Month: November 2016

It is probably not true but I have the feeling that it is: whenever I go for dinner in a nice restaurant and want a glass of wine I somehow trip a switch, it seems, that sets an elaborate ritual in motion. First, the sommelier appears. You can tell him or her by the necklace with the silver spoon hanging from it, a time-honored guild symbol. The sommelier does not bring any wine. He or she merely starts the ritual, beginning with the presentation of the wine list. It is usually a document of several sheets of parchment, folio size and bound in leather, a volume that would not be out of place in a monastery library. I have never yet recognized any of the wines enumerated in any list but I am not proud of my oenological ignorance. I know better. One does not mock the wine tasting, or any other society unless one is part of it, Oscar Wilde warned us. The truth is that the finer points of drinking wine were not part of my upbringing.

Anyway. Looking at the list even I can tell that I am in the presence of the right stuff. The prices tell it all. As a rule of thumb I would say that the average price of wine by the glass tends to be double or triple of what I pay at the Safeway market for the entire bottle. I have never yet paid nineteen dollars for a bottle of dry red but I have paid that much for a glass. A big glass, containing just a few drops. At least that is how I remember it.

The next step in the ritual is a friendly chat with the wine steward. Since I do not know any wines by name I cannot be specific when the steward asks me what kind of wine I like. The question stomps me. As Professor Einstein would have said, “now I must a little think”. All I can meaningfully and honestly say is that it should be red and that I don’t like it too sweet. Some eighty-eight different wines on the list will fit into this category. Gracious God. I cannot say, “Bring me the cheapest”, can I?  So I ask to be instructed.

Well, talk about Pandora’s box. We begin with the structure of the wine. I am not kidding. Structure!  Do I like a full bodied wine? Being a man who has an eye for feminine beauty I have trouble with that terminology in connection with what I drink for dinner. How about acidity? I had already mentioned that it, the wine, should not be sweet. Well, then, let us talk about flavors instead. “How about this Dom Shalom, new harvest. A fine wine, medium in acidity, plenty of body but not full” or words to that effect, the steward suggests. “A taste of mostly cherry and blueberry with a touch of vanilla and rosemary”. What next, I think to myself, broccoli?

“Then there would be this Domaine Chapeau Vieux. First class wine with rich flavor of dark cherry and blackberry and a profile of extra long finish on your mid-palate and beyond; and then there is also a George Fumble merlot, very nice. Like so many merlots a little hard to put in any category as far as structure and profile are concerned, but with a healthy down-to-earth flavor of lemon and coconut with notes of Bartlett pears and plums, and spice”. After such a monologue, delivered rapidly in one breath, my sommelier usually comes up for air.

I use this pause to interrupt the spiel. “I like a fruity wine” I interject. I have of course no idea what I mean by this but it always produces a decision. Never fails. “You should try the Hohenstauffen Trollinger Übernberg, Zuspätlese 2016 (German wines have a lot of pedigree [author’s note]).  A jewel of a light red with jamlike fruit flavors, a well-crafted balanced wine”. “Sold!” I say. We shake hands and part like old friends.

The last step of the ritual is not easy either. They bring the wine. I must study the label. Corroboration of authenticity is the proper term, or should be if it isn’t. Now the cork comes out and I must sniff it. It smells of cork and wine. No surprise, really. Now a bit of the Trollinger is poured in my glass and swirled around. Then I must put my nose in it, just the glass, not the wine, and take a sip. “Smells good”, I say. “Thank God no peppermint, not a hint of it”. The waiter politely ignores my quip, fills my glass, and if we are on a cruise, writes my stateroom number on the label, then leaves with a bow.

Funny enough the ritual invariably produces the same result: I get a good glass of wine that goes well with anything I might order.

I also notice that the ancient Romans were wise when they declared that in vino veritas. For if the truth must be told, I always wish I could have a second glass. I mustn’t though. Cardiologist’s orders. Medice, quare semper spoileas gaudium meum? Answer me that, Romans!                   © 2016 by Herbert H. Hoffman

 

For a concept so utterly precise, “time” is surprisingly absurd. Not long ago I was on a plane that left Los Angeles at ten o’clock and got to Miami at eight. At first that sounded right. But then it didn’t, either. I mean, we left at 10 and arrived two hours earlier, at 8? Eight is less than 10, no? We made it in (-2) hours? On the way home we left Miami at 12. The pilot announced that flight time would be 5 hours and consequently (?) we landed in Los Angeles at 3 o’clock. Can it be that the flight actually took 3 minus 12, or (-9) hours?  Descartes cannot be wrong. Must be me, then.

What happened, of course, is this: people mess things up, whenever possible. It began with the invention of the clock. Astronomers had already decided long ago that the earth rotates in a space of time which they mentally chopped up into twenty-four equal periods that they then called hours. Then somebody invented the clock. By accident, ignorance, or lazyness he designed a lovely clock face which, however, covered only half the earth’s rotation per day, i.e. 12 hours. How do I know that the inventor was a man? Simple. It could not have been a woman because women can’t afford to be so nonchalant about time. They must get breakfast ready and ship the kids out to school on time in the morning. They can ‘t just ignore the afternoon either because they have to cook and do their ironing. They need every one of those 24 hours.

Over the centuries we got used to that half-a-day clock face that tells us that the day goes from 12 o’clock to 12 o’clock. The numbers themselves are correct. They are both positive integers. In fact, they are the same two positive integers. But they do not stand for the same things. They do not say what they mean. The March Hare tried to explain the importance of that to Alice. But, like us, she did not get it either.

Stubborn as we humans are, we began to pretend that one “12” actually means 0 (zero), the beginning of the day. Others, looking at the case from the other side, eventually added a modifier to the number and called it “12 o’clock midnight”, the Witching Hour, the end of the day, or  some other verbal description of what the first “12” means, other than the number 12.

No matter how you look at it, there is a second “12”. It is the very same “12” and it also is different. At the same time. Shades of quantum mechanics. But it does not designate the same time as the first. Thank God we found a word for it or we would never get our lunch at noon.

At Nassau in the Bahamas, where I attempted to relax from my trials and tribulations, I was so relieved when lunch was offered at 12, dinner at 19, and bed time was at 23:00 hours, Eastern time. In Nassau it is perfectly clear what the numbers mean. At home things run on Pacific time, three time zones away. I find it amusing that the international standard 24 hour clock has not reached the West Coast yet. Thus a person eating  something at the same moment in Los Angeles would have had lunch at 9 (i.e.12-3), dinner at 4 (19-3 {19 being 7}), and gone to bed at 8 (23-3). Except that just then Los Angeles had given up daylight savings time and set the clock back an hour. Nassau had not. So our West Coast times  would have been lunch at 8, dinner at 3, and bedtime at 7, by the clock, before mental AM/PM interpretation.

Makes me wonder what time it really is. Or if time really is, if time can be. Or which of us is crazy, me or the philosopher (Martin Heidegger) who wrote a book entitled Being and Time. 

(c) 2016 by Herbert H. Hoffman