Nothing to do with tailoring although the saying 'to cut one's cloth accordingly' does come from tailoring. Anyway, The Old Girl would never see me as having anything to do with tailors. Just yesterday she laughed at the way I was dressed. "You used to dress elegantly when you were 'courting me', or at least you tried" she said. "Now you just dress like a bag of busted arseholes".
What a cheek, just because I was wearing shorts, long woollen socks and a tee-shirt with holes in it.
Anyway, back to the saying. As of tomorrow, as I said in my previous Post, I will be unemployed and thus not earning any money at all. Nothing. Zilch. I'll have to make savings where I can.
One way of saving money I guess is to buy bargains so I did. I bought four paintings by Harold Coop, the New Zealand artist that The Old Girl likes - she already has about fourteen of his works. I successfully bid on Trade Me getting two at a hundred dollars each, one at seventy two dollars and one at eighty seven dollars. The seller indicated the value at three to four thousand dollars each - my calculation is that each are worth at least a thousand. By my dodgy economic calculation I saved nearly four thousand dollars! Admittedly I spent three hundred and fifty nine dollars that I can ill afford now but, hey ho, The Old Girl likes them.
Another way of saving money is to drink less expensive wine. No doubt I'll write about this as The Wine Guy but just briefly, I think I'm going to have to change my preference in wine style. My wine of choice for years now has been Chardonnay. This is 'The queen' of grape varietals and, when made properly with all the right inputs, far surpasses any other white wine type. Unfortunately the 'inputs' are expensive being - low cropping, perfect site selection, barrel fermenting, barrel-ageing in new and one or two year old oak etc. Normally it's impossible to get a wine with at least some of these 'inputs' at less than twenty dollars a bottle unless the wine is heavily discounted.
Most other white varietal wines are cheaper to produce as they usually don't require low cropping, site selection is less important and no wood treatment is needed. Gold Medal standard wines like Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer etc. can be purchased for less than fifteen dollars - not on special. I might have to seek out Gewurztraminer to buy as I hate Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris. The trouble with Gewurztraminer though is that it is a wine type that is difficult to drink a lot of and frequently. It can be pungent, cloying, sweetish and ultimately boring - not like Chardonnay which Richard (of RBB) can drink until the cows come home (a bad analogy that as Richard (of RBB) is scared of cows).
Hold on though. Hold on. If Chardonnay is the 'queen' of white wines then the 'king' is Riesling.
I've always liked Riesling and acknowledge that New Zealand makes some of the best Rieslings in the world. I do drink it and would have drunk more but Chardonnay has always been my first choice in white wine. Now the advantages with Riesling are:
- It generally doesn't require wood fermentation or barrel ageing
- It can comfortably crop higher
- It generally can be grown on poor land (and consequently cheaper land)
- It isn't popular and therefore is usually cheaper than Chardonnay.
Today I checked the deals on www.Blackmarket, the on-line website where I often buy wine and found a gold medal standard Riesling (93 points) at $7.95 a bottle. I bought a case of 12 which will be delivered in a few days. The brand is Framingham from Marlborough which has an excellent reputation as a Riesling producer so I'm a little surprised at the low cost of this 2015 vintage wine.
When it arrives I'll try one straight away to evaluate and, if up to the advertising will buy some more.
At $7.95 a bottle (plus $8.00 a dozen freight) this is less than half what I usually pay for a Chardonnay that is on special.
I'll post wine-notes and bore regale you with my findings and expand on this on the Wine Guy site.
See:
So, I've only just retired and am already into cost-cutting and saving money. Who says that retirement is difficult?
8 comments:
You've deleted a post!
Yeah. On reading it, it seemed a bit self-indulgent.
The Happy Days series... The Windows series... You, self indulgent? No.
No, no,no.
No chance.
I might have to re-do the "Window Series'. Now that it's raining the windows have a different perspective.
It could be that I'll have to do four different versions to match the seasons.
Thanks for the tip.
And while I'm at it (I have time on my hands after all) I should do some more 'Happy Days' Posts.
Mmmm ..... and then, to balance things out I'll have to do some 'Bad Days' Posts.
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