TikiChris blogs his view of last night’s wine-tasting fun. Plus, he’s got a whole bunch of pics on Flickr; trust me, I had more fun than this one implies.

The smart folks at Qype continue to keep us obsessive reviewers sweet. Last month it was a special chocolate-tasting event; last night it was a wine-tasting event.

LVMH (the group that contains luxury brands like Moët Hennessy and Louis Vuitton) held a showcase of some of their New World wine producers in the swanky 19th-century event venue Il Bottaccio in Belgravia. It’s a really nice old building, well-suited for an event associated with luxury.

The six wine producers set up booths and we walked around and tried each. A representative from each winemaker was on hand to talk about their wines, locations, and production methods. Some had a bit of fun with their displays. Many had bits of food that were meant to accompany the wine-tasting.

I tend to prefer Old World wines so last night was a good event for me. Naturally there were some things I liked and some things I didn’t.

My non-professional thoughts on the wines being showcased:

• Terrazas de los Andes - An Argentinian producer that focuses on growing particular grapes at particular altitudes (thus Terrazas, or “terraces”). Their reserve Malbec was quite good, and was in fact the favourite red of much of our group. They had little snacks to go with each wine - a tiny spoon of crème brûlée for their Chardonnay, a speck of duck for the Malbec, and a bit of beef for their Cab Sav - that came in a little clear plastic chest of drawers.
• Green Point - From the Yarra Valley in Victoria, Australia. Their station was simply a long bar with stools, but it was very popular with the crowd. When we finally wedged in we found that they were making a big fuss about their carefully-paired tasters to accompany the wine. We all liked their non-vintage rosé, which came with some fruit jelly and foam in a shotglass. I really liked their reserve Shiraz (which came with - get this - a spoon of goat cheese foam with honey and cracked black pepper); it was probably my favourite wine of the evening.
• Cape Mentelle - From Margaret River in Western Australia. I didn’t care for their Sauvignon Blanc Semillon 2007, but I did find their 2006 a bit more complex and enjoyable (although they don’t export it, I’m told). Their Cab Sav was okay. Their display was made to look like a beach, with wooden tables on a pile of sand, gauzy curtains surrounding, and with ocean sounds piped in.
• Cloudy Bay - From Marlborough, New Zealand. Plenty of whites, the only one of which I liked was their Te Koko.
• Newton - A Napa Valley, California, producer. Their set-up was behind a short hedge maze. Once through there was a mini-oasis: a large table, some benches, and a Chinese gate (a replica of a larger one at the vineyard back in the US; one of the founders is Chinese). They made a big deal of their “unfiltered” process. Maybe they should start filtering, because I didn’t care for any of their wines. They did have the best snacks, though, with fresh strawberries, currants, cashews, and delicious honey-roasted walnuts.
• Cheval des Andes - The last one we tried. They were the only producer set up on their own, in the library downstairs, giving them the air, at least, of exclusivity. This was an Argentinian wine, although produced in some sort of cultural joint venture with French producers Cheval Blanc. Their 2004 Malbec-Cabernet Sauvignon blend was very tasty.

It was definitely a fun experience. After a glass or two, you don’t mind being a group of six regular folks shuffling between the upper-crust types who actually paid £60 to hum and haw about how much pomegrante they can detect in the 2006. I certainly appreciate Qype getting us in. In addition to being a fun event, it was fun to hang with Rob and Andrew from Qype, and with my fellow free-event recipients (most of whom I’ve met at blogger meetups) Shiny Gemma, Annie Mole, Guernican, and TikiChris.

EDIT: here it is written up on the Qype blog, with a few pics of me looking weird.

My iPod shuffled up some excellent tunes for my morning commute. Check out this random playlist:

• “Stockholm Syndrome” by Muse
• “Ode to O-Ren Ishii” by RZA
• “Somebody Have Mercy” by Colin James
• “Cutting It Fine” by Asia
• “Oh, Lonesome Me” by Neil Young
• “Reckless Life” by Guns ‘n’ Roses
• “18 Ghosts II” by Nine Inch Nails
• “Hotel California” by The Eagles
• “I Should Know” by Dirty Vegas
• “The Complainer’s Boogie Woogie” by William Clarke
• “True Fine Love” by Steve Miller Band
• “Salt the Stings” by The Duke Spirit
• “Calling Elvis” by Dire Straits
• “Mother” by Pink Floyd
• “We’ll Meet Again” by Johnny Cash
• “Sometimes I Feel So Lonely” by Primal Scream

Today is one of those days when computers definitely do not make me more efficient.

However, it looks like the critics agree with my assessment of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds the other night (he did three nights in a row, so they might technically be speaking of different nights, but you know what I mean).

• Independent
• Guardian

It’s gloriously sunny and warm today. Not only have I relaxed and had fun, I’ve got a lot of stuff - shopping, a bit of yardwork - done, too. Maybe this will be the spring and summer to make up for the last two crappy ones we’ve had.

Last night I saw one of the coolest men on a stage anywhere: Nick Cave, with the Bad Seeds.

I got to the Hammersmith Apollo early enough to catch first act Barry Adamson. Adamson was a Bad Seed for a while and played bass on four of the band’s early albums. Since then he’s made solo albums and done work for film soundtracks (Lost Highway, for instance). Adamson’s dub-tinged jazz songs are as cheezy as they are swinging. I’ve got his last album, Back to the Cat, and it’s pretty cool. The cheese and swing were there live, too, and I think Adamson’s taken dancing lessons from Nick Cave. It was a fun set, and I probably liked “Spend A Little Time” best (I uploaded it to the Box here on The Plummet Onions the other day, scroll down to find it).

