28 Comments

I've heard from someone in a position to know (secret service detail) that ol W drank quite regularly in private during his tenure. The nickname they had for him was apparently "high ball." Also as a California wine industry guy, I'd be willing to bet my next paycheck that Kamala knows next to nothing about wine. Overexposure to the over extracted Napa style cabs in my opinion destroys any semblance of a palate one may otherwise have, which is a shame because there a lot of genuinely interesting AVAs in California that don't get a lot of love (Santa Cruz, Amador/Dorado, Shasta). People of Harris's type and age generally get into napa oak bombs, then stick with just that.

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I don’t know, Ridge Monte Bello is pretty popular among Boomer wine afficianados and it’s a classic Santa Cruz cab. It’s also hard to explain the mania for red Burgundy if Americans just get their palates fried by Napa cults and then can’t taste anything else.

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Classic era Superman. Always having to trick him into saying his name backwards.

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Bingo

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I like some Cabs (Ridge Cabs are awesome but very expensive). There are a lot of great CA red wines including Zins and Pinots. Ridge makes an awesome wine out of Carignane (which is usually just a mixing grape). I am not a huge fan of Napa wines but much of the wine out of Sonoma, Mendocino, Santa Cruz and the central coast are among the tastiest wines in the world.

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I like a lot of California wines, but the bang for your buck is simply not there. In my opinion, a similarly priced European wine will beat out a California wine 10 times out of 10 this is of course, not the fault of the California wineries but the inputs here are simply too expensive to be competitive in a global marketplace.

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Always interesting that Washington led troops to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion. It ended somewhat peacefully; maybe Washington felt a kinship with fellow distillers.

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Hamilton went nuts over the Whiskey Rebellion and wanted to hang all the rebels, but Washington hanged only the highest leader and was nice to the little guys.

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I've long believed that Biden was a drunk, but that car accident that killed his first wife and gave Hunter head injuries scared Joe to be publicly sober.

Anyway, Trump's teetotaling was something that made him popular amongst young men, or at least became something his young male supporters liked and emulated about him. Unlike Pence and Romney (dry for religious reasons) and W. (dry due to religion and his admitted alcoholism), Trump never drank because he saw it only slowed him down and he saw how others in the business world would get drunk and screw up-- for Trump, not drinking was a business strategy.

In The Art of the Deal, Trump told a story about meeting some established Manhattan real estate guys when he was young and how they all went out and had dinner and made a deal and then they got drunk at dinner. The next day he called and neither remembered making the deal, so Trump had to take them out again for dinner to get the deal in place. Although miffed, it impressed upon Trump that he could leap well ahead of these guys if he just didn't drink, because they would forget half their business deals with enough wine.

Trump liked winning, and if winning meant no drinking, he didn't drink. Plain and simple.

And it worked.

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Well, and his brother died of alcoholism. So there’s that

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Great little history of presidential alcohol use! When Kamala was a senator I ran into her a few times and knew people who knew her and my impression is that she’s not an alcoholic but a naturally upbeat, social, and slightly goofy/cheerful person, a bon vivant type.

Trump strikes me as also quite social (obviously) but kind of sardonic

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According to her aides she’s a nightmare to work for

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Can’t be the wine!

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That she was only able to retain about 6% of her staff during her tenure as VP speaks volumes

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incompetent managers are a nightmare even sober

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I'd have sworn that as President, Bill Clinton was a teetotaler, too, or advertised as one.

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The Arkansas State Troopers who ratted Clinton out on how he used them to proposition random women for him also reported they'd never seen him worse for drinking or drugging.

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I don't remember that from the original Am Spec article, which I saved for posterity, but I don't know where. Tom cats to cat ladies in 30 years.

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Liver is good, heart not so much?

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Oh, no, please tell me there is not something I would like about her. Good Italian and French wines are my hobby, drinking them, not talking about them. If she's buying I'm drinking but only if she stays quiet about it.

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Wow--one thing about Kamala that I like! Who knew?

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I've said it for a long time. People drink mixed drinks to fit in and whiskey to get drunk. Wine is for impressing others (when it's good) and not having to go to the restroom every 10-15 minutes. And beer is for those of us who like to cruise through the day with a bit of a buzz on and WANT to micturate as often as possible for our prostate's sake.

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I wouldn't describe Grant as an alcoholic, according to the classic definition (someone who is addicted and needs to drink daily); your description of binge drinker is more accurate. He could go long periods without touching a drop when he was focused and had problems to solve. His autobiography is a classic.

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Reagan's and McCain's fathers were binge drinkers. Reagan's would be gone for several days and reappear passed out on the porch, so Ron and his mother had to drag him inside. IIRC, McCain said he didn't know about his father's benders until later.

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I don't believe for a minute that Walz has been on the wagon since his DUI. Just look at him for God's sake.

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> In the year he died, 1799, his Mount Vernon distillery sold almost 11,0000 gallons of whiskey

This should be 11,000

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I’m guessing Kamala didn’t spend many evenings in the library at Howard.

Her campaign so far reminds me of a bachelorette party. 🎉

Everyone is having a really great time. Really, really great.

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I've always felt that wine enthusiasts are making it all up, exaggerating, indulging in placebo-- Like high end audiophiles who hear the difference kilobuck cables make. I don't like wine much. I admit some wine tastes better than others, but there comes a point where...it's just a hobby to burn off money? or maybe for some to make alcoholism seem classy? Don't get me started on whiskey enthusiasts. The flavor of whiskey is the wood of the barrel you store it in. Whiskey burns like fire and tastes like wood. I don't get it.

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