THE INSULT OF THE STINKS

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Big opening here: making wine to suit the room ... hotshot spooks required
by PHILIP WHITE 


"An inspiring blend of fresh juniper and iced red currant, brushed with hints of coriander. As it evolves, the mix of frozen ginger, fresh bamboo leaves and geranium emerge taking center stage, while a masculine combination of rich vetiver, tonka bean, birchwood and musk create a powerful presence throughout ... " 

Best Sauvignon blanc on the block? 

Nope. 

While the President of the United States of America owns a winery in Charlottesville, Virginia, he reckons he's a tetotaller. He drinks twelve cans of Diet Coke per day, but he don't drink Sauvignon blanc. 

The 92 hectare Trump vineyard is on his 526 ha wedding farm, close to the homesteads of Presidents James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson. Really. The President's son Eric is the president there, so his Dad can get away from his golf to talk business with the Korea bloke. He's the one with the lovely teeth, Eric. We can't get teeth like them out this neck of the woods. You can get married there in their joint. Fair dinkum. Just give Eric the money. Thousands of people get married there.

The winemaker is Jonathon Wheeler, who is content to suggest his 2017 Sauvignon "has aromas of tropical fruits, citrus, green bell pepper and lemongrass," with "an exciting palate with a refreshing crisp and clean acidity." 

A good courtier would advise Kim Jong-un much such could be grown in his country. Low yields, intense high flavour. But since what Fox TV called "the two dictators" boarded their flights, one's sucked down the general drain of what in the name of the bowels of our Lord and Saviour will it smell like when Kim and Trump enter that room in Singapore? That smell! That smell? What sort of a song would Randy Newman write of it? 

You'd forgive me if I dreamt that Kim's cologne reflects the diet of his court. Salty seaweed beachy things, with leeks, radix greens and beans, like many fine Sauvignons. Bracing. Dimethyl sulphide, the whiff of windriff spume. 

Add cinnamon and pepper for piquancy, enoki fungi and quail egg jelly for flesh. I had to say quail egg jelly. You'll need them wide pants, quailing. Then kimchi made from everything that's not jelly or fat. Gunpowder and rocket exhaust. Distill essence of all the above, package imperially, have staff squirt. 

Guerlain could have made it. Turn left at Jicky. 

If I were the boss sniff courtier to the Supreme Leader Eternal General Secretary, I'd always have this intelligence in the basement as I grovelled impeccably to his fashionmista sista Kim Yo-jong for approvals. 

Who's gonna start selling them suits?!?

"Fine tuning, mister White." 

This is the kind of little sister who can send the face-washers out to surprise you in the strangest places, like just as you walk through the terminal at Kuala Lumpur.

Fine? How could one know? I'd be quietly wiped if I were spotted fining up my knowledge by surviving the poison fugu blowfish with the mysterious Japanese spy Kenji Fujimoto who cooked for their dad. He'd know all the smells. He reported the old man having a hearty gluttony and a full cellar. We could drink. But they'd erase me. 

Then there's the matter of the President of the United States of America who eats Big Macs and drinks Diet Coke. You can get an official limited release Raspberry Coke now with extra raspberry flavouring but I reckon there's always been a bit of it with the cherry emulators and the phosphoryic acid in the old model Diet Coke he loves.. 

Some of the things in raspberry flavouring are - I can rap this at your funeral if you're bad enough - amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone (10 percent solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, g-undecalactone, vanillin, solvent, caffeine, glucose, sucrose and fructose. 

Of course Diet Coke drops some of those overt sugars down the bottom to be in the diet appellation but you wonder what else is in the lovely stuff with the industrial raspberry and cherry and whatnot. Dozens of such essential wonders be there! 

And aspartame? Nope. They replaced that with acesulfame potassium and sucralose. Can't go wrong.

And the Presidential smell? 

The President of the United States of America sells two. Smells. 

That back label text I quoted at the top has nothing to do with wine or Sauvignon blanc. Second glimpse I gave to the Trump Viognier, but nah, it's not that, either. It's actually the official note on his Trump Success perfume, which "captures the spirit of the driven man." 

To trump that the President then pokes Empire by Trump. 

I reckon he'd walk this in. I mean on top of the fragrance of the dry cleaning, the wig dust and sprays, the anti-perspirants and shoe polish and the friggin pore putty and collar starch and toothpaste and the canker of petrochem poison cleaners and aromatics from a clammy life in his own endless airless hotels and shit knows, he'd, as he told GQ,  "just spray my neck and behind the ears". 

Empire's tasting sheet says it's "the perfect accessory for the confident man determined to make his mark with passion, perseverance and drive. For those who aspire to create their own empire through personal achievement, this dynamic scent is both compelling and leaves a lasting impression." 

So what does it actually friggin smell of, Nostril Damus? 

"Bold notes of peppermint, spicy chai and a hint of apple demand attention." 

I have little idea of the current fashion template for ambient aromatics in impossibly expensive rooms, but I suspect if there was a country which could deliver your majesty a secure chamber with no particular aroma other than neutral expensive comfort Singapore will be doing it perfectly. 

Australia is terrible. Last time I attended the Federal Parliament House to address issues of booze on behalf of the proho FARE mob, I could map the borderlines of the dozens of individual cleaners right from my Kangarilla cab through the big flying cigar full of scented conservatives and the torrid disenfectants of Canberra airport through another cab to the parliament. 

From its front doors to innermost sanctums, I could tell in the parliament house where different shifts, moppers or monitors had agreed to draw or smudge the borders of their territories by their personal aromatic changes. You know, floor wax, wall scrub, bleach ... the many ways the same droll issue could be painted on: some of it was pure Euclid; other bits more Macchiavellian pointillism, where the best ensure nothing is what it is. I felt like some kind of cyborg sniffer mandog. Couldn't help it. 

Round at the National Gallery one hit the aromatics of somebody trying to bleach out the smell of a ten-foot slab of dribbling meat on a hook by Francis Bacon mixed up with all the lovely ridiculous fractals of Blue Poles until director Ronnie Radford swooped up like the president in a haircut and a double-breaster and I'll never know what combo he bore but Jesus. 

"What a surprise!" he said. 

Anyway there's lot to be said about aroma as public amenity and I gotta say one of things that makes it very easy for me to avoid the cities is the insult of the stinks. In his 2012 GQ interview with Andrew Richdale, Trump said "there are things you don't want to mention. In terms of fragrance, sometimes I smell things on people that are just terrible - things that make you not like them ... I have fired people that, and maybe it wasn't the main reason, didn't exactly smell good." 

Which is why it was very important that the best scientists we can entice shoulda been testing and sampling that room where the President and the Supreme Leader Eternal General Secretary sit down to chew the fat. Measure, sample and archive that air, and science the fuck out of it before during and after. Off to the skunkworks for intense data breakdown. Gimme the list of stinks, I'll do the backlabels and we'll award a tender to winemakers who can make wine to best match the texts at our price. 

I always wanted to give air currency. This one would have been the easiest and the first one off, never to be repeated. 

Depending on how the dudes react to the chemborg pheromania Singapore and whoever have pumped into that room tonight, I would dearly hope to soon announce my partner and backer in this new aromatic venture would be mainly Kim Yo-jong. Yo-jong has access to quite a lot of upland, right up to white pointy bits. All going well, we'd have a lovely Trump skwillion floor wedding factory swaying right up the middle of it. Wait til you see the labels. 

Chinese investors should call Yo-jong direct. She knows the ropes.