Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
First two eliminated?
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
Tom T defence?
Jenrick - North Ireland.
Decent idea for Tom, and Defence is a Big Job in the Conservative mindset.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
Defence is also a big job in current circumstances, and has been quite well done on a cross-party basis.
Tom T sounds suitable to me.
What about Ag & Fish (whatever it is called now) for Generick Bob, so he can talk about pork bellies? Newark is mainly rural, after all.
Please be advised that between 1 and 2pm today I bet the following
LOW RISK: STATE: MINNESOTA: 1/14 Kamela to win: £200 bet LOW RISK: STATE: VIRGINIA: 2/17 Kamela to win: £500 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: ARIZONA: 2/9 Reuben Gallego to win (D): £200 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: MONTANA: 1/5 Tim Sheehy to win (R): £100
Total waged: £1000 (fuuuck) Total returns if all win: 558.82+214.29+244.44+120 = £1,137.55 Potential profit: £137.55 Potential loss: £1000.
Hmm. As you may have noticed I lost track during the betting and bet £500 not £250 on Virginia as intended. Lots of talking and bingy sounds, brain got confused. Doesn't look like a good idea now you say it out loud. Ah well, don't walk into the shop with money if you don't want to spend it: we will see what happens.
#BigBoyPants
Virginia is pretty damn safe, though.
If it were me, I'd just have stuck £100 on Georgia. More potential profit; downside £100.
Yes, I don't really see the point of betting a significant sum (£1,000) to win a pittance that you could burn in the pub in a few hours. That said, I find the betting practices of @Viewcode bizarre at best – this is the guy that insists on putting his own bets on in cash at a betting shop then whines when he can't get a bet on because either a) the shop won't lay the bet and/or b) he lacks the time to actually go to the shop.
Why do you think I need or want your approval?
I appreciate you disapprove of the way I gamble, but I do not come here to ask for your approval and I do not need it. I record my betting here to lay down an audit trail so I can prove to others that I bet X at time T on event Y. What you do is up to you.
Bet how you like, but whining publicly about the negative consequences of your somewhat niche model is ... very odd.
The Stride and Patel appointments make absolutely no sense to me except as statements of lack of Tory talent. Neither of them would have been trouble on the back benches. Both are the past. What do they bring to the front bench?
Unity.
Together they bring 30 MPs who were willing to back them. Believe it or not that’s almost a quarter of the parliamentary party.
I think appointing fellow leadership contenders isn’t a terrible move at this time. If Badenoch tried to make a power play purely with her allies, it doesn’t shore up her position in parliament.
There’s much I will be criticising Badenoch and the Tories for I’m sure, but actually I think this is quite a good bit of tactical realpolitik.
But would unity have been affected if Patel and Stride had not been given those jobs? I don't know much about either but they don't strike me as trouble. Stride as Shadow Chancellor is particularly peculiar to my eyes.
They might not have been, but their backers might.
I think you’re underestimating the Machiavellian tendencies of the Tories also by the way…
Badenoch isn’t going to want her first year or two in office beset by people sniping that she’s not taking on board all arms of the party.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
You don't half get worked up about the fine details of people's opinions on things. It's an S curve, as is the case with almost all consumer goods. There is a bigger difference in quality between the average £5 and £15 bottle than there is between a £50 and £60 bottle.
Because I have some involvement in the wine world I know what drives price point and a significant chunk of that is cost. Cost is partly to do with the amount of care and attention lavished on a wine - which is reflected in quality of the product - but it's also partly to do with rarity, which in turn is down to yields and economies of scale. Put simply, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a bottle of decent wine in South East England, or on the sheer slopes of the Northern Rhone, than it is in the Marne Valley or the Napa Valley.
And brand is absolutely important. One only has to look at the pricing of the trendy "natural wine" category to see this. Decidedly bog standard wines a lot of them, but no sulphur and no filtration and you're suddenly opening up a different market. And the opposite is true: see the gross under-valuation of say Beaujolais or Vouvray.
I'm not getting worked up, I'm discussing. I simply don't believe that Leon's MW said, or meant, it's all bollocks over £50.
And I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. Scarcity is of course important as there are more Blue Nun hectares than Le Montrachet and even there the selection process, as I have no doubt you are aware, is rigorous for the grand vin.
But I think you and I are talking about brand in a different way. Brand is important for eg British customers (think Jacob's Creek or all those ghastly-named aussie wines like "The Guv'nor"). That is different from an eg Comte Lafon or Drouhin or some other well-known negoce wine or indeed the various chateaux or houses where the brand success follows the quality, rather than being designed to catch peoples' attention on the shelves at Waitrose.
And as for English wine yes you absolutely are operating at a disadvantage vs other climates and hence I think that's why it has struggled. There's a reason why there are more wine-producing regions that aren't in or near the UK so the care and attention you provide to make your wines can often not be worth the premium vs wines from a more benign (for wine) climate. Them's just the breaks.
All of which comes down to my central proposition that more expensive wines aren't just some marketing gimmick to fool the wine-drinking public.
My Master of Wine friend is called Tim. There, that’s a hint. There are only 400 odd MWs in the world
Also I never said there’s NO difference over £50 - I said the difference gets increasingly and speedily opaque, incremental and not-worth-the-money apart from status-seeking
I accept a good £500 bottle will likely be better than a good £50 bottle, at least to someone with a very refined palate. And perhaps that is you, and fair enough
To most people there will be no difference. However in a hotel anyone will notice the vast difference between a £500 a night hotel and a £50 a night hotel, and they will again note the huge difference between a £5000 a night hotel and a £500 a night
I’ve stayed in several £5000 a night hotel rooms. eg the Hemingway Suite at the Gritti Palace, Venice. Absolutely sublime. I will never forget it. If you’re loaded - go for it
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm very confident that I couldn't tell the difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £50 bottle.
I'm very confident that most others couldn't either in a blind taste test.
I accept that genuinely talented wine lovers do exist - but for others it's mainly a snobbery thing IMO.
Spending more than £50 on one bottle strikes me as obscene but I'm tight as well as wine-skeptic so maybe that's it.
I think I'd get 6 out of 10 in a blind taste test, so better than random but not enough for £40 difference from a shop - probably £100 difference eating out.
Any PBer who is actually interested in actual election activities (a dwindling minority?) is welcome to check out real-time web-cams posted by King County Elections in the great Evergreen State of Washington:
Presume you mean the FIRST webcam which is the Election Service Center (one of several across the county) were folks can come in person to register to vote, get replacement ballot (if they didn't get one in the mail OR misplaced it) and vote using techology designed to enable people with disabilities to cast their ballot.
However, there are over a dozen other webcams with views of drop-box ballots arriving at Election HQ warehouse, sorting, signature verification, ballot opening (AFTER sigs verified), etc., etc.
BTW (and maybe FYI) yours truly will be down at King Co Elections inn person - and on some of the webcams - for a few hours tomorrow, as observer for KC Democrats.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm very confident that I couldn't tell the difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £50 bottle.
I'm very confident that most others couldn't either in a blind taste test.
I accept that genuinely talented wine lovers do exist - but for others it's mainly a snobbery thing IMO.
Spending more than £50 on one bottle strikes me as obscene but I'm tight as well as wine-skeptic so maybe that's it.
Again, weird. Almost everything we do or consume is graded according to quality and priced accordingly.
From cars to hotels to coffee to whatnot. But not wine, apparently.
What a bizarre view on here. I appreciate it's out of peoples' comfort zone to think about it, there have been endless skits about wine snobs and associated vernacular, and most people are very happy with a £5-10 bottle from Aldi but that doesn't mean there isn't a whole world of "fine" wine out there which is very real and justified.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm very confident that I couldn't tell the difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £50 bottle.
I'm very confident that most others couldn't either in a blind taste test.
I accept that genuinely talented wine lovers do exist - but for others it's mainly a snobbery thing IMO.
Spending more than £50 on one bottle strikes me as obscene but I'm tight as well as wine-skeptic so maybe that's it.
I think I'd get 6 out of 10 in a blind taste test, so better than random but not enough for £40 difference from a shop - probably £100 difference eating out.
I once did a lager taste test with six selections and my supposedly refined beer-palette friend had a go. He not only failed to identify his supposed favourite lager but picked a non-alcoholic lager as best and was appalled when I told him. I think drinkers are influenced by other factors more than taste, e.g. the label and brand, as there is not much difference in taste as far as I can tell.
Patel is also really very good. If she didn't have the unfortunate, but natural, smirky look she'd possibly be Tory leader.
Really? What is good about her.
Just my view. If you're asking the question then you'll disagree, and the merits of Priti Patel or otherwise isn't really an enticing discussion point on the eve of the US election. So I'm sure you'll forgive me if we have this discussion another time.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm afraid to say that New World Pinot Noirs have rather spoiled my enjoyment of Red Burgundy. And I particularly find the price point of the more expensive Red Burgundies almost inexplicable.
