[SOC] thought you might enjoy this, from a friend...

[Lloyd Lachow]

>From one of the newsgroups I read...

From: John D Salt <john.salt@NOSPAM.btclick.com>
Subject: Re: ATTN: FELLOW ALCOHOLICS
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 11:05:52 +0000 (UTC)

[...]

I don't care if you've all heard my brandy-drinking 
story, I'm,
going to tell it again.

Exective summary:  ARMAGNAC!

We in the Salt fambly are great lovers of brandy, and 
indeed my
mother once beat a former military policeman 
unconscious in a
Jungmeister-drinking competition, and she has drunk 
brandy
against the late, great Oliver Reed without suffering 
permanent
damage.  My favourite post-prandial brandial (not a 
cordial) is
Armagnac, unless I have eaten pork or am in Normandy, 
when it is
Calvados.

Years ago, I used to work on the Channel Tunnel 
project -- this
was in the days before it set off fuckwit detectors on

a world-
wide scale, and was still regarded as a mitigated 
disaster of
project mismanagement.  I lived in lodgings in 
Folkestone, and
got on tremendously well with my landlord (a former 
member of the
same regiment as me) and landlady.  When the time came

for me to
move on, they treated me to a big goodbye feed at a 
pub called
the Rose and Crown, at Stelling Minnis.

The Rose and Crown (at Stelling Minnis) is in many 
respects
typical of all that is best in the traditional Kent 
country pub
-- oak beams, a warm fire and a warm welcome, and a 
carefully-
chosen selection of well-kept Kent beers.  Obviously, 
in
hindsight, a pub of such archetypical Englishness 
could not be
run by the English since the Great Competence 
Evaporation of
1983, so the couple that ran the pub were Portugese.
Consequently, as well as the advantages of a 
traditional Kent
pub, the Rose and Crown offered a selection of 
splendid Portugese
cuisine and a wine list with great strengths in fine 
Portugese
wines.

I can't remember what the dish I had was called, and 
couldn't
either speak or spell it if I could, but it was a sort

of veal a
la Kiev, but Portugese.  The accompanying Portugese 
wine, whose
identity is again unrecalled, would have done credit 
to the Haut-
Medoc.

At the end of dessert, my hosts asked what I fancied 
to round the
meal off.  My brandy glands had been stimulated by the

sunmptuous
repast, and I said that the ideal finish to the meal 
would be a
glass of Armagnac; but I thought it unlikely that a 
pub, even one
as good as this, would stock it.  They said to ask the

landlord.
I said I didn't want to embarrass people by asking for

the
unobtainable.  They insisted, and then asked the 
waiter
themselves, "Do you have any Armagnac?"  "Just a 
moment, Sir,
I'll go and check".  There, I thought, they haven't 
got any.  A
few moments later the waiter reappeared from the 
cellar, and said
"I'm sorry, Sir, we've just finished the last of the 
'43.  Will
the 1944 be all right?"

I think that's the only time I've drunk something that

was older
than I was.

All the best,

John.

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