2007 Georges de Latour Private Reserve

There are times when one must fortify oneself with something very good. 

What an extraordinary age we live in, when the Supreme Court itself will tell us that falsehood is truth, and evil and nonsense are good and sound. So "gay" "marriage" is acceptable, is it, and only opposed  by hate-filled troglodytes? If we are all to acquiesce in the overturning of planetary reality by our betters -- "speak up loudly," the magazines and blogs say, but speak up to whom? -- then really we ought to overturn a little planetary reality ourselves. Try deciding that the earnest and ignorant young nieces and nephews (for example) in your life, who probably have the equal sign on a soft blue background as their new Facebook avatar, will now get their own private little dose of overturned reality. If they are called Mary and John, and are a woman and a man, try calling them Greg and Jane, all their lives. Introduce them conversely as "my nephew and niece" -- and make it stick. It would be a wonderful short story if nothing else. And if you did it, whom would you be hurting?

One opens Shakespeare at random -- I am not kidding -- and finds something apt.

I pressed me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins' heads, and they have bought out their services ... the cankers of a calm world and a long peace, ten times more dishonorable ragged than an old fazed ancient....

Falstaff is speaking of trying to recruit ("press," impress by force) soldiers, in I Henry IV, IV, ii. 

I am sure Sir John would approve our having a glass of good, very good wine. There are details to be learned about this one if you like, as Beaulieu having been founded in the '30s, and André Tchelistcheff being involved with it, and so on. But that seems rather unimportant now.  

 .....But for certain
He cannot buckle his distempered cause
Within the belt of rule. (MacBeth, V, ii.)

Retail (2009 vintage), about $90