By contrast, I find US Chardonnays - even really expensive ones - to be over-alcoholised shit. White Burgundy, by contrast, I tend to love. (With the exception of Merseult, which I've never really "got". And Chablis, because it's simply too expensive for average white wine.)
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm very confident that I couldn't tell the difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £50 bottle.
I'm very confident that most others couldn't either in a blind taste test.
I accept that genuinely talented wine lovers do exist - but for others it's mainly a snobbery thing IMO.
Spending more than £50 on one bottle strikes me as obscene but I'm tight as well as wine-skeptic so maybe that's it.
Again, weird. Almost everything we do or consume is graded according to quality and priced accordingly.
From cars to hotels to coffee to whatnot. But not wine, apparently.
What a bizarre view on here. I appreciate it's out of peoples' comfort zone to think about it, there have been endless skits about wine snobs and associated vernacular, and most people are very happy with a £5-10 bottle from Aldi but that doesn't mean there isn't a whole world of "fine" wine out there which is very real and justified.
I accept that, but I'm arguing that he proportion of the population that this covers is minute whereas the proportion that claim to be able to identify the different qualities is large.
The Stride and Patel appointments make absolutely no sense to me except as statements of lack of Tory talent. Neither of them would have been trouble on the back benches. Both are the past. What do they bring to the front bench?
Unity.
Together they bring 30 MPs who were willing to back them. Believe it or not that’s almost a quarter of the parliamentary party.
I think appointing fellow leadership contenders isn’t a terrible move at this time. If Badenoch tried to make a power play purely with her allies, it doesn’t shore up her position in parliament.
There’s much I will be criticising Badenoch and the Tories for I’m sure, but actually I think this is quite a good bit of tactical realpolitik.
But would unity have been affected if Patel and Stride had not been given those jobs? I don't know much about either but they don't strike me as trouble. Stride as Shadow Chancellor is particularly peculiar to my eyes.
They might not have been, but their backers might.
I think you’re underestimating the Machiavellian tendencies of the Tories also by the way…
Badenoch isn’t going to want her first year or two in office beset by people sniping that she’s not taking on board all arms of the party.
If you put unity first, you are not going to be able to face those hard truths that Badenoch has been talking about. How do you get consensus on a way forward with a Shadow Cabinet containing a One Nation Chancellor like Mel Stride and the Reform-adjacent Robert Jenrick?
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
You don't half get worked up about the fine details of people's opinions on things. It's an S curve, as is the case with almost all consumer goods. There is a bigger difference in quality between the average £5 and £15 bottle than there is between a £50 and £60 bottle.
Because I have some involvement in the wine world I know what drives price point and a significant chunk of that is cost. Cost is partly to do with the amount of care and attention lavished on a wine - which is reflected in quality of the product - but it's also partly to do with rarity, which in turn is down to yields and economies of scale. Put simply, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a bottle of decent wine in South East England, or on the sheer slopes of the Northern Rhone, than it is in the Marne Valley or the Napa Valley.
And brand is absolutely important. One only has to look at the pricing of the trendy "natural wine" category to see this. Decidedly bog standard wines a lot of them, but no sulphur and no filtration and you're suddenly opening up a different market. And the opposite is true: see the gross under-valuation of say Beaujolais or Vouvray.
I'm not getting worked up, I'm discussing. I simply don't believe that Leon's MW said, or meant, it's all bollocks over £50.
And I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. Scarcity is of course important as there are more Blue Nun hectares than Le Montrachet and even there the selection process, as I have no doubt you are aware, is rigorous for the grand vin.
But I think you and I are talking about brand in a different way. Brand is important for eg British customers (think Jacob's Creek or all those ghastly-named aussie wines like "The Guv'nor"). That is different from an eg Comte Lafon or Drouhin or some other well-known negoce wine or indeed the various chateaux or houses where the brand success follows the quality, rather than being designed to catch peoples' attention on the shelves at Waitrose.
And as for English wine yes you absolutely are operating at a disadvantage vs other climates and hence I think that's why it has struggled. There's a reason why there are more wine-producing regions that aren't in or near the UK so the care and attention you provide to make your wines can often not be worth the premium vs wines from a more benign (for wine) climate. Them's just the breaks.
All of which comes down to my central proposition that more expensive wines aren't just some marketing gimmick to fool the wine-drinking public.
My Master of Wine friend is called Tim. There, that’s a hint. There are only 400 odd MWs in the world
Also I never said there’s NO difference over £50 - I said the difference gets increasingly and speedily opaque, incremental and not-worth-the-money apart from status-seeking
I accept a good £500 bottle will likely be better than a good £50 bottle, at least to someone with a very refined palate. And perhaps that is you, and fair enough
To most people there will be no difference. However in a hotel anyone will notice the vast difference between a £500 a night hotel and a £50 a night hotel, and they will again note the huge difference between a £5000 a night hotel and a £500 a night
I’ve stayed in several £5000 a night hotel rooms. eg the Hemingway Suite at the Gritti Palace, Venice. Absolutely sublime. I will never forget it. If you’re loaded - go for it
If it’s the Tim I think it is then he’s a very good communicator. I subscribe to his blog.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
You don't half get worked up about the fine details of people's opinions on things. It's an S curve, as is the case with almost all consumer goods. There is a bigger difference in quality between the average £5 and £15 bottle than there is between a £50 and £60 bottle.
Because I have some involvement in the wine world I know what drives price point and a significant chunk of that is cost. Cost is partly to do with the amount of care and attention lavished on a wine - which is reflected in quality of the product - but it's also partly to do with rarity, which in turn is down to yields and economies of scale. Put simply, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a bottle of decent wine in South East England, or on the sheer slopes of the Northern Rhone, than it is in the Marne Valley or the Napa Valley.
And brand is absolutely important. One only has to look at the pricing of the trendy "natural wine" category to see this. Decidedly bog standard wines a lot of them, but no sulphur and no filtration and you're suddenly opening up a different market. And the opposite is true: see the gross under-valuation of say Beaujolais or Vouvray.
I'm not getting worked up, I'm discussing. I simply don't believe that Leon's MW said, or meant, it's all bollocks over £50.
And I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. Scarcity is of course important as there are more Blue Nun hectares than Le Montrachet and even there the selection process, as I have no doubt you are aware, is rigorous for the grand vin.
But I think you and I are talking about brand in a different way. Brand is important for eg British customers (think Jacob's Creek or all those ghastly-named aussie wines like "The Guv'nor"). That is different from an eg Comte Lafon or Drouhin or some other well-known negoce wine or indeed the various chateaux or houses where the brand success follows the quality, rather than being designed to catch peoples' attention on the shelves at Waitrose.
And as for English wine yes you absolutely are operating at a disadvantage vs other climates and hence I think that's why it has struggled. There's a reason why there are more wine-producing regions that aren't in or near the UK so the care and attention you provide to make your wines can often not be worth the premium vs wines from a more benign (for wine) climate. Them's just the breaks.
All of which comes down to my central proposition that more expensive wines aren't just some marketing gimmick to fool the wine-drinking public.
My Master of Wine friend is called Tim. There, that’s a hint. There are only 400 odd MWs in the world
Also I never said there’s NO difference over £50 - I said the difference gets increasingly and speedily opaque, incremental and not-worth-the-money apart from status-seeking
I accept a good £500 bottle will likely be better than a good £50 bottle, at least to someone with a very refined palate. And perhaps that is you, and fair enough
To most people there will be no difference. However in a hotel anyone will notice the vast difference between a £500 a night hotel and a £50 a night hotel, and they will again note the huge difference between a £5000 a night hotel and a £500 a night
I’ve stayed in several £5000 a night hotel rooms. eg the Hemingway Suite at the Gritti Palace, Venice. Absolutely sublime. I will never forget it. If you’re loaded - go for it
So what is the difference between a £500 a night hotel and a £5,000 a night hotel. I mean there is a bed and a shower and those quick-draw minibars or someone bringing up a burger and chips (and presumably maidens to peel your grapes at the spenny place). But what is the difference.
Surely the difference is the very essence of marketing and branding.
Because hands up I can't tell the difference between a bed which cost £2,000 and one which cost £10,000 and that's sort of the heart of your hotel experience, isn't it.
Edit: and Tim really was just humouring you. Wherever he is a consultant will have 75% of its list at over £50.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
You don't half get worked up about the fine details of people's opinions on things. It's an S curve, as is the case with almost all consumer goods. There is a bigger difference in quality between the average £5 and £15 bottle than there is between a £50 and £60 bottle.
Because I have some involvement in the wine world I know what drives price point and a significant chunk of that is cost. Cost is partly to do with the amount of care and attention lavished on a wine - which is reflected in quality of the product - but it's also partly to do with rarity, which in turn is down to yields and economies of scale. Put simply, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a bottle of decent wine in South East England, or on the sheer slopes of the Northern Rhone, than it is in the Marne Valley or the Napa Valley.
And brand is absolutely important. One only has to look at the pricing of the trendy "natural wine" category to see this. Decidedly bog standard wines a lot of them, but no sulphur and no filtration and you're suddenly opening up a different market. And the opposite is true: see the gross under-valuation of say Beaujolais or Vouvray.
I'm not getting worked up, I'm discussing. I simply don't believe that Leon's MW said, or meant, it's all bollocks over £50.
And I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. Scarcity is of course important as there are more Blue Nun hectares than Le Montrachet and even there the selection process, as I have no doubt you are aware, is rigorous for the grand vin.
But I think you and I are talking about brand in a different way. Brand is important for eg British customers (think Jacob's Creek or all those ghastly-named aussie wines like "The Guv'nor"). That is different from an eg Comte Lafon or Drouhin or some other well-known negoce wine or indeed the various chateaux or houses where the brand success follows the quality, rather than being designed to catch peoples' attention on the shelves at Waitrose.
And as for English wine yes you absolutely are operating at a disadvantage vs other climates and hence I think that's why it has struggled. There's a reason why there are more wine-producing regions that aren't in or near the UK so the care and attention you provide to make your wines can often not be worth the premium vs wines from a more benign (for wine) climate. Them's just the breaks.
All of which comes down to my central proposition that more expensive wines aren't just some marketing gimmick to fool the wine-drinking public.
My Master of Wine friend is called Tim. There, that’s a hint. There are only 400 odd MWs in the world
Also I never said there’s NO difference over £50 - I said the difference gets increasingly and speedily opaque, incremental and not-worth-the-money apart from status-seeking
I accept a good £500 bottle will likely be better than a good £50 bottle, at least to someone with a very refined palate. And perhaps that is you, and fair enough
To most people there will be no difference. However in a hotel anyone will notice the vast difference between a £500 a night hotel and a £50 a night hotel, and they will again note the huge difference between a £5000 a night hotel and a £500 a night
I’ve stayed in several £5000 a night hotel rooms. eg the Hemingway Suite at the Gritti Palace, Venice. Absolutely sublime. I will never forget it. If you’re loaded - go for it
At the other end Skiddaw House has no car access, no mains electricity, no phone, no mobile, no internet, and bunks; people beat a path to its door.
The Stride and Patel appointments make absolutely no sense to me except as statements of lack of Tory talent. Neither of them would have been trouble on the back benches. Both are the past. What do they bring to the front bench?
Unity.
Together they bring 30 MPs who were willing to back them. Believe it or not that’s almost a quarter of the parliamentary party.
I think appointing fellow leadership contenders isn’t a terrible move at this time. If Badenoch tried to make a power play purely with her allies, it doesn’t shore up her position in parliament.
There’s much I will be criticising Badenoch and the Tories for I’m sure, but actually I think this is quite a good bit of tactical realpolitik.
But would unity have been affected if Patel and Stride had not been given those jobs? I don't know much about either but they don't strike me as trouble. Stride as Shadow Chancellor is particularly peculiar to my eyes.
They might not have been, but their backers might.
I think you’re underestimating the Machiavellian tendencies of the Tories also by the way…
Badenoch isn’t going to want her first year or two in office beset by people sniping that she’s not taking on board all arms of the party.
If you put unity first, you are not going to be able to face those hard truths that Badenoch has been talking about. How do you get consensus on a way forward with a Shadow Cabinet containing a One Nation Chancellor like Mel Stride and the Reform-adjacent Robert Jenrick?
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm very confident that I couldn't tell the difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £50 bottle.
I'm very confident that most others couldn't either in a blind taste test.
I accept that genuinely talented wine lovers do exist - but for others it's mainly a snobbery thing IMO.
Spending more than £50 on one bottle strikes me as obscene but I'm tight as well as wine-skeptic so maybe that's it.
I think I'd get 6 out of 10 in a blind taste test, so better than random but not enough for £40 difference from a shop - probably £100 difference eating out.
I once did a lager taste test with six selections and my supposedly refined beer-palette friend had a go. He not only failed to identify his supposed favourite lager but picked a non-alcoholic lager as best and was appalled when I told him. I think drinkers are influenced by other factors more than taste, e.g. the label and brand, as there is not much difference in taste as far as I can tell.
At room temperature 99.99% of people can't tell the difference between red and white wine (or whisky and brandy).
That’s advice neither of them will heed. In the case of Trump that is regrettable. In the case of Harris that is a great thing as I’m not sure it’s well intentioned advice.
Tim Miller @Timodc Was just taping today’s pod with @BillKristol and it’s striking how disastrous Trump’s last 10 days have been. They had a playbook from 2016 of reining him in for the home stretch and he is just not able to execute it.
Can anyone, eg Topping, recommend a wine for £20 or less and I'l give it a go. £25 tops.
Not more than £25 though or I'll have to have a sit down.
LOL the 2x best red & white bargains around atm are both from Aldi. They have a 2020 Cru Bourgeois and a 2023 Macon Village both at under a tenner (under £9 actually). The claret you would find on other firms' lists at twice the price and the Macon although lighter is still top quality.
Can anyone, eg Topping, recommend a wine for £20 or less and I'l give it a go. £25 tops.
Not more than £25 though or I'll have to have a sit down.
LOL the 2x best red & white bargains around atm are both from Aldi. They have a 2020 Cru Bourgeois and a 2023 Macon Village both at under a tenner (under £9 actually). The claret you would find on other firms' lists at twice the price and the Macon although lighter is still top quality.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
You don't half get worked up about the fine details of people's opinions on things. It's an S curve, as is the case with almost all consumer goods. There is a bigger difference in quality between the average £5 and £15 bottle than there is between a £50 and £60 bottle.
Because I have some involvement in the wine world I know what drives price point and a significant chunk of that is cost. Cost is partly to do with the amount of care and attention lavished on a wine - which is reflected in quality of the product - but it's also partly to do with rarity, which in turn is down to yields and economies of scale. Put simply, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a bottle of decent wine in South East England, or on the sheer slopes of the Northern Rhone, than it is in the Marne Valley or the Napa Valley.
And brand is absolutely important. One only has to look at the pricing of the trendy "natural wine" category to see this. Decidedly bog standard wines a lot of them, but no sulphur and no filtration and you're suddenly opening up a different market. And the opposite is true: see the gross under-valuation of say Beaujolais or Vouvray.
I'm not getting worked up, I'm discussing. I simply don't believe that Leon's MW said, or meant, it's all bollocks over £50.
And I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. Scarcity is of course important as there are more Blue Nun hectares than Le Montrachet and even there the selection process, as I have no doubt you are aware, is rigorous for the grand vin.
But I think you and I are talking about brand in a different way. Brand is important for eg British customers (think Jacob's Creek or all those ghastly-named aussie wines like "The Guv'nor"). That is different from an eg Comte Lafon or Drouhin or some other well-known negoce wine or indeed the various chateaux or houses where the brand success follows the quality, rather than being designed to catch peoples' attention on the shelves at Waitrose.
And as for English wine yes you absolutely are operating at a disadvantage vs other climates and hence I think that's why it has struggled. There's a reason why there are more wine-producing regions that aren't in or near the UK so the care and attention you provide to make your wines can often not be worth the premium vs wines from a more benign (for wine) climate. Them's just the breaks.
All of which comes down to my central proposition that more expensive wines aren't just some marketing gimmick to fool the wine-drinking public.
My Master of Wine friend is called Tim. There, that’s a hint. There are only 400 odd MWs in the world
Also I never said there’s NO difference over £50 - I said the difference gets increasingly and speedily opaque, incremental and not-worth-the-money apart from status-seeking
I accept a good £500 bottle will likely be better than a good £50 bottle, at least to someone with a very refined palate. And perhaps that is you, and fair enough
To most people there will be no difference. However in a hotel anyone will notice the vast difference between a £500 a night hotel and a £50 a night hotel, and they will again note the huge difference between a £5000 a night hotel and a £500 a night
I’ve stayed in several £5000 a night hotel rooms. eg the Hemingway Suite at the Gritti Palace, Venice. Absolutely sublime. I will never forget it. If you’re loaded - go for it
At the other end Skiddaw House has no car access, no mains electricity, no phone, no mobile, no internet, and bunks; people beat a path to its door.
Reminds me of Moonhole on Bequia. It did have electricity, I think, but no windows or aircon or anything like that. Absolutely shocking and never again.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm afraid to say that New World Pinot Noirs have rather spoiled my enjoyment of Red Burgundy. And I particularly find the price point of the more expensive Red Burgundies almost inexplicable.
By contrast, I find US Chardonnays - even really expensive ones - to be over-alcoholised shit. White Burgundy, by contrast, I tend to love. (With the exception of Merseult, which I've never really "got". And Chablis, because it's simply too expensive for average white wine.)
White Burgundy is a good example of the impact of brand on wine pricing.
As most of you are aware I have a house in the Maconnais. The region makes chardonnays ranging from decent to really very good indeed (the latter mainly around Loché, Pouilly, Fuisse and Vinzelles as well as a few other spots). A favourite winemaker of mine was taking about the village domaines of Meursault and Montrachet. They can sell middle of the road plonk for 50 Euros a pop, whereas at that price you’re getting the very top Pouilly-Loché or Pouilly-Fuissé production.
