Three principalities of booze
The Maximum Leader the other day had a post about a proposed royal taxonomy of booze. He proposed that Scotch is the king of booze, and... well, just go read it. In reading it, I thought that it was a good idea, but the dear leader was channeling the French and it was poorly implemented.
I believe that there are in fact three warring states of booze. The three kinds of booze do not generally get along. Here's how I'd break it out:
The High Test Kingdom of Liquor, The Principate of Wine, and the Republic of Beer.
The High King of Liquor is certainly Scotch. And many of the roles the Maximum Leader suggests for other distilled spirits are appropriate. But really, the wines would never submit to the rule of another alcohol. The Prince of the Wines (after a recent civil war) is the House of Cabernet from California. They displaced the French Cabernets, who are now plotting in return. The nobility of the Principate is largely the red wines. The awkward bourgeoisie - putting on airs, but still with red clay on their feet, is the blush and zinfandels. The yeomanry is the white wines, though some white wines still cling to noble titles like saxons in Plantagenet England. The serfs are the box wines.
The republic of beer is a low place. The vast majority of the population is low income industrial workers, the proletariat of thin American style lagers. There is a vibrant entrepreneurial class, though, of independent craft brewers. Some of these have become successful, and have started aping the manners of the nobility of the Liquors and Wines. There is also a large corporate managerial class, wholly owned by the large lager magnates, but who aspire to higher quality than they actually possess. In a curious inversion of life in America, the darker beers are the more respected and wealthy.
In the mountains between Wine and Liquor, there is a barbarous, semi-independent state inhabited by piratical and impoverished fortified wines. The high sulfate content of the soils there leaves life very hard indeed.
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Ah, the barbarous wines.
I spent a great deal of time (ha, although not a great deal of $$) in that region in my sordid youth and, through my exploits, became an honorary member of clan Thunderbird.
It is a barbarous country. …
It is a barbarous country. Back in my own sordid youth, I was working third shift at a stop and rob in a dubious part of town. This was right after the collapse of the iron curtain, and it happened that someone in the State Department or some other tentacle of our foreign policy managed to get all the import duties for East European wine reduced to nothing or next to. So, you could get, at your local grocery store, bottles of decent Hungarian red for maybe four bucks a bottle.
Now, the winos who were the stop and rob habitues, they wanted their fortified wine. It was cheep, which fit their particular idiom. I tried to convince them that they could get good wine for less, but they never listened. They were convinced that the stronger alcohol in the Mad Dog or Night Train made it a better value, getting wrecked-wise. One night, I argued with one bum for over an hour about unit alcohol per dollar. The Hungarian was maybe 2/3 the proof of the Thunderbird (vintage last week). But the 375 Cisco Hangover Inducer is exactly half the size. Not even taking into account the fact that bumwine tastes like piss, you'd get more alcohol from the good stuff.
However, Despite my math skills, I couldn't convince him to try the Tokay. I also couldn't convince his little hustler buddy that they had reformulated white out to replace the high with brain damage. So he went back to giving $5 blow jobs in the parking lot to the gay bar rush with a preinstalled white ring around his nose.
Damn. I had a comment to add…
Damn. I had a comment to add, but after I read yours, B, I found my train of thought derailed. Who were you channeling, Dennis Miller?
I'll try again after I quit laughing.