too, enjoy your balanced and amiable postings on life in
France.

On 26/12/03 16:43, in article , "Ronald
Hands" wrote:

Earl Evleth wrote:


Like wine, some years are better than others. Evidently
1931 Good, 1932 Bad, for people.


Well, since I was born in 1929, I hope you all will be appropriately
deferential to any opinion I may express.


Yipes, you outclassed us all

"1929 One of the finest vintages this century. Red Bordeaux from this year
is sought after the world over. Glorious, full-bodied and fragrant, these
wines are a pure delight now and will continue to develop with style well
into the next century. The star was undoubtedly Chateau Latour which has
been showered with a wealth of superlatives at tastings ever since."


-- Ron (elder statesman wannabe)

P.S. Earl, I, too, enjoy your balanced and amiable postings on life in
France.


That was a while back, I do too much politics now. My wife complains that
I am getting mean in my "golden years".

By the way I never have tasted a wine that old. The list at

http://www.gotogifts.co.uk/system/index.html

had no Chateau Latour, nor any 1929 wines.

When we first lived France and drove around in the mid-60s I bought
some excellent Bordeaux wines for not much, less than $10 a bottle.
Now the run to much. At that time, when my reseach director came
on a trip to Paris, we took him and his wife to the restaurant on
the lst floor of the Tour Eiffel. We had a bottle of Batard Montrachet,
the restaurant price was not too high ($20). The current prices around
around $300. It really is a great white but I would not have the courage
to spend that on a bottle of wine now.

Anyway, you can brag about being a living equivalent to the Chateau Latour.

And I feel like Coca-Cola, sob!

Earl

Earl Evleth wrote:

Anyway, you can brag about being a living equivalent to the Chateau Latour.

Thanks. I needed that.
It's so much better than having the year of my birth associated with
the start of the Great Depression. :-)

-- Ron
Hamilton, ON

Ronald Hands muttered....

Earl Evleth wrote:

Anyway, you can brag about being a living equivalent to the Chateau
Latour.

Thanks. I needed that.
It's so much better than having the year of my birth associated
with
the start of the Great Depression. :-)


Having had to live with October, 1939 for 64+ years, I can only expect that
it was better than September of the same year. As for the French vintages
of the period, the French military, ceretainly not deficient in numbers or
equipment (and not so poor in morale or motivation as some here have
suggested), but governed by the idologically and politically bankrupt and
generaled by the inept and unable, saw to it that the French delivered much
of the better bottlings over to their new masters with whom they cooperated
at at shocking and disgraceful level....cooperation at lower levels having
serious postwar consequences, while among the affluent and "connected" it
even led to rewards.

History may note that even the Italians, partners in the Axis, presented
more obstacles and cooperated less in the arrest and transportation of
Italy's Jews than did the French who have left for the future all those
grainy film clips of French police and paramilitaries rounding up and
sheperding Jewish refugees and "home grown" French Jewry into the German
maw. For folks who must wear those tarnished and tawdry mementos on the
national lapel to argue over head scarves serves only to highlight the
charade in which culture occupies a higher priority than character, an
excess of the first hardly outweighing a record in which the second
continues to run well on the deficit side of the ledger.

TMO

On 26/12/03 20:06, in article , "Ronald
Hands" wrote:

Earl Evleth wrote:

Anyway, you can brag about being a living equivalent to the Chateau Latour.

Thanks. I needed that.
It's so much better than having the year of my birth associated with
the start of the Great Depression. :-)


Oh, yes, the crash. The actual depression took some time to catch up,
in Europe it was well into the 30s. This time too, the American recession
did not catch up here for another two years.

The 1929 crash had some recover, currently called the "dead cat bounce" in
which the market recovered and then started down again.

Anyway, it was great year for wines and you can borrow that prestige
instead. So God was smiling on the earth with regard to men and wine,
and laughing with regard to the stock market.

Earl