But of course Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were the main attraction. I’ve always liked Nick Cave but I never became a big fan until the dual albums Abbatoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus came out a few years back: I love those albums. I loved his garage-band Grinderman album (and the show I saw them do in that incarnation last year). Returning as the Bad Seeds, new album Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! continues the awesome album streak. Really, their latest albums have been phenomenal, I think.

And man, they did not disappoint live last night. The band rocked and Nick Cave was awesome. He is just too cool. Far cooler than any middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a dubious mustache has a right to be. He strides the stage and flails his gangly arms and legs about like a goth-blues Mick Jagger. Cave writes like Bob Dylan and Tom Waits - wry and complex and Biblical and literate - but he’s a confident Thin Black Duke on stage. And his songs rock a lot more.

They played a lot of songs from Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! of course since it’s new, but that’s fine with me. They pulled out a few classics, as well, which we gladly sang along to. I was just three bodies back from the front of the stage so I had perfect seats to watch Nick grab us, hold us fast, and do the twist until we returned the favour.

Nick kicked over his lyrics stand in the very first song, though he managed to recover them for the most part. The rest of the band pretty much just sits back and does their thing, the only other visual oddity being Warren Ellis with his wild beard and tiny guitars. Two drummers gives you the ability to sound very heavy live, too.

I’m not sure whether the guy in the crowd who kept yelling, “Blixa!” during the set wasn’t aware that he left the group in 2003 or whether he was just an asshole.

The highlights from the night were the crowd loving “Red Right Hand”, Nick’s bile during “We Call Upon the Author”, one of my favourite cuts “The Lyre of Orpheus” (although - whether for brevity or from forgetfulness - he left out a few verses, including my two of my very favourites*), and the closing, vicious version of folk-blues standard “Stagger Lee”. But everything sounded really, really good. The show was just completely cool.

I’m pretty sure this is the correct setlist:

• Night of the Lotus Eaters
• Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
• Tupelo
• Today’s Lesson
• Red Right Hand
• Midnight Man
• Your Funeral, My Trial
• Deanna
• Lie Down Here and Be My Girl
• Hold On to Yourself
• Nobody’s Baby Now
• We Call Upon the Author
• Papa Won’t Leave You Henry
• More News From Nowhere

1st Encore

• Far From Me
• The Lyre of Orpheus
• Get Ready For Love
• Hard On For Love
• The Ship Song

2nd Encore

• Moonland
• Stagger Lee

*They are:

Orpheus strummed till his fingers bled
He hit a G minor 7
He woke up God from a deep, deep sleep
God was a major player in heaven

The well went down very deep
Very deep went down the well
The well went down so very deep
Well, the well went down to hell

Tom Waits says he’s coming to Europe.

BE SPECIFIC!

New, bike-commuting London mayor Boris Johnson - who will henceforth be referred to on The Plummet Onions by his latest nickname, Bojo - has made his first mark by outlawing the drinking of alcohol on London’s transport systems. No more cans of lager on the tube or bus from the beginning of next month.

This is the first move in a plan Bojo made very clear during his campaign: to be tough on London crime using the model that New York City used in the mid-’90s. That is, if you’re tough on the minor crimes, on the smaller anti-social behaviours, it removes the type of environment that results in bigger crimes. Bojo’s so keen to follow in NYC’s kinder, gentler footsteps that that city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, will be here on Friday to have a face-to-face with our new Etonian leader.

I wonder about this direction for two reasons:

1. I’m not sure that the cause-and-effect of the broken-window policy in NYC is true. There seems to be debate about how much was due to those policies, how much was due to larger societal trends, better crime management and statistics tools, or even the controversial Freakonomics legal abortion link. Getting nitpicky with public behaviour may not change overall crime.
2. I’m not sure that London is really that crime-ridden. Of course if you read The Sun or any other conservative tabloid you think it is. Bojo ran on a tough-against-crime platform, and he won, so some people must believe it. Crime stats are hard to summarize, since there are many types of crime, and they can go up and down in different areas. But I haven’t seen any attempts at all to do such a summary: just heated reported of any particular knife crime or shooting and lusty cries that something must be done to prevent them ever again. My eyeballing of several types of crime in several boroughs over several years from the Met’s stats page leads me to believe that overall crime may not be that bad to begin with and may be getting better in many (most?) areas.

That aside, Bojo may not have thought out some of the more obvious implications of this no-transport-drinking policy, though, as explained by Rail Maritime & Transport union leader Bob Crow:

Perhaps the mayor will come out with his underpants on over his trousers like Superman one Saturday to show us how it should be done, and maybe tell a crowd of Liverpool supporters that they can’t drink on the train.

To be fair, though, I think his plan to provide more weekend activities for city youth is an admirable idea. I do believe that having something to do (which makes you meet people and develop goals) is essential for kids’ development.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN, Switzerland, is going to fire up this summer. I’m very excited, and much more optimistic than the guy who - as reported recently on Mental Floss - is suing CERN because he believes that their experiments might create a black hole that destroys the planet.

Check out that Mental Floss link, above, for a superb 15-minute video from physicist Brian Cox about the LHC and what mysteries of the universe they hope it will reveal: namely, the confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson and possible verification of supersymmetry. The bottom of that page also has some nice photos.

Sexy science, for sure.

From the brilliant Language Log: