May 23, 2019 – Things that happen

It was a jolly good wine, old chap

Hawksmoor, a steakhouse in Manchester, England is in the news for a very costly mistake.

Seems a diner ordered a bottle of 2001 Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, which the wine menu lists at  £260 ($335) a bottle.  Sounds like a nice choice.  However, a member of the staff picked up the wrong bottle and served a bottle of 2001 Château Le Pin, Pomerol, which is listed at £4,500 or about $5,800.

Whether the diner was aware of the mistake is unknown.  The restaurant hoped the lucky guest enjoyed it.  And, in a show of compassion for the offending server Tweeted “One-off mistakes happen and we love you anyway.”  You’d think with a fancy wine list like that they’d have a highly trained sommelier on hand so mistakes like this don’t happen.

The Drinks Business, a UK trade magazine, reported some wag, posing as the lucky guest, added the following comment to post:  “I don’t know about 4500 quid, but it was nice when we added the lemonade and ice cubes.”

A woman brewer made my beer?  Oh no.

Long before your time, back in the unenlightened 60s, Virginia Slims, a brand of cigarettes marketed to women, had a slogan:  “You’ve Come A Long Way Baby”.

Apparently not.  A study by the Graduate School of Business from Stanford University shows that typically male oriented products such as beer and screwdrivers if made by women are less valued.  When tasting a craft beer with a female brewer’s name on it, the tasting volunteers claimed they would pay less for the beer and had lower expectations of taste and quality.  The same beer with a male brewer’s name received a more positive response.  The experiment was also done with cupcakes but there was less disparity in results because cupcakes are perceived as female products to begin with.

You’ve Still Got A Long Way To Go, Baby.

Lord Mayor of Dublin Busts His Beer Budget

Diageo, world’s biggest drinks maker and owner of Guinness, gives the Lord Mayor of Dublin 120 kegs of beer every year for entertainment purposes.  Dublin is, of course, the home of the world famous brewery.

The current Lord Mayor, Nial Ring took up his office in July last year, but managed to spend his entire free beer allowance by January.  Mansion House has been the official residence of Dublin’s Lord Mayor since 1715 and it gets a lot of visitors apparently.  And the visitors drink a lot of beer.

After he ran out, the Lord Mayor “negotiated” an additional 30 kegs at the start of 2019 but they were gone by March 21.  Well, let’s face it, St. Patrick’s Day on March 17 was very busy.  So the Dublin council bought another 71 kegs which included 45 kegs of Guinness; 16 of Carlsberg; six of Budweiser; and four of Smithwick’s for a cost of €15,280 or $17,073 of tax payer money.

In February, Lord Mayor Ring said how delighted he was that so much beer is being enjoyed by the over 16,000 members of the public visiting Mansion House and 8,000 more for evening events.  This week he told the Times newspaper, “Thirty-five thousand people have visited the Mansion House so far this year. The beer is part of the entertainment which also [includes] afternoon tea for parties, including senior citizens,” he said.  Those tea parties must be pretty lively.  Mr. Ring’s tenure ends in June.

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