Results tagged “John Huston” from Mist Net

The area where I live is dotted with wineries these days, so for an excursion yesterday afternoon I went to a tasting at one. These things can be dangerous: You go, they pour you a glass, and if you don't reflexively spew it out and choke and retch like it was ammonia, you'll feel under some obligation to buy a bottle or two. But this place—it was just a few miles away, too—was different in that you pay ten bucks and they give you a souvenir glass, four reasonable noggins of different wines they make, and four different cheeses made locally so that the wine has something to wash down. When you pay for a tasting, there's no guilt involved. The tasting room is in an old farm building, stone walls and all that, and you can see the vines (well, the vine stocks, it's winter) out the window. They're used to dealing with people of all different levels of knowledge, and all different levels of pretension, of that I'm sure. I made a modest comment about a flavor I thought I detected, and the guy responded with a sort of noncommittal nod. I'm sure that if I'd said "Do I detect a note of singed raccoon fur?" I'd have gotten the same nod—he must practice it. The wines turned out to be perfectly tasty, a little pricey, but that's how it is with itsy wineries where small production is part of the value you're paying for. It's local, which is fun—I could walk there in a couple of hours, which I might do for a laugh some time—and it's rare, which is sort of okay too, and they concentrate on Italian grapes and styles, which are a little neglected in the wine world IMHO. All in all, a perfectly pleasant way to spend the afternoon. I bought a bottle of their cheapest. Fact is, I'm what's euphemistically called a "value shopper," and if I were any more of a value shopper I'd probably qualify for food stamps. In a properly ordered society you'd get government assistance to assure a good supply of solid table wine in the house for subsistence purposes, but we're just not there yet. So most days I'll have to drink good, solid, tasty wine produced on industrial scale in Australia or California or wherever, and have locally produced wine once in a great while, as a luxury. Wine that comes to me on a boat from halfway around the world is cheap, and wine made down the street is very nearly prohibitively expensive. Go figure!

Of the three DVDs  I grabbed at the library to entertain myself and the cat with tonight, I didn't notice at the time, it was a coincidence, but two of them were directed by John Huston. (Moby Dick and The Man Who Would Be King, to be specific.) If you want to watch a good film, get something by John Huston. You can't go wrong. Very, very cool guy, John Huston.