Factlets (21 & 22)

  These factlets are food-related, although beverages are also involved. The first has to do with what is now the largest fast-food chain on the planet. The name of the company begins with the letter "M" and it is not McDonald's. The second pertains to one small restaurant in Washington. Washington, Virginia, not Washington, D.C. If you are interested in finer dining, go directly to the second one.

MIXUE

   The company name is pronounced this way: ME-shway. It sells soft ice cream, sugary drinks and bubble tea. Those products are sold in over 50,000 red (really red) establishments scattered throughout the world. McDonald's has around 43,500 outlets. 
   Mixue's Ronald McDonald is "Snow King", who looks like a snowman. Apparently the stores' Muzak plays a song with these lyrics, "I love you, you love me,: Mixue, ice cream and tea, to the tune of "OH! Susanna." 


   The chain was started in 1997 by a student, Zhang Hongchao. His brother, Hongfu is the CEO and the boys are reportedly worth $8.2 billion each. They can afford to eat at the next place in this post, where there is a lot less red and much more ambience.
   According to the company website the full name is Mixue Bingcheng, which in English is"Sweet Snow Palace." For sources see: "Forget McDonald’s. This Chinese Fast-Food Chain Is Now the World’s Biggest: Mixue lures cost-conscious customers with ice cream and drinks under $1 during China’s economic slump," Stu Woo, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 3, 2025 and from the Washington Post: "The World’s Biggest Fast-Food Chain Lands in the U.S. Here’s How it Tastes," Ethan Beck, Feb. 23, 2026.

THE INN AT LITTLE WASHINGTON

   This place is a little nicer and I am sure it is "Worth a Pilgrimage", as they state on their website. The related factlet here has to do with the corkage fee charged by this establishment, about which someone complained - $200 per bottle. I was unable to verify, that, but it may actually be $300.
   You have not wasted your time. Enjoy the rest of your evening here: The Inn At Little Washington. There is a lot to see and there are many dishes to savour, such as, "Carpaccio of Herb-Crusted Elysian Fields Baby Lamb Loin with Caesar Salad Ice Cream Domaine Figuière, Première, Rosé, Côtes De Provence, France (2024).
   As for the wines, if you don't want to pay them a few hundred bucks to open your own plonk, they have plenty to choose from. Here is a random pick which is found on p.66 of their 92 pp. wine list.

Sources:
   The corkage complaint was also found in the WaPo. Unfortunately this is the last day I will be able to present such valuable nuggets from that publication. I have cancelled my subscription and will probably post about it, since I won't be spending the time reading the Washington Post.
  For those who are curious, the first factlet related to the Gee-Gees.

The Bonus:
More Fine Wines at  L'Auberge Provencale Inn & Restaurant 
   Late last year you may recall that two people dined at another restaurant in the Virginia countryside. They then asked to see the wine cellar and tried to remove from it, some valuable wines. They were chased outside and the British woman was captured. Her Serbian partner was not, and he was last spotted at the John F. Kennedy International Airport. Some of the pinot noirs taken are still missing.
Some Cancon: The British woman wanted to look around because she was working for a "Canadian client who was evaluating venues for a potential event."
(Once again, the source is from WaPo: "Tricked-out Overcoat Linked to New Charges in $38,000 Wine Heist A Suspect in a Virginia Theft Case is Accused of Slipping Six High-end Pinots Into Interior Pockets of His Coat," Dan Morse, Feb. 6, 2026.)
  The restaurant/inn is L'Auberge Provencale Inn & Restaurant and it is not too far down the road from The Inn at Little Washington, if you want to have a nice long weekend. Very nice. Supposedly the cellar has around 5,400 bottles. To have your cork popped costs $55 at L'Auberge Provencale. Their wine list is only 70 pp. and here is a sample page from it:

Given that the price for one bottle on the page above is $18,000, perhaps the Virginia marketing people should change the state's slogan to "Virginia Is For Wine Lovers."

Christmas Spirit$

 Alcoholic Beverages
     I looked in MM to see what I have written about booze and I will just say that the MADD members would not approve. Last year, I admitted in "Sober Hypochondria" that I was not able to stay dry, even for just January, and I provided some evidence that perhaps alcohol was not as bad as the health people suggest. The title and sub-title of this post is all you will need to determine where I stand: "Sobriety May Be Overrated: Ammo for Alkies."
   Many of us plan to drink a lot in the next few days and promise not to drink once the bell rings in the new year. Most of us are better at planning, at least about things that are booze-related, than we are at keeping promises. That the promise part is difficult is attested to by a fellow British boozer.
   Although he knew it would be difficult he was determined to limit his consumption to 100 bottles of wine for the year. How difficult that goal is, you abstainers won't appreciate. He thought that if he stayed dry for January, he would have about eight bottles to his credit and only eleven months left. While he did have some alcohol-free days during that dreadful month, "the long and the short of it is I got through my 100-bottle quota in the first three months of the year!" (the exclamation point is provided by me, since I know you sober people probably gasped.)
   Wait, it gets worse. Having decided to drink less, he also decided to purchase wines of a better quality.  "I immediately splurged on good wine - claret and white Burgundy for the most part - and then guzzled it all by springtime. Some of it was around £75, such as 2009 Domaine de Chevalier, but most of it was in the £30-£40 range, such as 2015 Segla, which worked out at £33.20 a bottle." Note the £ symbol. I drink mostly "plonk" as the Brit would say, but I do realize that booze is expensive.

