Food, History, Poetry, Security

WWI Spirits Unearthed in Gradesnica

Leave a comment

Soon after I wrote about the potential value of beer to Vikings (greater than gold?), I find a story extolling a historic French soldier brandy find as the “nectar of the gods”.

Farmers in Gradesnica have unearthed what they say are cases of spirits from trenches once used by French soldiers.

Spirits of those killed by artillery. This Eau de vie gets a new lease on life.

Valued at thousands of euros a bottle, it is said to have survived a German shell strike that killed many soldiers.

The first case of 15 bottles was reportedly unearthed by villagers in the south of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia about 15 years ago.

Several further batches, containing about 12 bottles each, are said to have been found in subsequent digs.

What drives the price so high? Rarity, surely. It also might be something like the phenomenon of product cycles, as Wikipedia suggests the modern value of Cognac sales is linked to interest from young Americans.

Many have credited hip-hop culture as the savior of cognac sales in the USA; after nearly floundering in 1998 due to economic crisis in Asia—cognac’s #1 export market at the time…

Reminds me of the time I discovered no one in Milwaukee would be caught dead drinking a particular drink if their parents enjoyed one, but they were more than happy to try it if it was from their grandparents’ or older generation. The old stuff becomes new again eventually.

Incidentally, if you are ever lucky enough to find a tender who still keeps a pot of Door County cherry mash with spices melting in a pot behind the bar, I highly recommend ordering an Old Fashioned. Soda-water, if they ask. Don’t believe anyone who says a cube of sugar or even a maraschino cherry is involved in achieving the appropriate flavor. They might as well call grape juice with aspartame a variety of brandy.

Granted, the Wikipedia is referring to American sales, and surely the interest in the Gradesnica bottles will be driven by those painfully aware of the region’s social as well as military history, or experts in the trade of fine spirits. But on the other hand, with all the silly XO, VS and VSS labels on cognac today, I wonder if a new label will appear to commemorates the survival of the French cache as the ultimate in exclusivity. The marketing for something like this is superfluous, but perhaps someone will still propose a label or even a brand.

Maybe we can expect Busta Rhymes to come out with a Courvoisier remix — “pass the Gradesnica” — with the sensibilities of the Clash’s Spanish Bombs. Andalucia is known for an Eau de vie made from aniseed. Hmmm, I see a theme here…battle booze.

Poetry, Security

Poetry speaks to CEOs

Leave a comment

The NYT reveals that many successful business leaders are avid readers, and writers, of poetry. No surprise there.

However, they correlate this love to the want of books, and then to the need for libraries. One could almost use this tortured logic to say the people who house the largest collection of books are likely to be the most successful. I think they are missing the forest for the trees (pun not intended), but nevertheless a more significant message is not lost in the article:

Poetry speaks to many C.E.O.’s. “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers,” says Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, a $3 billion producer of sound systems for luxury cars, theaters and airports. Mr. Harman maintains a library in each of his three homes, in Washington, Los Angeles and Aspen, Colo. “Poets are our original systems thinkers,” he said. “They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.”

Exactamundo!

The poetry of information security is the act of looking at environments and reducing the complexity to something that can be understood and therefore secured.

History, Poetry, Security

Viking Treasure: Big Load of Beer

Leave a comment

I just read a Viking galdralag poem called Havamal:

Byr’i betri
berrat ma’r brautu at
en s’ mannvit mikit;
vegnest verra
vegra hann velli at
en s’ ofdrykkja ols.

Interesting how the meter works. The ThinkQuest site provides the above text, and then this version in English:

Burden better
bears none abroad with him
than a cool discretion;
with worser food
will fare you never
than a big load of beer.

Something seems lost in translation.

Speaking of lost, have you heard about the treasure chest discovered in Old York? A father and son with metal detection equipment unearthed a well-preserved cache of silver and such.

The ancient objects come from as far afield as Afghanistan in the East and Ireland in the West, as well as Russia, Scandinavia and continental Europe.

The hoard contains 617 silver coins and 65 other objects, including a gold arm-ring and a gilt silver vessel.

[…]

It was probably buried for safety by a wealthy Viking leader during the unrest following the conquest of the Viking kingdom of Northumbria in AD927.

I wonder about the “leader” concept suggested in the article. Not a King? Regia Anglorum gives some stirring details of the conflict in the area:

England was being ruled at that time by King Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, who took the throne in 925 at the age of thirty. Athelstan was not a soft king: he was a warrior in the tradition of his grandfather, father and aunt, and was determined to have an English kingdom that reached to the borders of Strathclyde. His ambitions worried the northern kings, but, when he met Sihtric at York, Athelstan gave away his sister in marriage to the king of York, in return for the Scandinavian becoming Christian. It seemed as though the Clan Ivarr was secure in its throne.

That security lasted until 927, when Sihtric died and Guthfrith took over. Athelstan invaded Northumbria and expelled Guthfrith and Olaf, Sihtric’s son. He entered York, demolished the Scandinavian fortifications, and distributed the loot he found there to his army.

Impressive how long the leader’s lead container was able to preserve the goods. Good thing Athelstan’s men did not find all the loot in their day.

While we may want to celebrate the discovery of precious metallic goods from ancient times, beer recipes or even ingredient farming methods may be the real treasure still waiting to be recovered.