They are both dismissive of the Maconnais, and fiercely suspicious: Pouilly Loché has been in the process of going for a Premier cru, which is majorly overdue, but because the Loché winemakers have proposed very strict rules on hand harvesting and organic viticulture the Cotes de Beaune establishment are thoroughly pissed off because it might create precedent.
How would you fund Unis if you don't allow them to increase fees? Genuine question?
They should have a genuine market. Charging economics students at LSE and Cambridge or law students at UCL and Oxford who will go on to earn a fortune as investment bankers, KCs and corporate lawyers the same as arts and humanities graduates at lower ranked universities who will earn average salaries at best if that is just absurd and always has been.
The higher the graduate earnings premium of the course the higher should be the fees
The level of the fees is largely irrelevant now, because the interest charged is greater than the the amount most people are paying it back.
They pay 9% of their marginal income past £25k. If they got the average maintenance loan and the standard fees level, then they'd start with nearly £55k of loan. Unless they are earning over £70k per year, they will be paying less than the interest on the loan and the principal will continue rising.
At this point, then if fees go up to £10,000 per year, or £15,000 per year, or £20,000 per year, or £100,000 per year, the net effect on the graduate is unchanged: they have 9% of their income above £25k per year deducted from their pay slip until the age at which they are exempted from further payments. This is 30 years after the first repayment due for those who started between 2012 and 2023, and 40 years for the poor sods who started in September 2023 and onwards.
Yeah, the system is a mess.
It is a mess. I think it was well intentioned but has gotten out of control. The original idea was that it wouldn't be a graduate tax because you could clear the debt, whereas a graduate tax would keep on being paid. But the practice of it, plus the interest has changed it rather fundamentally.
Sadly the best advice to an 18 year old, once established that they genuinely want to go on the HE either for learning or vocational (or both) reasons, is to entirely disregard how much you borrow and max out, because what you pay back will relate to earnings, not to the size of the debt.
This is especially true for those people (they do exist - O fortunatos nimium) who love learning and education but don't regard it as a springboard to wealth untold.
Best advice is
1) find a degree apprenticeship within the Civil Service 2) find a degree apprenticeship outside the Civil Service 3) go to uni...
Best advice for young people is go abroad. Uni fees are cheap in Europe, you'll learn another language. In US you can probably get a scholarship if you're good academically or at sports and you'll be in a country where salaries are much higher.
Not as easy as it used to be post Brexit. Worse it's getting harder - Holland (as one example) are insisting that all teaching will now be done in Dutch rather than English).
"Holland (as one example) are insisting that all teaching will now be done in Dutch rather than English"
do you have a link for that?
last time I looked there were still plenty of undergraduate courses available in English, and postgraduate English is the norm afaik
There's been a lot of controversy about it recently.
The new rules that are supposed to ensure that English is used less often as the language of instruction at research and applied science university courses in the Netherlands could become stricter, said Education Minister Eppo Bruins on Tuesday. The minister is pressing forward with a bill first introduced by his predecessor, Robbert Dijkgraaf, but Bruins said he wants to adjust the underlying regulations to prevent too many courses from being exempted from these rules.
The law is known as the Wet internationalisering in balans, or the Balanced Internationalization Act. The Cabinet wants the law to regulate that a maximum of one-third of the courses taken for credit in bachelor’s programmes be offered in a language other than Dutch.
While the minister has said he wants the law to improve Dutch language skills while countering what he sees as the anglicisation of education, he also wants to cut down on the number of foreign students enrolled in higher education in the Netherlands. “The large influx puts pressure on student housing, causes overcrowded lecture halls and high pressure on lecturers,” he explained.
Yes but that's a long way from "insisting that all teaching is in Dutch"
Jenrick been offered half the Cabinet jobs it seems..and turned them all down it seems..🤨🥴
BBC agrees. But there's always a but.
The BBC has also been told that Badenoch's leadership rival Robert Jenrick has been offered several roles in the shadow cabinet but is yet to accept one.
A Conservative source has said: "Kemi just doesn’t like Rob. She thinks his whole schtick about her and whether she has any policies has done her lasting damage with the Right and with Reform voters." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9n304z0x7o
Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
First two eliminated?
What prime jobs does that leave for Tom T and Robert J?
Tom T defence?
Jenrick - North Ireland.
Decent idea for Tom, and Defence is a Big Job in the Conservative mindset.
For Jenrick... If you offer him something too insulting, does he stomp off immediately, and is this desirable or not? The ballsy option would be shadow Home Secretary, but I'm not sure that would be wise.
Defence is also a big job in current circumstances, and has been quite well done on a cross-party basis.
Tom T sounds suitable to me.
What about Ag & Fish (whatever it is called now) for Generick Bob, so he can talk about pork bellies? Newark is mainly rural, after all.
Any orange groves in Newark?
England that is; certainly none in Newark, New Jersey! OR Newark, Arkansas or California or Delaware or Illinois or Indiana or Maryland or Missouri or (especially) Nebraska.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm very confident that I couldn't tell the difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £50 bottle.
I'm very confident that most others couldn't either in a blind taste test.
I accept that genuinely talented wine lovers do exist - but for others it's mainly a snobbery thing IMO.
Spending more than £50 on one bottle strikes me as obscene but I'm tight as well as wine-skeptic so maybe that's it.
I reckon most could, but not after the second bottle.
Can anyone, eg Topping, recommend a wine for £20 or less and I'l give it a go. £25 tops.
Not more than £25 though or I'll have to have a sit down.
I'd suggest, just looking through Laithwaites offerings:
Red - Altos de la Guardia Crianza Rioja 2021 - £16.99 as part of a mixed case (otherwise £18.99) White - Pieropan Soave Classico 2023 - £15.99 (otherwise £17.99) Rose - Whispering Angel Côtes de Provence Rosé 2023 - £17.99 (otherwise £22)
Stop tipping Jenrick for the Home Office or Justice. Jenrick can't go to the Home Office or Justice. His main leadership campaign pledge was leaving the ECHR! Badenoch can't appoint him! If she hasn't noticed this, then fine, but she's obviously noticed this. Come on.
Robert Jenrick has accepted the role of shadow justice secretary in Kemi Badenoch's new shadow cabinet
Badenoch offered him the role after a bitterly fought leadership contest
An ally of Jenrick said: 'Rob thinks the party needs to come together and take the fight to Labour. Unity could not be more important. He’s eager to expose Labour’s dreadful record on law and order'
The Stride and Patel appointments make absolutely no sense to me except as statements of lack of Tory talent. Neither of them would have been trouble on the back benches. Both are the past. What do they bring to the front bench?
Unity.
Together they bring 30 MPs who were willing to back them. Believe it or not that’s almost a quarter of the parliamentary party.
I think appointing fellow leadership contenders isn’t a terrible move at this time. If Badenoch tried to make a power play purely with her allies, it doesn’t shore up her position in parliament.
There’s much I will be criticising Badenoch and the Tories for I’m sure, but actually I think this is quite a good bit of tactical realpolitik.
But would unity have been affected if Patel and Stride had not been given those jobs? I don't know much about either but they don't strike me as trouble. Stride as Shadow Chancellor is particularly peculiar to my eyes.
They might not have been, but their backers might.
I think you’re underestimating the Machiavellian tendencies of the Tories also by the way…
Badenoch isn’t going to want her first year or two in office beset by people sniping that she’s not taking on board all arms of the party.
If you put unity first, you are not going to be able to face those hard truths that Badenoch has been talking about. How do you get consensus on a way forward with a Shadow Cabinet containing a One Nation Chancellor like Mel Stride and the Reform-adjacent Robert Jenrick?
Even Thatcher had ultra wets like Pym in her first Cabinet.
In a parliamentary party of only 124 you need all on board. As they are now in opposition their first task is getting the whole party opposing this hapless, awful, useless government. The main hard truth needed is to show what a lying schemer Starmer is having already betrayed farmers, business owners, pensioners and now students and ripped up half the Labour manifesto and the platform he was elected Labour leader on
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm afraid to say that New World Pinot Noirs have rather spoiled my enjoyment of Red Burgundy. And I particularly find the price point of the more expensive Red Burgundies almost inexplicable.
By contrast, I find US Chardonnays - even really expensive ones - to be over-alcoholised shit. White Burgundy, by contrast, I tend to love. (With the exception of Merseult, which I've never really "got". And Chablis, because it's simply too expensive for average white wine.)
White Burgundy is a good example of the impact of brand on wine pricing.
As most of you are aware I have a house in the Maconnais. It makes chardonnays ranging from decent to really very good indeed (the latter mainly around Loché, Pouilly, Fuisse and Vinzelles as well as a few other spots). A favourite winemaker of mine was taking about the village domaines of Meursault and Montrachet. They can sell middle of the road plonk for 50 Euros a pop, whereas at that price you’re getting the very top Pouilly-Loché or Pouilly-Fuissé production.