Very Expensive Bottles
  How expensive, you ask? Here are the five most expensive bottles in stock at the LCBO stores here in Ontario. They are all Scotch whiskies. The Scots have to be frugal to afford these.

1. $69,999.95

Coming in at number one is The Dalmore Cask Curation Series: The Sherry Edition.

2. $55,849.95

For nearly $56,000, you can purchase a single 700 ml bottle of The Dalmore Constellation Collection Cask 2 Single Malt Scotch Whisky 1971.

3. $55,000

For $55,000, you can get a 700 ml bottle of Bowmore 1969 Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky.

4. $47,000

A 700 ml bottle of The Dalmore 45-Year-Old Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky goes for $47,000.

5. $40,000

At number five, for $40,000 you can buy a 750 ml bottle of Highland Park 50-Year-Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky from Scotland

Booze That People Purchase
   According to the LCBO data, folks here were more likely to buy American whiskey than Scotch, and Tequila is very popular. About 35% of sales was for spirits, 28% for wine and 23% for beer, which is easily purchased elsewhere. The illustrations are from the LCBO Quarterly Update, June 23 to Oct. 12

 

Sources: "Could I Limit Myself to 100 Bottles of Wine A Year?" Toby Young, The Spectator, Dec. 14, 2024.

"The 5 Most Expensive Bottles of Alcohol at the LCBO in Ontario," Ryan Rocca, Insauga.com, Dec. 4, 2024

P.S. "Both spellings of the word, "whiskey" and "whisky," are correct. The tricky part is matching the right spelling with the right country of origin. If you’re talking about a drink that’s been made in Scotland, Canada, or Japan, use the spelling without the e—whisky. When referring to drinks distilled in the United States or Ireland, use the e—whiskey."

BEYOND THE PALEWALL (1)

["Beyond the Palewall" is the title of this series because "Beyond the Paywall" is taken. Information for which you are not willing to pay, along with information you may not wish to know, is presented in abbreviated form without charge. What has caught my eye may sometimes feel like a poke in yours and, in that sense, be beyond the pale for you. Items will appear weekly, or perhaps monthly, or maybe semi-annually, if I can get started and the weather is bleak.]

SACRÉ BLEU - Wine Destruction

   You may have missed this bad news among the other bad news, but this is truly terrible. There is too much wine in Europe and the French government is spending over 200 million euros to get rid of it. Perhaps they could just ship it to the LCBO.

   "France Has Too Much Wine. It's Paying Millions to Destroy the Leftovers," Caroline Anders, Washington Post, Aug. 26, 2023.

"Ruining so much wine may sound ludicrous, but there’s a straightforward economic reason this is happening: Making wine is getting more expensive due in part to recent world events, and people are drinking less of it. That has left some producers with a surplus that they cannot price high enough to make a profit. Now, some of France’s most famous wine-producing regions, like Bordeaux, are struggling....

In June, the European Union initially gave France about $172 million to destroy nearly 80 million gallons of wine, and the French government announced additional funds this week. Producers will use the funds to distill their wine into pure alcohol to be used for other products, such as cleaning supplies or perfume.

Wine consumption in France has been plummeting since its peak in 1926, when the average French citizen drank about 136 liters per year. Today, that number is closer to 40 liters, The Washington Post previously reported. Consumers are also inundated with beverage choices now, and they’re choosing wine less and less.

As consumption has taken a nosedive, production costs have increased and inflation has tightened budgets around the world. That’s especially true since the coronavirus pandemic, which shuttered bars, restaurants and wineries, driving up prices. The war in Ukraine also influenced the industry by disrupting shipments of products essential to winemaking, such as fertilizer and bottles. And on top of the pandemic and war, climate change is forcing growers to adapt to new harvest schedules and reckon with more extreme weather."

Rivers of Wine! 

  Not long after that article was published, this one was. I am not suggesting they are related.

   "Nearly 600,000 Gallons of Wine Wash Down the Street in Portuguese Town,"  María Luisa Paúl, Washington Post, Sept. 12, 2023. 

