Ch. Compost Compote Le
Gloriation du Merle 1598
As Merlot is the grape which ripens first
in Aquitaine,
it is also the grape devoured first by the Merle, or blackbird (Turdus merula). In mounting its revenge with some
humour, Ch. Compost aims this stewy
distinction directly at consumption accompanying the great pie devised by its
consultant de cuisine Giovanni de’ Rosselli, the artifice of which is achieved
thus: “Make the coffin of a great Pie or pasty, in the bottome whereof make a
hole as big as your fist, or bigger if you will, let the sides of the coffin be
some what higher than ordinary Pies, which done, put it full of flower and bake
it, and being baked, open the hole in the bottome, and take out the
flower. Then, having a Pie of the
bignesse of the hole in the bottome of the coffin aforesaid, you shal put it
into the coffin, withal put into the said coffin round about the aforesaid Pie
as many small live birds as the empty coffin will hold, besides the pie
aforesaid. And this is to be done at
such time as you send the Pie to the table, and set before the guests: where
the uncovering or cutting up the lid of the great Pie, all the Birds will flie
out, which is to delight and pleasure shew to the company. And because they shall not bee altogether
mocked, you shall cut open the small Pie, and in this sort tart you may make
many others, the like you may do with a Tart.” Use the Merlot with the cooked
blackbirds in your inner pies, make too a topping gravy of it, also serve it
fresh from jugs for toast raising as the living birdies are released through
the crust. To provide a fine opportunity for wagers whilst protecting your
unpicked grapes, close the windows and pass the .410 round the table with the
port.
Steelojex
Taxi Spackasity Gonas Glosav Blanco 2099
You know the lick of a clean urinal? Clean, I mean, with the big lollies down the
trough at the bottom. That lovely
reassuring whiff of clean? Take your
taxi cab. Before the
hyper-normal-smelling Punjabis took over the cabs and made them clean, most
taxis smelt like a dirty public toilet, even though we don’t smoke ’em up
anymore on account of the law replacing the lure and the lore. Then you got one that smelt like a clean
toilet, usually because of that little blotting paper Christmas tree swinging
by its neck from the rear view mirror, exuding the overwhelming stink of
clean. Whatter you gonna do? Which taxi are you gonna drink? I’ll never forget the
floral bouquet of the cab the Hon. Tom Koutsantonis MP drove for Bill
Gonas’s Adelaide Independent when he’d shuttle me between the Exeter Thirst
Emporium and the square named after the first bloke in South Australia to get a knighthood, where I
sometimes slept. Tom sweated a lot in
his neat poly uniform in the summer, and in the winter, too, for that matter,
but you could depend on him getting you there quick. He was a man on the make. When he became the
Minister for Road Safety a bit later on, and somebody advised the electorate of
some 58 traffic offences and over $10,000 of unpaid fines, they fired him from
Road Safety and put him in charge of everything radioactive, like the world’s
biggest uranium mine. So bugger this wine.
Tom’s clean now, he's doing a really good job, and I wanna drink the uranium mine. I was in that
business. It’ll have a longer finish.
This fledgeling blackbird came from a nest in the rafters outside my kitchen door. I photographed it on the back of the ute after it had taken its first flight. That involved about six metres of flopping leading it to crash into that grille, then it did a great big "whew!" and spent some time having a very confused look around. All I could do was say "Welcome to the world, Sunshine" and let it find its own way home.
These reviews of imaginary wines are from the comic I made with George Grainger Aldridge in 2013, called Evidence of Vineyards on Mars. I'm about to hit George with a draft text of my translation of the Gospel According to Mark, so he can dream up some visions. I expect it to go on all Australian school curricula.
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