Monthly Archives: December 2008

Kaiken Ultra Malbec 2006

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Kaiken Ultra Malbec Mendoza Argentina 2006
$12.99 — 91 WA | 90 WS

Kaiken Ultra Malbec

Source: KaikenWines.com

This is my third post about the Kaiken Ultra Malbec 2003.  My other posts are here and here.

For better or for worse, we drank the last bottle from our case many weeks ago.  However, over the holiday one of my relatives — and blog readers :)  – had several bottles on hand and was happy to share the wealth.  I can now say with great confidence, this may be the finest bottle of wine produced in the 21st century for under $13.  Truly a wonderful wine for the money.

3 Wines Under $10

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Over the holiday I took three wines, each of which cost $10 or less, to one of the family gatherings.  The wines included:

Arthur Hills Cabernet Sauvignon Paso Robles California 2006 — $9.99

Nine x Nine Zinfandel Lodi California 2006 — $9.99

Bodega Norton Malbec Barrel Select Mendoza Argentina 2006 — $8.99

I had high hopes for all three, especially the Arthur Hills, as finding a decent California Cab for $10 has become almost impossible. Unfortunately, my search continues. The Arthur Hills was by far the worst of the three wines. It had a bizarre nose – think some combination of rotting organic matter and petrol. On the palate it was watery thin with flavors of strawberries — but of a decidedly artifical nature. At any rate, not what you want from a Cab. In short, this is one of the worst wines I can recall drinking in a long while. After a few sips, it went down the drain. It looks like the Gun Bun Cab gets to retain its title as the best California Cab under $15.

Next up was the Nine x Nine Zin. I was hoping for perhaps an alternative to Renwood or Dancing Bull. Certainly for $10 I had no expectations of Ridge… Alas, for me, this wine was also a disappointment. Mind you, it was not so visibly flawed as the Arthur Hills, but it was still just a bit beyond the borderline of acceptable. Of course, in wine as so many other things opinions vary; one of the other wine enthusiasts at the party thought it wasn’t so bad.

The third of the three turned out to be the best. The Norton Malbec was fragrant on the nose and full and lush in the mouth. It would benefit from a bit more grip on the palate and a little less ripenness, but overall, this was a drinkable wine. I have also recommended this wine to some friends who reported back that they enjoyed it very much. Although the Norton will never be mistaken for Kaiken, it is perfectly adequate for social gatherings and everyday drinking.

Moment of Inversion

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In tracing the concepts of institution and taken for granted in Husserl’s work, especially The Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology, I was struck by the fact that Husserl seems to clearly describe a concept we might now label as the moment of inversion (Latour & Woolgar, 1986).

Although moment of inversion is not a phrase Husserl uses, the concept is clearly Husserlian.  Crisis speaks repeatedly of the “art of measurement” and its role in “externalization,” a process through which the sensible qualities of an object are externalized and substructed, i.e., put on the surface and made to cover up, while the original senses are pushed under or buried. The result is an inversion through which idealities, quantities and symbols become an index to realities, qualities and senses.  A world of formulas replaces the world of forms.

We can even suggest a preliminary definition of the moment of inversion as: “The surreptitious substitution of the mathematically substructed world of idealities for the only real world, the one that is actually given through perception, that is ever experienced and experienceable – our everyday lifeworld” (Husserl, 1970: 48-49).

Citation: Husserl, E. 1970. The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology (D. Carr, Trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Giddens Structuration Theory

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Agents and structures are not two independent phenomena, a dualism, but rather a duality

One of our MGMT 590 assignments was to summarize a classic article or book for the class.  For my classic I chose Anthony Giddens’ (1984) The Constitution of Society.  The book brings together in one place an approach to social science – structuration theory (ST) – which Giddens had begun developing in earlier works.  In one sentence structuration theory’s thesis is that: Structure is both the medium and outcome of action.

Theoretically, structuration theory’s focus is on understanding human agency and social institutions, i.e., the social world (p. xvii).  For Giddens, doing so coherently requires that the dualism between objectivism and subjectivism “be reconceptualized as a duality – the duality of structure” (p. xxi; see also Cohen, 2000).  The result is not “interpretive sociology,” not “structural sociology” (p. xxi), and not “methodological individualism” (p. xxvii).

The rules and resources drawn upon in the production and reproduction of social action are at the same time the means of system reproduction… The constitution of agents and structures are not two independently given sets of phenomena, a dualism, but represent a duality” (pp. 19, 25).

Methodologically, social practices are the locus of this duality; they are “at the root of the constitution of both subject and social object” (p. xxii). For structuration theory, practices are the central unit of analysis (Cohen, 2000: 95, 96), and they are always situated in time and space (p. xxii, xxiv).  For Giddens, one implication of putting time and space at the heart of structuration theory is a need to rethink arbitrary divisions between sociology, history and geography (p. xxi).  In sum, structuration theory privileges neither the individual nor the collective, “but social practices ordered across space and time” (p. 2).

Empirically, studying structuration “means studying the modes in which such systems… are produced and reproduced” as a result of the activities of situated actors (p. 25).  Structuration theory can guide such research by drawing attention to (1) “the routinized intersection of practices which are the ‘transformation points’ in structural relations;” and (2) “the modes in which institutionalized practices connect social with system integration” (p. xxxi).

Download Book Summary (52k .pdf)

Citation: Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

d’Arenberg Footbolt Shiraz 2005

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d’Arenberg The Footbolt Shiraz McLaren Vale Australia 2005
$14.99 – 89 WA | 89 ST 

d'Arenberg Footbolt Shiraz 2005
d’Arenberg Footbolt Shiraz

According to the Pennsylvania Wine and Spirits website, the Atherton Street location is a Premium Collection Store with more than 2,000 selections. Far from premium, this week the store looked like a cross between a warehouse and a warzone, with literally dozens of specials occupying every bit of free space. In some places they had aisles blocked in order to accommodate everything. 

And yet, despite the abundance of choices, finding any wines worth buying proved to be a real challenge.   Most of what they were peddling was either worthless swill or just simply too expensive for everyday enjoyment. Having 2,000 selections is of no benefit if the wines are not not worth drinking in the first place. 

After what felt like an hour in the store, I finally found one worth bringing home in quantity: d’Arenberg The Footbolt Shiraz McLaren Vale Australia 2005. The Footbolt is a consistently good offering (so too are many of the other bottlings from d’Arenberg). The 2005 vintage is no exception. And at $14.99, the Pennsylvania Wines and Spirits price is actually very, very competitve, on par with the best I can find on the internet. I picked up a case and a half, nearly cleaning them out. 

The Footbolt scores 89 points from both Robert Parker / Wine Advocate, and from Stephen Tanzer / International Wine Cellar.  After drinking the first bottle I can see why.  This wine has a beautiful nose, a lot on the palate and a decently long finish.  The Footbolt is clearly ready to drink now, but I suspect that it will taste like a $30 bottle of Shiraz if you give it about 12 to 18 months of cellaring. 

As for me, one case went onto the “everyday” shelf of our Eurocave, and the other half a case went onto one of the “save for later” shelves.  If the latter 6 bottles manage to last 12 or 18 months, I’ll let you know how it is holding up.  Also, if I get a chance, I plan to stop back and clean out any remaining bottles.

BTW — The producer is spelled d’Arenberg with an E, not d’Arenburg with an U.