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A Balloon in Cactus
Say Bartender, Make Mine Tuna on the Rocks
By Maggie Van Ostrand
Her Email
Her Bio
In the Bible, Jesus turns water into wine and multiplies two fishes into enough to feed 12,000 people, including women and children. Can China top that? Seems as though they're going to try.
Sun Keman, of China's port city of Dalian, has formed the Dalian Fisherman's Song Maritime Biological Brewery, intending to turn fish into wine. I'm not kidding. I checked it out on Snopes and it's not a hoax. They already have orders from Japan, Russia, and other parts of China. Xinhua News Agency reported "Different from China's thousands of years of brewing, [this] brewery will clean, boil, and ferment fish for making wine."
I don't know about anyone else, but I like my wine made the old-fashioned way, from grapes. At least French wine doesn't have eyes that can look back at you from the bottom of the glass. Then again, I had to give up drinking altogether when I saw the worm in mescal; even though it was dead, it stared balefully at me.
Alvin Starkman, M.A., LL.B., wrote a comprehensive article for Mexconnect.com, about the worm in mescal. Starkman says "The gusano worm is in fact not a worm, but rather a caterpillar, an infestation to which the agave plant is susceptible. However, in the production and sale of mezcal... prior to there being any labeling or regulation... , a gusanito was inserted into a bottle of mescal as proof to the purchaser that the liquor had a sufficiently high alcohol content. The worm's preservation in the mescal, without any decomposition, signified that the alcohol content ought to be acceptable to the purchaser." So okay then, it wasn't a worm in my mescal, it was a caterpillar. This is better?
Fish-into-wine and worms-into-mescal could be considered prime marketing by Mother Nature. TV commercials for such drinks could be made even more effective by using the popular Guinness Beer commercials with the two geezers shouting "Brilliant!"
Another effective marketing tool, if tool be the correct word, would be perpetuation of the myth that pulque, the respected drink of Aztec elders, high priests, and warriors, sprang from the breasts of the Goddess Mayahel, of which she had 400. Imagine what that would mean to Victoria's Secret bra sales?
Mayahel was the "official" Goddess of Pulque, Alcohol, and Agave, at least until she entered rehab. . .
Maggie Van Ostrand is a wonderful storyteller with great insight. To read all her articles all the time, we invite you to join our family of subscribers... it isn't expensive. A monthly subscription is just $5.00 USD - that's $1.15 per week. An annual subscription costs $30.00 USD - only $2.50 per month or 58 cents per week. If you're interested in living or retiring in Mexico, we think you'll find it's money well spent.
Subscribe today and always read all the articles!Maggie Van Ostrand, writer, lives in Ajijic, Mexico and Pine Mountain, California. Her stories appear in the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, El Ojo Del Lago, and various magazines. She co-authored "Home Is Where The Hurt Is" with Tony- and Grammy-winning country humorist Roger Miller, and ghostwrites for television sitcoms.
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For MexConnect.Com LLC & Conexión México S.A. de C.V. © Mexico Connect 1996-2008 |
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