Well, I don't know about that off-topic thing, Dale. :-) Before my cycling hobby migrated to 'serious racing', I toured England, especially the North, often. My Mercian was hung with Carradice and Karrimor bags; in one of those bags was the book Beer and Skittles by Richard Boston. The book served as a guide; my route took me from inn to pub, savoring the local brews. For me at least, tasty beer and classic racing bikes are inseparable!
Freek (Heineken is OK too) Faro Rotterdam Netherlands
2006/12/10, Jerome & Elizabeth Moos <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net>:
>
> To put this at least partly back On-topic, all is not lost, be it wine,
> beer or bikes. The backlash against giant breweries run by MBA's selling
> bland crap created the microbrewing movement that has now spread throughout
> America, and small wineries produce countless varieties of wine all over the
> country, just as the KOF frame builders like many on this list, and
> retro-inspired component manufacturers like Paul and Avid offer alternatives
> to the marketing-driven products of Shimano, Trek et al. If you don't like
> mass-produced, overmarketed goods, don't buy them.
>
> As long as dissatisfied customers seek alternatives, someone will supply
> those alternatives. These alternative suppliers will be small and few at
> first, as demand may not support large ones, but the growth of microbrewing
> shows that demand for quality products and supply of those demands reinforce
> each other to expand both demand and supply. In the 10 years or so of the
> CR list we have already seen that with the growth in list membership and
> with the introduction of new classic-style products and with many more
> sellers offering NOS or used classic parts. In a sense we have in some ways
> perhaps succeeded too well, as the increased demand has, as discussed
> recently, seemingly now begun to deplete caches of NOS components. But this
> may just give the incentive to manufacturers to produce reproductions of
> original parts, which has not yet occurred with bicycles to the extent it
> has with classic cars and motorcycles. If demand is sufficient, I think
> even Campagnolo will
> eventually be persuaded to either reissue their classic products or
> license someone else to do so. I think the acquisition of Brooks by Selle
> Italia is, on balance, a hopeful sign. While it would have been nice for
> Brooks to remain under British ownership, and while we are now paying higher
> prices, I believe it is clear that Selle Italia understand the collector
> market and made this acquisition specifically to cater to that market,
> becasue they believe there is money to be made supplying that demand just as
> a properly run businesses can make.
> money in classic cars and motorcycles.
>
> I firmly believe this glass is half full rather than half empty.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jerry Moos
> Big Spring, Texas
>
> Norris Lockley <norris.lockley@talktalk.net> wrote:
> Joe wrote recently that "...French wine has gone the same way of
> Simplex, Mafac and Huret here in the UK..." and I think that this was
> said in a pejorative sense.
>
> I think you have to remember that those French manufacturers made some
> wonderful contributions in terms of technological innovations..
> innovations blatantly copied years later by Japanese companies, but they
> just failed to market the products as well as they should have done.
> However these companies were world leaders at a time when the
> market-makers..those powerful people who decide just what we should
> drink, eat, wear, ride, drive etc had not taken over the world of
> business, and as we know to our own loss, frequently we have to buy the
> goods that the market-makers think we should have rather the the ones
> that we might otherwise wish to buy.
>
> This is surely the case in the UK where the large supermarkets dictate
> the types of wines that we, their customers, will drink. The other
> problem is that many British wine drinkers are too idle to actually
> study the world of wine in any greater depth than the biased hand-outs
> given out by the supermarkets, and I have little doubt that if CocoCola
> or Pepsi Cola decided to bottle wine eg PepsiShiraz or CocaMerlot, the
> average undemanding British wine drinker would buy millions and millions
> of cans of the stuff, in the knowledge that every can of that generic
> wine regardless of the year, would taste just the same as every other
> one from the same supplier, again regardless of year of production.
>
> French vineyards probably have, but I am willing to be corrected, the
> widest variety of grapes of any country in the world. There are
> varieties grown over there that produce absolutely delicious wines on a
> par with anything produced in any other part of the world, but because
> the French system of categorising wine, with the AOCs representing the
> top-end wines, does not specify in large easily-read type on the front
> of the label whether its sauvignon blanc, cabernet sauvignon
> ,chardonnay, merlot, syrah, pinot noir etc..many undiscriminating
> British wine-drinkers cannot make the effort to find out what varieties
> of grape are in the bottles...so they don't buy the wine.
>
> I have properties in both Sancerre and the Rhone valley of France so I
> have a vested interest..and I buy all of my wine from local
> producers..but you show me a New Zealand sauvignon blanc and I will show
> you an even better Sancerre or a Pouilly Fume...show me a syrah(shiraz)
> from anywhere in the world and I will show you an even better
> Hermitage..
>
> It's the supermarket wine-buyers of the UK that are killing off the
> British consumption of French wines , not the French wines
> themselves..if the buyers who control our tastes dont put the stuff on
> the shelves..then the customers cannot buy it..But there again there are
> some excellent independent wine-merchants in the UK who have not sold
> out their souls to market forces and the bland world of the mundane and
> totally generic chemically-doctored beverages.
>
> Sorry about that Dale...but I am as enthusiastic about wine as I am
> about old bikes..and I do admit to having vested interests in France.
>
> Norris Lockley