They are both dismissive of the Maconnais, and fiercely suspicious: Pouilly Loché has been in the process of going for a Premier cru, which is majorly overdue, but because the Loché winemakers have proposed very strict rules on hand harvesting and organic viticulture the Cotes de Beaune establishment are thoroughly pissed off because it might create precedent.
Absolutely. Your mate wasn't Jean-Marie Guffens-Heynen, now, was he? Yes Macon is an easily-recognised brand with much of it super mediocre but you know what to expect. Plus Guffens-Heynen aside, you can also easily pay £20 for a very so-so macon.
Stop tipping Jenrick for the Home Office or Justice. Jenrick can't go to the Home Office or Justice. His main leadership campaign pledge was leaving the ECHR! Badenoch can't appoint him! If she hasn't noticed this, then fine, but she's obviously noticed this. Come on.
Robert Jenrick has accepted the role of shadow justice secretary in Kemi Badenoch's new shadow cabinet
Badenoch offered him the role after a bitterly fought leadership contest
An ally of Jenrick said: 'Rob thinks the party needs to come together and take the fight to Labour. Unity could not be more important. He’s eager to expose Labour’s dreadful record on law and order'
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
You don't half get worked up about the fine details of people's opinions on things. It's an S curve, as is the case with almost all consumer goods. There is a bigger difference in quality between the average £5 and £15 bottle than there is between a £50 and £60 bottle.
Because I have some involvement in the wine world I know what drives price point and a significant chunk of that is cost. Cost is partly to do with the amount of care and attention lavished on a wine - which is reflected in quality of the product - but it's also partly to do with rarity, which in turn is down to yields and economies of scale. Put simply, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a bottle of decent wine in South East England, or on the sheer slopes of the Northern Rhone, than it is in the Marne Valley or the Napa Valley.
And brand is absolutely important. One only has to look at the pricing of the trendy "natural wine" category to see this. Decidedly bog standard wines a lot of them, but no sulphur and no filtration and you're suddenly opening up a different market. And the opposite is true: see the gross under-valuation of say Beaujolais or Vouvray.
I'm not getting worked up, I'm discussing. I simply don't believe that Leon's MW said, or meant, it's all bollocks over £50.
And I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. Scarcity is of course important as there are more Blue Nun hectares than Le Montrachet and even there the selection process, as I have no doubt you are aware, is rigorous for the grand vin.
But I think you and I are talking about brand in a different way. Brand is important for eg British customers (think Jacob's Creek or all those ghastly-named aussie wines like "The Guv'nor"). That is different from an eg Comte Lafon or Drouhin or some other well-known negoce wine or indeed the various chateaux or houses where the brand success follows the quality, rather than being designed to catch peoples' attention on the shelves at Waitrose.
And as for English wine yes you absolutely are operating at a disadvantage vs other climates and hence I think that's why it has struggled. There's a reason why there are more wine-producing regions that aren't in or near the UK so the care and attention you provide to make your wines can often not be worth the premium vs wines from a more benign (for wine) climate. Them's just the breaks.
All of which comes down to my central proposition that more expensive wines aren't just some marketing gimmick to fool the wine-drinking public.
My Master of Wine friend is called Tim. There, that’s a hint. There are only 400 odd MWs in the world
Also I never said there’s NO difference over £50 - I said the difference gets increasingly and speedily opaque, incremental and not-worth-the-money apart from status-seeking
I accept a good £500 bottle will likely be better than a good £50 bottle, at least to someone with a very refined palate. And perhaps that is you, and fair enough
To most people there will be no difference. However in a hotel anyone will notice the vast difference between a £500 a night hotel and a £50 a night hotel, and they will again note the huge difference between a £5000 a night hotel and a £500 a night
I’ve stayed in several £5000 a night hotel rooms. eg the Hemingway Suite at the Gritti Palace, Venice. Absolutely sublime. I will never forget it. If you’re loaded - go for it
So what is the difference between a £500 a night hotel and a £5,000 a night hotel. I mean there is a bed and a shower and those quick-draw minibars or someone bringing up a burger and chips (and presumably maidens to peel your grapes at the spenny place). But what is the difference.
Surely the difference is the very essence of marketing and branding.
Because hands up I can't tell the difference between a bed which cost £2,000 and one which cost £10,000 and that's sort of the heart of your hotel experience, isn't it.
Edit: and Tim really was just humouring you. Wherever he is a consultant will have 75% of its list at over £50.
Well, er, location - for a start. Eg the Hemingway Suite at the Gritti possibly has the single best view of the Grand Canal of any hotel room in the city. And this city is VENICE - the most beautiful city on earth
To the left you have Santa Maria della Salute. To the right the Canal heading to the Rialto
What possible price can you put on that? Right now it is about £6000 a night AND I CAN SEE WHY
The room is exquisite and the bathroom amazing and it’s full of antiques blah blah - but it’s the location and the view. And literally anyone can see that and grasp it. You don’t need a refined palate
You walk into that suite and you practically orgasm from the beauty
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
Many argue that a whisky doesn't get any better after 25 years in the cask. It's not really as simple as that - it's a complex process and you could have an older whisky matured in a shitey cask and a far better younger whisky matured in a great cask. And some whiskies will be better for the added maturity, but I'd say after 35 the chances are that anything good that was going to happen has happened. Yet there are 50 and 60 year old bottles going for 10s of 000.
Can anyone, eg Topping, recommend a wine for £20 or less and I'l give it a go. £25 tops.
Not more than £25 though or I'll have to have a sit down.
I'd suggest, just looking through Laithwaites offerings:
Red - Altos de la Guardia Crianza Rioja 2021 - £16.99 as part of a mixed case (otherwise £18.99) White - Pieropan Soave Classico 2023 - £15.99 (otherwise £17.99) Rose - Whispering Angel Côtes de Provence Rosé 2023 - £17.99 (otherwise £22)
Laithwaites = super-alcoholic wines which mask very so-so quality. I know there are the Rhones but never trust a wine over 14% alc.
Patel is also really very good. If she didn't have the unfortunate, but natural, smirky look she'd possibly be Tory leader.
Really? What is good about her.
She's by no means a bad constituency MP. I live her constituency, she's been quite helpful to me, although I've never voted for her. And think I'm highly unlikely to!
Is often on offer at less than £24, but in any case it’s white labelled 2010(!) Nyetimber and is the best English Sparkling you’ll get for under £25.
Very rare to get sparkling wines that old in the mass market, and it wears its age well.
Yes that's very good I had a couple of cases of it not so long ago. I'd forgotten which it was so thanks I'll have to restock (although I'm a huge Aldi Monsigny fan for everyday fizz).
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm afraid to say that New World Pinot Noirs have rather spoiled my enjoyment of Red Burgundy. And I particularly find the price point of the more expensive Red Burgundies almost inexplicable.
By contrast, I find US Chardonnays - even really expensive ones - to be over-alcoholised shit. White Burgundy, by contrast, I tend to love. (With the exception of Merseult, which I've never really "got". And Chablis, because it's simply too expensive for average white wine.)
White Burgundy is a good example of the impact of brand on wine pricing.
As most of you are aware I have a house in the Maconnais. It makes chardonnays ranging from decent to really very good indeed (the latter mainly around Loché, Pouilly, Fuisse and Vinzelles as well as a few other spots). A favourite winemaker of mine was taking about the village domaines of Meursault and Montrachet. They can sell middle of the road plonk for 50 Euros a pop, whereas at that price you’re getting the very top Pouilly-Loché or Pouilly-Fuissé production.
They are both dismissive of the Maconnais, and fiercely suspicious: Pouilly Loché has been in the process of going for a Premier cru, which is majorly overdue, but because the Loché winemakers have proposed very strict rules on hand harvesting and organic viticulture the Cotes de Beaune establishment are thoroughly pissed off because it might create precedent.
Oh, I absolutely love the slightly less fashionable areas of Burgundy. I've had some stunning St Aubin's for example.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm very confident that I couldn't tell the difference between a £10 bottle of wine and a £50 bottle.
I'm very confident that most others couldn't either in a blind taste test.
I accept that genuinely talented wine lovers do exist - but for others it's mainly a snobbery thing IMO.
Spending more than £50 on one bottle strikes me as obscene but I'm tight as well as wine-skeptic so maybe that's it.
I’m quite happy spending 30 quid on a nice bottle with a meal. 50 quid seems excessive although we did have a wine flight at Restaurant Sat Bains and that was 165 quid each. It was about the experience as well as the wine.
But I am like you, I doubt I could tell the difference between a 10 and 50 quid wine and I get why wine lovers are sniffy about Jacobs Creek or wolf blass but for me, going back 30 years or so, they were great. First reds I tried and I loved them. I wouldn’t be sniffy at any supermarket wine. People I work with like stuff like Jamshed.
Two biggest jobs given by Kemi Badenoch to former leadership rivals and — having been elected in 2010 — two of the most experienced Conservative MPs
Good appointments
Eeech. Not keen on either of those tbh. Mel Stride would be an utter creature of the Treasury imo. And Patel, much as I like her, got sacked from being Foreign Sec. Though I suppose the upside is she's done the job.