"Residents in a Portuguese village woke up to an almost biblical scene on Sunday morning. The streets were impassable, replaced by a raging river of close to 600,000 gallons of red wine.

After two wine tanks belonging to a local distillery burst, enough booze flowed down the roads of São Lourenço do Bairro to fill an Olympic-size pool — and to spark fears from local leaders about possible environmental damage…

Sunday’s wine wave began at Destilaria Levira, a company that specializes in transforming wine into a slew of products, including gin, cleaning supplies and food oils. Though authorities are still investigating what caused the tanks to burst, the company said the wine they carried was essentially going to be destroyed — or distilled into raw alcohol — as part of the Portuguese government’s attempts to address a brewing wine crisis.

The nation with the world’s highest wine consumption per capita is among the European countries grappling with a massive surplus of wine this year. The combination of rising production costs and an ever-increasing range of alcoholic drink options has resulted in plummeting demand for wine in countries such as France, Spain and Italy....

The episode in Portugal isn’t the first time large amounts of wine have spilled. In 2020, the Russian River in California’s Sonoma County was tainted red after a 97,000-gallon winery tank burst open. That same year, a 13,000-gallon tank broke at a Spanish winery, leaving a flood of red wine gushing down like a breached dam."

  This story was also reported in the New York Times: "A River of Wine Flooded the Streets of a Town in Portugal," Sept. 12, 2023.

"The tanks that collapsed were part of an effort to address a broader problem: There’s too much wine in Europe. Portugal, like other major European wine producers such as France and Italy, is suffering from an oversupply of wine, largely because of a decline in both consumption and exports. The tanks that collapsed were being used to store surplus wine, according to the distillery."

I will try to find some better news.

For The Foodies

    

   Thanksgiving will be here soon, so here are some more resources for those who like to cook. In "Food History" you were provided with menus, recipes, books about food and libraries which had large culinary collections. Add to all of that, this article from Atlas Obscura: "4 Library Collections Filled With Culinary Treasures: They're Saving Food History For the Future," Anne Ewbank, Sept. 19, 2022. 
   The four are: 
1) University of California, Davis, Wine Library (I discussed this one in "Libraries as Cabinets of Curiosities".)
2) University of Texas at San Antonio Mexican Cookbook Collection
3) New York Public Library Jewish Cookbook Collection
4) Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive
("Last month, Janice Bluestein Longone passed away at the age of 89. Her passion for food and culinary history led her, in 1972, to launch a rare culinary books business out of her home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Food luminaries such as Julia Child and James Beard often sought her out for research help.More than 20 years ago, Longone and her husband began donating their prodigious collection to the University of Michigan. Today, the archive consists of nearly 25,000 books and other food-related items, a testament to Longone’s dedication to seeking out, sharing, and preserving culinary history.")

Cooking Resources Up At Western University

   The Archives and Special Collections in the Western Libraries has recently digitized some books and papers that contain food recipes as well as some medical ones. The History Cookery Collection offers the Crete and Emily Chadwick's Recipe Scrapbooks and a few others. Although no information is offered about either Crete or Emily, apparently they were members of the Chadwick family from Ingersoll. A finding aid to that collection is found here: The Chadwick Family Papers. 

     Check with the folks up at the Archives Collection in the D.B. Weldon Library for additional information. 

The Bonus:
   If you are cooking for a literary crowd see, "Cooking With the MLA.

Survival Wisdom

Wine Advice

   This is another of my useful Public Service Announcements. It is taken from The New Yorker and the wisdom is Nate Odenkirk's, not mine. Two things should be noted: 1) only a small snippet of the advice offered is provided here and, 2) I received it in an email from The New Yorker, to which I subscribe, and it seems to me that some of the items in the emails don't make it to the printed edition. 

   So, I am performing a public service in archiving this valuable information and saving you from having to listen to an insufferable, wine-glass twirling oenophile. While the advice is intended for those who are in a hurry, I think it applies generally to all wine buying, allowing more time for the drinking of it. 

   Mr. Odenkirk offers this additional advice:

Skip the tasting profile
Wine tasting profiles are basically essays printed in small type that describe the wine’s characteristics. They’re very helpful if you’ve lately found yourself craving a “full-bodied, citrus-forward wine with hints of melon, clove, and marzipan.” But in all other scenarios, these flowery dissertations are a titanic waste of time that you do not have! Does it allege to be “wine”? Huzzah. Buy it.

Source:
  "Wine-Buying Tips For People Who Are Running Late," Nate Odenkirk, The New Yorker, May 6, 2022.

The Bonus:

   "Odenkirk" is a slightly odd name so I looked for more information about Nate Odenkirk. It just happens to be the case that we are about to watch the conclusion of the fine drama series: Better Call Saul. Saul is Saul Goodman, who is played by the writer, comedian and actor, Bob Odenkirk. His son is Nate Odenkirk.