If you go to the Calafia Cafe, in Palo Alto, you won’t have to wait for a server to take your order. Instead, you just call up the menu on the touch screen mobile pad on your table, look at hi-res digital images of the foods, and then punch in your selections. Let’s say it’s the clams and udon noodles for an appetizer, then the grilled hanger steak for the main course. Your friends do the same thing. Your orders go right to the kitchen. While you’re waiting for the food, you might play a social game on the same tablet; your table’s high scorer at trivia gets $1 off the cost of dessert. Of course, when your food is ready, a real live human being brings it to your table–the tablet can’t do that. But when the meal’s over, you can pay for it with a swipe of your credit card–no waiting for a busy waiter to have to notice you’re ready to leave. You can enter your email and get a digital receipt promptly sent. And, since the night is still young, you can browse the tablet and discover clubs, bars and so on that are right in the neighborhood. (more…)
The sommelier as endangered species…(Those with a sense of humor may be worth saving)
16 Jan
Lady Gaga, Chinese Penis Potion, Merlot Mani-Pedi…
29 Dec
No aspect of popular culture achieves real acceptance until it’s been incorporated into one of Lady Gaga’s outfits, so I was gratified to see her decked out as a wine bottle with cork hat and wineglass gloves on Saturday Night Live’s spring season finale.
That was one of 2011′s more notable homages to the drink I sip and spit every day of the year. (more…)
Punishments for drunk monks 1000 years ago
12 Dec
Decretum:
By Burchard of Worms Germany, first half of the eleventh century.This is part of a manuscript leaf from a manual for the instruction and guidance of young monks, written in a German monastery a thousand years ago. The language is Latin and the script Carolingian, on which is based some of the most beautiful printing types still in use today.
It contains punishments for drunk monks:
- 15 (fifteen) days on bread and water if one drank so much that one vomited;
- 30 (thirty) days on bread and water if one, when drunk, encouraged others to get drunk;
- 40 (forty) days on bread and water if, through drunkenness, one vomited the communion wine and sacred host. (more…)
Like this:
You too can become a wine snob
22 Nov
New research suggests that you too can become a wine snob
Do you find yourself completely lost whenever your friends go off on long-winded descriptions of a wines aroma and bouquet? Well there may be hope for you yet, you uncultured brute. A new animal study — wherein researchers trained rats to distinguish between three very similar, albeit different, smells — suggests that with training, your sense of smell can actually improve on a neurological level. Heres how it works. (more…)
Elegant Box Wine Dispenser
13 NovBox wine enthusiasts love the good parts of boxed wines: freshness for weeks after opening, minimal storage space, low environmental impact, and better-than-bottle pricing. But box wine enthusiasts have to admit there are a few annoyances (beyond lacking the satisfaction of extracting a cork). For one, getting the last glass or so out of the box requires extracting the inner bag 
and squeezing it into a glass. Second, since the wine is dispensed by gravity, the spigot is at the bottom of the box – you either have to set the box on the edge of your counter or table or place it on some kind of platform to pour into a glass. Boxxle may be the answer… (more…)
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