We were aware, if only vaguely, of the Portuguese habit of dropping an ice cube into a glass of red wine. So this passage in Kingsley Amis’s must-read Everyday Drinking was not a total surprise:
If the red strikes you as thick, dark and heavy, feel no shame in cutting it with the local bubbly mineral water; worth trying in part of Italy and Spain. And/or add ice. Nay, stare not so; we are not talking about vintage burgundy. The cheaper Portuguese reds are better iced, as the locals know.
So during the couple of vicious heat waves we’ve already seen in New York City, we (and by this we mean I, Josh Robertson) have been dropping an ice cube into our regular everyday wine -- which we won’t call “cheap” but which we will grant (per Amis) is “cheaper” than at least one other thing in the store. People have looked at us funny, but come on -- drinking a beverage at “room temperature” in a poorly-ventilated New York apartment in mid-June is really no different than drinking a warm beverage. A warm red on a hot day is the opposite of pleasant. But what to do -- swear off red wine until the fall?
Today at nytimes.com, Eric Asimov offers that drinking red wine chilled does not make us complete troglodytes.
He does not go so far as to suggest dropping an actual ice cube in the glass. That would of course be troglodytic. But then, some pompous people will tell you dropping an ice cube into a glass of white is troglodytic. To which our reaction would be, “Who is this ass and what is he doing at our Fourth of July cookout?”(As for the calamity of dilution caused by a melting ice cube in wine, note that people have been diluting wine at the dinner table for centuries. In ancient Rome, it was done because straight wine was too harsh. But we can tell you, anecdotally, that we have witnessed contemporary Romans cutting their red table wine by as much as half with water. Maybe it’s a pointless holdover from an ancient tradition. Or maybe it just lets you drink your wine at a normal pace over the course of a multi-course meal without ending up face-down in the gelato.)
A final riff from Kingers:
The wine snob, the so-called expert and the jealous wine merchant (there are a few) will conspire to persuade you that the subject is too mysterious for the plain man to penetrate without continuous assistance. This is, to put it politely, disingenuous flummery. It is up to you to drink what you like and can afford. You would not let a tailor tell you that a pair of trousers finishing a couple of inches below the knee actually fitted you perfectly; so, with wine, do not be told what is correct or what you are sure to like or what suits you.
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Comments on this entry:
If you're sitting alone in your apartment on a hot summers day and drinking something other than Thunderbird from a straw, I'd say you're ahead of the game.
Sincerely,
A woman sitting alone, drinking cheap red, watching a documentary on the Brooklyn Bridge, surfing the Web and commenting on the Playboy blog.
...so, with wine, do not be told what is correct or what you are sure to like or what suits you.
Right. It's not philistine to let form follow function with everyday mood-changers like coffee and alcohol (or whatever is "everyday" for a person, I suppose).
LOL Are you company guys contractually obligated to use the royal "we"? I have to laugh a little, even though it's probably an inevitable consequence of the shape of the organization. Not since Emperor Norton held court in nineteenth-century San Francisco has America had anything as close as Hugh Hefner to a constitutional monarch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton
We humbly request that you kiss the ring, Brian.