Any PBer who is actually interested in actual election activities (a dwindling minority?) is welcome to check out real-time web-cams posted by King County Elections in the great Evergreen State of Washington:
I am one such, @SeaShantyIrish2 : you are an endless source of delight.
Well, if you like looking (for hours on end?) at live webcams at King Co Elections (which processes & counts about 30% of total WA vote) then check out webcams of Whatcom Co Auditor in Bellingham WA, which is a far smaller operation:
Note that Whatcom is perhaps the most politically-polarized county in WA, including lots of Libtard college students on one hand, and mega-MAGA-maniac Dutch-heritage dairy farmers on the other; also includes one of the few swing legislative districts in the state.
Fearless prediction & betting tip: Dem incumbents will retain two state house seats in LD 42.
Please be advised that between 1 and 2pm today I bet the following
LOW RISK: STATE: MINNESOTA: 1/14 Kamela to win: £200 bet LOW RISK: STATE: VIRGINIA: 2/17 Kamela to win: £500 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: ARIZONA: 2/9 Reuben Gallego to win (D): £200 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: MONTANA: 1/5 Tim Sheehy to win (R): £100
Total waged: £1000 (fuuuck) Total returns if all win: 558.82+214.29+244.44+120 = £1,137.55 Potential profit: £137.55 Potential loss: £1000.
Hmm. As you may have noticed I lost track during the betting and bet £500 not £250 on Virginia as intended. Lots of talking and bingy sounds, brain got confused. Doesn't look like a good idea now you say it out loud. Ah well, don't walk into the shop with money if you don't want to spend it: we will see what happens.
#BigBoyPants
Virginia is pretty damn safe, though.
If it were me, I'd just have stuck £100 on Georgia. More potential profit; downside £100.
Yes, I don't really see the point of betting a significant sum (£1,000) to win a pittance that you could burn in the pub in a few hours. That said, I find the betting practices of @Viewcode bizarre at best – this is the guy that insists on putting his own bets on in cash at a betting shop then whines when he can't get a bet on because either a) the shop won't lay the bet and/or b) he lacks the time to actually go to the shop.
Why do you think I need or want your approval?
I appreciate you disapprove of the way I gamble, but I do not come here to ask for your approval and I do not need it. I record my betting here to lay down an audit trail so I can prove to others that I bet X at time T on event Y. What you do is up to you.
Bet how you like, but whining publicly about the negative consequences of your somewhat niche model is ... very odd.
Betting cash money in a betting shop is hardly "a niche model". It's done by tens of thousands of people a day.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
I was once given DRC at a Berry Brother's lunch. It was fine, maybe even good, but it was not a style of wine I particularly appreciate.
(Red) Burgundies are some of the most "difficult" or complex of wines imo, and DRC are at the top of the tree. They can be quite demanding. We Brits are much more at home with a claret prob 55% Merlot (sad to say) is where people are happy. Try finding a supermarket cab sauv-based claret. It's a challenge.
I spent quite some time tasting burgundies for the new vintage at one point in my life and by 5pm you needed nothing so much as a beer and some crisps.
I'm afraid to say that New World Pinot Noirs have rather spoiled my enjoyment of Red Burgundy. And I particularly find the price point of the more expensive Red Burgundies almost inexplicable.
By contrast, I find US Chardonnays - even really expensive ones - to be over-alcoholised shit. White Burgundy, by contrast, I tend to love. (With the exception of Merseult, which I've never really "got". And Chablis, because it's simply too expensive for average white wine.)
White Burgundy is a good example of the impact of brand on wine pricing.
As most of you are aware I have a house in the Maconnais. It makes chardonnays ranging from decent to really very good indeed (the latter mainly around Loché, Pouilly, Fuisse and Vinzelles as well as a few other spots). A favourite winemaker of mine was taking about the village domaines of Meursault and Montrachet. They can sell middle of the road plonk for 50 Euros a pop, whereas at that price you’re getting the very top Pouilly-Loché or Pouilly-Fuissé production.
They are both dismissive of the Maconnais, and fiercely suspicious: Pouilly Loché has been in the process of going for a Premier cru, which is majorly overdue, but because the Loché winemakers have proposed very strict rules on hand harvesting and organic viticulture the Cotes de Beaune establishment are thoroughly pissed off because it might create precedent.
Oh, I absolutely love the slightly less fashionable areas of Burgundy. I've had some stunning St Aubin's for example.
The French system is very French, whilst the German is based on faultless teutonic logic.
I’m not even a higher rate tax payer and I pay £330 a month to those never-ending “loans” -Plan 1 and Postgraduate.
A fellow Plan 1er. We don't get ours written off until 65, unlike the younguns. On the other hand until recently the interest rate was lower than inflation.
Please be advised that between 1 and 2pm today I bet the following
LOW RISK: STATE: MINNESOTA: 1/14 Kamela to win: £200 bet LOW RISK: STATE: VIRGINIA: 2/17 Kamela to win: £500 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: ARIZONA: 2/9 Reuben Gallego to win (D): £200 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: MONTANA: 1/5 Tim Sheehy to win (R): £100
Total waged: £1000 (fuuuck) Total returns if all win: 558.82+214.29+244.44+120 = £1,137.55 Potential profit: £137.55 Potential loss: £1000.
Hmm. As you may have noticed I lost track during the betting and bet £500 not £250 on Virginia as intended. Lots of talking and bingy sounds, brain got confused. Doesn't look like a good idea now you say it out loud. Ah well, don't walk into the shop with money if you don't want to spend it: we will see what happens.
#BigBoyPants
Virginia is pretty damn safe, though.
If it were me, I'd just have stuck £100 on Georgia. More potential profit; downside £100.
Yes, I don't really see the point of betting a significant sum (£1,000) to win a pittance that you could burn in the pub in a few hours. That said, I find the betting practices of @Viewcode bizarre at best – this is the guy that insists on putting his own bets on in cash at a betting shop then whines when he can't get a bet on because either a) the shop won't lay the bet and/or b) he lacks the time to actually go to the shop.
Why do you think I need or want your approval?
I appreciate you disapprove of the way I gamble, but I do not come here to ask for your approval and I do not need it. I record my betting here to lay down an audit trail so I can prove to others that I bet X at time T on event Y. What you do is up to you.
Bet how you like, but whining publicly about the negative consequences of your somewhat niche model is ... very odd.
Betting cash money in a betting shop is hardly "a niche model". It's done by tens of thousands of people a day.
What is niche is insisting that you only do that, and won't even let a mate put an online bet on for you when you can't reach the shops.
Please be advised that between 1 and 2pm today I bet the following
LOW RISK: STATE: MINNESOTA: 1/14 Kamela to win: £200 bet LOW RISK: STATE: VIRGINIA: 2/17 Kamela to win: £500 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: ARIZONA: 2/9 Reuben Gallego to win (D): £200 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: MONTANA: 1/5 Tim Sheehy to win (R): £100
Total waged: £1000 (fuuuck) Total returns if all win: 558.82+214.29+244.44+120 = £1,137.55 Potential profit: £137.55 Potential loss: £1000.
Hmm. As you may have noticed I lost track during the betting and bet £500 not £250 on Virginia as intended. Lots of talking and bingy sounds, brain got confused. Doesn't look like a good idea now you say it out loud. Ah well, don't walk into the shop with money if you don't want to spend it: we will see what happens.
#BigBoyPants
Virginia is pretty damn safe, though.
If it were me, I'd just have stuck £100 on Georgia. More potential profit; downside £100.
Yes, I don't really see the point of betting a significant sum (£1,000) to win a pittance that you could burn in the pub in a few hours. That said, I find the betting practices of @Viewcode bizarre at best – this is the guy that insists on putting his own bets on in cash at a betting shop then whines when he can't get a bet on because either a) the shop won't lay the bet and/or b) he lacks the time to actually go to the shop.
Why do you think I need or want your approval?
I appreciate you disapprove of the way I gamble, but I do not come here to ask for your approval and I do not need it. I record my betting here to lay down an audit trail so I can prove to others that I bet X at time T on event Y. What you do is up to you.
Bet how you like, but whining publicly about the negative consequences of your somewhat niche model is ... very odd.
Betting cash money in a betting shop is hardly "a niche model". It's done by tens of thousands of people a day.
What is niche is insisting that you only do that, and won't even let a mate put an online bet on for you when you can't reach the shops.
Please be advised that between 1 and 2pm today I bet the following
LOW RISK: STATE: MINNESOTA: 1/14 Kamela to win: £200 bet LOW RISK: STATE: VIRGINIA: 2/17 Kamela to win: £500 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: ARIZONA: 2/9 Reuben Gallego to win (D): £200 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: MONTANA: 1/5 Tim Sheehy to win (R): £100
Total waged: £1000 (fuuuck) Total returns if all win: 558.82+214.29+244.44+120 = £1,137.55 Potential profit: £137.55 Potential loss: £1000.
