Penguin Review: Penfolds Club Reserve Tawny Port

Have you ever seen something utterly fantastic, yet completely unsuited to it’s obvious use? Like a solid gold Monopoly set. Or a boat loaded with beer. I think I can add Penfolds Club Reserve Tawny port to the list.

Looking at it in the sipper, it is deep brown, a classic tawny in colour. Before you dive in, you might smell flowers, chocolate, and vanilla. Or you might smell nothing. And why not? When the flavour is dominated by honey and butterscotch, why not have some dainty sweet smells?

Also watch out for nutty tones and treacle. It’s certainly complex, even to the point of being bitter. But the bitter does work. It may irk you the first time, but the the way if starts so rich and finishes dry complements the slight bitter taste, which is gone by the finish.

To me, port, like most fortified wine, goes with dessert. Which is why Club Reserve really rubs me the wrong way. It is a great drop in its own right, but the overt complexity and dry finish don’t really gel with dessert for me.

Screw it – who needs an excuse. Drink it whenever ya feel like – it’s worth it. But then again, for $22+, you’d kinda expect that…

Just admit it, we love organised crime

Des Moran, dead. Another killing in Melbourne (a place I have chosen to habit as it is the closest part of Australia to Antarctica where incest is not practised). Opinion pages and letters to the editor are full of a curious mix of gushing memorials for Tuppence Moran, and indignation that the scourge of organised crime could possibly exist in a state capital.

Tempting as it is, I won’t be lampooning revisionist obituaries for poor old Tuppence.

What is absolutely fascinating is how much the masses love a good gangland war. Sure, we all pretend that the loss of bad guy 5’s life is a terrible tragedy. However there is a resurgent interest in not only the life of Des Moran, but all sorts of ’secret’ criminal figures.

Underbelly. Do I need to say any more?

The fact is that organised crime has everything that makes a great story: Money. Power. Sex. Danger. Secrets.

And the best part? It’s right here, in our corner of the world.

Quit denying it Melbourne, we love our pathetic gangland wars.

Chuck Norris Fact of the Week

Chuck Norris doesn’t have rodent problems.

Rodents have Chuck Norris problems.

The fight against freedom

Leilani Neumann,  has been convicted of homicide in Wisconsin for letting her daughter die from diabetes. With her daughter unable to walk or talk for days, she chose to pray rather than seek medical treatment. The community is outraged. The world is shocked.

Then again, I thought America was the ‘land of the free’?

Freedom is the right to choose ones own destiny. Good, bad or ugly, we write our own stories of our lives. We choose our politicians (well, supposedly). We choose if we study, what we study. We choose whether we are an employee, or an employer. It is our freedom to choose that defines democracy, not just in the United States, but all free states all over the world.

Freedom is a double edged sword. I can eat a salad, or I can eat smoke a cigarette. This is a concept that many communities have long struggled with. The masses seem to believe that our democratic systems should force everyone to conform with the majority vote. Admittedly, our political system does work like this. Majority rules, and everyone else has to suck it. That is the price of governance, only one party can govern.

There is no reason that all parts of our society must work like this. Teetotallers, do-gooders and moralisers have been inescapable in Australia over the past year or two. Whether it is regulating against smoking, the food we eat, drugs, gardens, religion, alcohol or even what type of cars people should drive, there are voices out there calling for everyone to do what they say, or else, in the name of community opinion.

It is the freedom to choose which drives innovation. It drives justice. It drives productivity. People look over the fence at other peoples choices, and they decide for themselves if they are better off. Those that ignore it succumb to natural selection.

Back to Leilani, I’m not going to defend any lunatic that murders their own children due to their medieval beliefs. Although, it warms this penguin’s heart that even in this era of everyday medical miracles that Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ still manages to hold true. If you would rather pray than seek medical treatment, then natural selection will eventually take its course. It doesn’t matter how good doctors have become.

You can’t save people from themselves.