Madeira

Wednesday

Roger Kimball

Madeira, our onetime national drink

Does America have a national drink? It once did — not officially, quite, but in fact. And what was that national potation? Madeira. The wine, John Hailman writes in Thomas Jefferson on Wine, “symbolized to Americans a common patriotism and spirit of independence.” It was, he continues, the “mother’s milk of the American Revolution,” the “virtual national beverage after the Revolution.” Madeira was used to toast the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson dispensed it at his inauguration. Washington, Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin all loved the stuff. John Adams remarked that a few glasses of Madeira made anyone feel capable of being president.

madeira

Wednesday

Ian Oxnevad

Florida flirts with diversity-centric medical training

If you needed urgent heart surgery to save your life, would you care about the racial background of your doctor? While you as a prospective patient in need of treatment may not care, Florida State University cares a great deal and recently received a grant worth $14.5 million from the National Institute of Health to promote diversity. FSU’s “Florida-First Brigade” initiative is to “build a research community committed to diversity and inclusive excellence”. Diversity of medical professionals is the end-goal of the funds, not the provision or development of better medical care. Therein lies the problem. The human body operates the same way across individuals regardless of racial background.

florida diversity

Tuesday

Roger Kimball

Ports for any storm

Just as tastes in female beauty have differed widely through the ages — take a comparative glance at the damsels Rubens featured with those of Botticelli (I leave the Venus of Willendorf out of account) — so, too, does the taste in wine vary through the ages. The British critic George Saintsbury was a giant in the field of literary scholarship. He was also an avid apologist for wine, and his Notes on a Cellar-Book (1920) is a classic in the literature of wine writing. A modern reader, however, cannot help but be struck by the prominent place given to wines that have fallen out of favor today, especially such fortified wines as sherry, Madeira and port.

ports