Hmm. As you may have noticed I lost track during the betting and bet £500 not £250 on Virginia as intended. Lots of talking and bingy sounds, brain got confused. Doesn't look like a good idea now you say it out loud. Ah well, don't walk into the shop with money if you don't want to spend it: we will see what happens.
#BigBoyPants
Virginia is pretty damn safe, though.
If it were me, I'd just have stuck £100 on Georgia. More potential profit; downside £100.
Yes, I don't really see the point of betting a significant sum (£1,000) to win a pittance that you could burn in the pub in a few hours. That said, I find the betting practices of @Viewcode bizarre at best – this is the guy that insists on putting his own bets on in cash at a betting shop then whines when he can't get a bet on because either a) the shop won't lay the bet and/or b) he lacks the time to actually go to the shop.
Why do you think I need or want your approval?
I appreciate you disapprove of the way I gamble, but I do not come here to ask for your approval and I do not need it. I record my betting here to lay down an audit trail so I can prove to others that I bet X at time T on event Y. What you do is up to you.
Bet how you like, but whining publicly about the negative consequences of your somewhat niche model is ... very odd.
Betting cash money in a betting shop is hardly "a niche model". It's done by tens of thousands of people a day.
What is niche is insisting that you only do that, and won't even let a mate put an online bet on for you when you can't reach the shops.
No it isnt
As I say, nobody is stopping you, but whining publicly about the obvious consequences of your inflexible is rather weird.
My first night in India was spent on Delhi station waiting room floor in the absence of the 16 hour delayed Jhelum "Express". Speaking of which. Has anyone stayed in a Wetherspoon's hotel?
Yes. It was clean, it was friendly, stuff in the room worked, there was the known quantity Wetherspoons to eat in so no need to be out on the streets after dark, I felt safe, it was within my price bracket, it was where I needed to be, and public transport was a few metres away to get to & from my relatives home.
Not the sort of thing most PBers would want, probably, I grant.
Can anyone, eg Topping, recommend a wine for £20 or less and I'l give it a go. £25 tops.
Not more than £25 though or I'll have to have a sit down.
I'd suggest, just looking through Laithwaites offerings:
Red - Altos de la Guardia Crianza Rioja 2021 - £16.99 as part of a mixed case (otherwise £18.99) White - Pieropan Soave Classico 2023 - £15.99 (otherwise £17.99) Rose - Whispering Angel Côtes de Provence Rosé 2023 - £17.99 (otherwise £22)
Laithwaites = super-alcoholic wines which mask very so-so quality. I know there are the Rhones but never trust a wine over 14% alc.
The 'bargain' ready-made cases that Laithwaites churns out to their mailing list are only so-so, but if you pick and choose from their bespoke list you can find some decent choices.
With improvements in winemaking it's actually hard to find wines below 14% nowadays, especially reds. I agree that above that, the alcohol can overwhelm the flavour,
Please be advised that between 1 and 2pm today I bet the following
LOW RISK: STATE: MINNESOTA: 1/14 Kamela to win: £200 bet LOW RISK: STATE: VIRGINIA: 2/17 Kamela to win: £500 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: ARIZONA: 2/9 Reuben Gallego to win (D): £200 bet MEDIUM RISK: SENATE: MONTANA: 1/5 Tim Sheehy to win (R): £100
Total waged: £1000 (fuuuck) Total returns if all win: 558.82+214.29+244.44+120 = £1,137.55 Potential profit: £137.55 Potential loss: £1000.
Hmm. As you may have noticed I lost track during the betting and bet £500 not £250 on Virginia as intended. Lots of talking and bingy sounds, brain got confused. Doesn't look like a good idea now you say it out loud. Ah well, don't walk into the shop with money if you don't want to spend it: we will see what happens.
#BigBoyPants
Virginia is pretty damn safe, though.
If it were me, I'd just have stuck £100 on Georgia. More potential profit; downside £100.
Yes, I don't really see the point of betting a significant sum (£1,000) to win a pittance that you could burn in the pub in a few hours. That said, I find the betting practices of @Viewcode bizarre at best – this is the guy that insists on putting his own bets on in cash at a betting shop then whines when he can't get a bet on because either a) the shop won't lay the bet and/or b) he lacks the time to actually go to the shop.
Why do you think I need or want your approval?
I appreciate you disapprove of the way I gamble, but I do not come here to ask for your approval and I do not need it. I record my betting here to lay down an audit trail so I can prove to others that I bet X at time T on event Y. What you do is up to you.
Bet how you like, but whining publicly about the negative consequences of your somewhat niche model is ... very odd.
Betting cash money in a betting shop is hardly "a niche model". It's done by tens of thousands of people a day.
What is niche is insisting that you only do that, and won't even let a mate put an online bet on for you when you can't reach the shops.
No it isnt
As I say, nobody is stopping you, but whining publicly about the obvious consequences of your inflexible is rather weird.
Premier Inns are what the good US chain motels USED to be, before they suddenly tripled in price
We should be thankful for them, even if they are pig ugly on the outside
wrt the relative merits of hotels and luxury hotels I'm delighted that you seem to have left behind your previously held absurd view that a £10 bottle of wine is no different to a £500 bottle of wine.
No, my view was and is that wine stops discernibly improving over £50 a bottle
Above that - unless you have a prodigiously refined palate (and even then I doubt it) - wine does not get “better” - it gets rarer and snobbier and older and more prestigious - but not actually better
Hotels are much more complex. A £2000 a night hotel will be significantly better than a £500 a night hotel
I believe the most expensive hotel room I’ve ever stayed in (I wasn’t paying) was a £10,000 a night Chinese Ming Dynasty moated mini-castle near Shanghai - authentic but transplanted, and surrounded by a transplanted sacred forest. Plus butler
It was fucking incredible and notably better than the £1200 a night exquisite ryokan in gion Kyoto where I stayed last week (and spilt red wine on their tatami mats)
I'm very surprised that you, a noted restaurant critic, should hold such a frankly bizarre view
I mean you may not understand the difference ofc I get that but there is a difference. If you really think that , say, a 1982 Mouton should cost the same as a 2016 Ch. Batailley then you really have no business reviewing restaurants or food & drink.
My conclusion with wine is that it's generally an S curve, if you have price on the x-axis and quality on the y-axis. At the cheap end of the market there's not, in my experience, much difference between the occasional £4 bottle and a £7 or £8 bottle. From then until around £25-30 there is a steep though not entirely linear increase in quality with price. Upwards from there and there's still a quality increment, but the relationship is not so linear and the relative importance of brand and rarity (and the wine's "story") goes up.
You're in the wine trade and think that things get tricky after £30? Are you serious? Wowser. What a stupendously strange comment from someone who actually makes the stuff. What's the "story" of a DRC or a Mouton. Good wine is what.
You don't half get worked up about the fine details of people's opinions on things. It's an S curve, as is the case with almost all consumer goods. There is a bigger difference in quality between the average £5 and £15 bottle than there is between a £50 and £60 bottle.
Because I have some involvement in the wine world I know what drives price point and a significant chunk of that is cost. Cost is partly to do with the amount of care and attention lavished on a wine - which is reflected in quality of the product - but it's also partly to do with rarity, which in turn is down to yields and economies of scale. Put simply, it's a hell of a lot more expensive to make a bottle of decent wine in South East England, or on the sheer slopes of the Northern Rhone, than it is in the Marne Valley or the Napa Valley.
And brand is absolutely important. One only has to look at the pricing of the trendy "natural wine" category to see this. Decidedly bog standard wines a lot of them, but no sulphur and no filtration and you're suddenly opening up a different market. And the opposite is true: see the gross under-valuation of say Beaujolais or Vouvray.
I'm not getting worked up, I'm discussing. I simply don't believe that Leon's MW said, or meant, it's all bollocks over £50.
And I'm not disagreeing with anything you say. Scarcity is of course important as there are more Blue Nun hectares than Le Montrachet and even there the selection process, as I have no doubt you are aware, is rigorous for the grand vin.
But I think you and I are talking about brand in a different way. Brand is important for eg British customers (think Jacob's Creek or all those ghastly-named aussie wines like "The Guv'nor"). That is different from an eg Comte Lafon or Drouhin or some other well-known negoce wine or indeed the various chateaux or houses where the brand success follows the quality, rather than being designed to catch peoples' attention on the shelves at Waitrose.
And as for English wine yes you absolutely are operating at a disadvantage vs other climates and hence I think that's why it has struggled. There's a reason why there are more wine-producing regions that aren't in or near the UK so the care and attention you provide to make your wines can often not be worth the premium vs wines from a more benign (for wine) climate. Them's just the breaks.
All of which comes down to my central proposition that more expensive wines aren't just some marketing gimmick to fool the wine-drinking public.
