Friday, January 23, 2009

DO YA THINK I'M SEXY?


Well, Rod Stewart did - someone should have told him he was dreaming.
There's something a bit off-putting about ageing rock stars, film stars, businessmen and politicians trying to look sexy and cool.
Last night I saw Leonard Cohen and his supporting musicians and it was the sexiest show I've ever seen.
Cohen is 75 years old. I loved my Dad who died at 80 but I never saw him as sexy.
Cohen and the beautifully balanced, silky smooth and honey sweet music from and behind him was very sexy. Right from the beginning the warm sound, underpinned by some superb bass lines (yes Bass!)and structural percussion created a platform for the other great musicians to (in an understated way) put in highlights.
Once again I thought it was sexy and some of the geezers up on stage were even older than me.
This show was a classic and I hope that a really good DVD comes from the tour. It was possibly the best I've ever seen.

The wine? Really, the music was so great that who cared about the wine. just as well I guess as the offerings at the Vector Arena are very disappointing. It is a Fosters contract so punters have to drink Carlton beers and Matua and Shingle Peak wines. Nothing wrong with Matua top wines but these are not on offer. (Aotea Centre have a Pernod Ricard contract and they offer some of the top Montana wines).We had Shingle Peak Chardonnay which was overpriced and ordinary.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

CHAMPAGNE ON A STICK


We had Lynn's birthday bash last night. We drank mostly Champagne and the majority of that from magnums. In our enthusiastic imbibing of Lanson Black Label NV Brut (with one magnum of 1988 vintage) we forgot about the magnum of 1979 vintage Lanson that had been put in the freezer to rapidly chill (sacrilege I know but needs must). This morning, of course, we discovered it had burst (see pic). The frozen sorbet was a very good 'hair of the dog'.
I was reminded of another time when I had seen 'burst' Champagne. This was a container load (about 750 dozen) that in transit some idiot had plugged in the freezing apparatus so that when it arrived and we opened the container doors out spilled broken cases and burst bottles of lovely NV, Vintage and Rose Champagne - all frozen. The whole lot had to be destroyed.