My Master of Wine friend is called Tim. There, that’s a hint. There are only 400 odd MWs in the world
Also I never said there’s NO difference over £50 - I said the difference gets increasingly and speedily opaque, incremental and not-worth-the-money apart from status-seeking
I accept a good £500 bottle will likely be better than a good £50 bottle, at least to someone with a very refined palate. And perhaps that is you, and fair enough
To most people there will be no difference. However in a hotel anyone will notice the vast difference between a £500 a night hotel and a £50 a night hotel, and they will again note the huge difference between a £5000 a night hotel and a £500 a night
I’ve stayed in several £5000 a night hotel rooms. eg the Hemingway Suite at the Gritti Palace, Venice. Absolutely sublime. I will never forget it. If you’re loaded - go for it
So what is the difference between a £500 a night hotel and a £5,000 a night hotel. I mean there is a bed and a shower and those quick-draw minibars or someone bringing up a burger and chips (and presumably maidens to peel your grapes at the spenny place). But what is the difference.
Surely the difference is the very essence of marketing and branding.
Because hands up I can't tell the difference between a bed which cost £2,000 and one which cost £10,000 and that's sort of the heart of your hotel experience, isn't it.
Edit: and Tim really was just humouring you. Wherever he is a consultant will have 75% of its list at over £50.
Well, er, location - for a start. Eg the Hemingway Suite at the Gritti possibly has the single best view of the Grand Canal of any hotel room in the city. And this city is VENICE - the most beautiful city on earth
To the left you have Santa Maria della Salute. To the right the Canal heading to the Rialto
What possible price can you put on that? Right now it is about £6000 a night AND I CAN SEE WHY
The room is exquisite and the bathroom amazing and it’s full of antiques blah blah - but it’s the location and the view. And literally anyone can see that and grasp it. You don’t need a refined palate
You walk into that suite and you practically orgasm from the beauty
Comments
Tom T sounds suitable to me.
What about Ag & Fish (whatever it is called now) for Generick Bob, so he can talk about pork bellies? Newark is mainly rural, after all.
I think you’re underestimating the Machiavellian tendencies of the Tories also by the way…
Badenoch isn’t going to want her first year or two in office beset by people sniping that she’s not taking on board all arms of the party.
Also I never said there’s NO difference over £50 - I said the difference gets increasingly and speedily opaque, incremental and not-worth-the-money apart from status-seeking
I accept a good £500 bottle will likely be better than a good £50 bottle, at least to someone with a very refined palate. And perhaps that is you, and fair enough
To most people there will be no difference. However in a hotel anyone will notice the vast difference between a £500 a night hotel and a £50 a night hotel, and they will again note the huge difference between a £5000 a night hotel and a £500 a night
I’ve stayed in several £5000 a night hotel rooms. eg the Hemingway Suite at the Gritti Palace, Venice. Absolutely sublime. I will never forget it. If you’re loaded - go for it
Starmer v Badenoch
Reeves v Stride
Lammy v Patel
So far
Eh??
However, there are over a dozen other webcams with views of drop-box ballots arriving at Election HQ warehouse, sorting, signature verification, ballot opening (AFTER sigs verified), etc., etc.
BTW (and maybe FYI) yours truly will be down at King Co Elections inn person - and on some of the webcams - for a few hours tomorrow, as observer for KC Democrats.
From cars to hotels to coffee to whatnot. But not wine, apparently.
What a bizarre view on here. I appreciate it's out of peoples' comfort zone to think about it, there have been endless skits about wine snobs and associated vernacular, and most people are very happy with a £5-10 bottle from Aldi but that doesn't mean there isn't a whole world of "fine" wine out there which is very real and justified.
Horrible person wholly unfit for any office
Exclusive interview: Ms Harris should pardon Trump ‘to dampen down’ threat of violence in the aftermath of polling day, the British MP said"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/11/04/nigel-farage-donald-trump-play-golf-if-kamala-harris-wins/
By contrast, I find US Chardonnays - even really expensive ones - to be over-alcoholised shit. White Burgundy, by contrast, I tend to love. (With the exception of Merseult, which I've never really "got". And Chablis, because it's simply too expensive for average white wine.)
Surely the difference is the very essence of marketing and branding.
Because hands up I can't tell the difference between a bed which cost £2,000 and one which cost £10,000 and that's sort of the heart of your hotel experience, isn't it.
Edit: and Tim really was just humouring you. Wherever he is a consultant will have 75% of its list at over £50.
Not more than £25 though or I'll have to have a sit down.
https://x.com/forecasterenten/status/1853465121483313275
I suspect the luck witl be with your team.
@Timodc
Was just taping today’s pod with @BillKristol and it’s striking how disastrous Trump’s last 10 days have been. They had a playbook from 2016 of reining him in for the home stretch and he is just not able to execute it.
https://x.com/Timodc/status/1853459131165749533
Enjoy.
As most of you are aware I have a house in the Maconnais. The region makes chardonnays ranging from decent to really very good indeed (the latter mainly around Loché, Pouilly, Fuisse and Vinzelles as well as a few other spots). A favourite winemaker of mine was taking about the village domaines of Meursault and Montrachet. They can sell middle of the road plonk for 50 Euros a pop, whereas at that price you’re getting the very top Pouilly-Loché or Pouilly-Fuissé production.
They are both dismissive of the Maconnais, and fiercely suspicious: Pouilly Loché has been in the process of going for a Premier cru, which is majorly overdue, but because the Loché winemakers have proposed very strict rules on hand harvesting and organic viticulture the Cotes de Beaune establishment are thoroughly pissed off because it might create precedent.
The BBC has also been told that Badenoch's leadership rival Robert Jenrick has been offered several roles in the shadow cabinet but is yet to accept one.
A Conservative source has said: "Kemi just doesn’t like Rob. She thinks his whole schtick about her and whether she has any policies has done her lasting damage with the Right and with Reform voters."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9n304z0x7o
Tuition Fees up by "inflation" - 3.1%.
Where does this 3.1% number come from? The number just used for benefit increases was 1.7% iirc.
England that is; certainly none in Newark, New Jersey! OR Newark, Arkansas or California or Delaware or Illinois or Indiana or Maryland or Missouri or (especially) Nebraska.
Trading Places - Crop Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4piJqApTgM&t=61s
Red - Altos de la Guardia Crianza Rioja 2021 - £16.99 as part of a mixed case (otherwise £18.99)
White - Pieropan Soave Classico 2023 - £15.99 (otherwise £17.99)
Rose - Whispering Angel Côtes de Provence Rosé 2023 - £17.99 (otherwise £22)
Stop tipping Jenrick for the Home Office or Justice. Jenrick can't go to the Home Office or Justice. His main leadership campaign pledge was leaving the ECHR! Badenoch can't appoint him! If she hasn't noticed this, then fine, but she's obviously noticed this. Come on.
Oh!
@Steven_Swinford
BREAKING:
Robert Jenrick has accepted the role of shadow justice secretary in Kemi Badenoch's new shadow cabinet
Badenoch offered him the role after a bitterly fought leadership contest
An ally of Jenrick said: 'Rob thinks the party needs to come together and take the fight to Labour. Unity could not be more important. He’s eager to expose Labour’s dreadful record on law and order'
In a parliamentary party of only 124 you need all on board. As they are now in opposition their first task is getting the whole party opposing this hapless, awful, useless government. The main hard truth needed is to show what a lying schemer Starmer is having already betrayed farmers, business owners, pensioners and now students and ripped up half the Labour manifesto and the platform he was elected Labour leader on
NEW THREAD
To the left you have Santa Maria della Salute. To the right the Canal heading to the Rialto
Look. See for yourself
https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/vcegl-the-gritti-palace-a-luxury-collection-hotel-venice/rooms/suite-collection/presidential/
What possible price can you put on that? Right now it is about £6000 a night AND I CAN SEE WHY
The room is exquisite and the bathroom amazing and it’s full of antiques blah blah - but it’s the location and the view. And literally anyone can see that and grasp it. You don’t need a refined palate
You walk into that suite and you practically orgasm from the beauty
Is often on offer at less than £24, but in any case it’s white labelled 2010(!) Nyetimber and is the best English Sparkling you’ll get for under £25.
Very rare to get sparkling wines that old in the mass market, and it wears its age well.
And think I'm highly unlikely to!
But I am like you, I doubt I could tell the difference between a 10 and 50 quid wine and I get why wine lovers are sniffy about Jacobs Creek or wolf blass but for me, going back 30 years or so, they were great. First reds I tried and I loved them. I wouldn’t be sniffy at any supermarket wine. People I work with like stuff like Jamshed.
https://www.whatcomcounty.us/3490/Live-Webcams
Note that Whatcom is perhaps the most politically-polarized county in WA, including lots of Libtard college students on one hand, and mega-MAGA-maniac Dutch-heritage dairy farmers on the other; also includes one of the few swing legislative districts in the state.
Fearless prediction & betting tip: Dem incumbents will retain two state house seats in LD 42.
Do something for them first, then we will talk.
Not the sort of thing most PBers would want, probably, I grant.
With improvements in winemaking it's actually hard to find wines below 14% nowadays, especially reds. I agree that above that, the alcohol can overwhelm the flavour,