Merry Christmas!

[robson]

Всех-всех католиков, протестантов и вообще всех-всех

С Рождеством!

Пусть сбываются добрые надежды.

62793

[viktorsabade]

http://i056.radikal.ru/1212/4b/2a14a71df17b.jpg (http://www.radikal.ru)
Ежегодная рождественская ярмарка Fira de Santa Lucia в Барселоне - взрыв праздничного настроения вокруг Храма Святого Семейства, непреклонно вытягивающего к далекому небу неровные башни, будто выплавленные из песка. Рождество на родине корриды и фламенко, что может быть экзотичнее? Только здесь на базаре вы найдете ароматную посуду из оливкового дерева и мягкие сумки из тонкой кожи. В число типично испанских сувениров входят искусные глиняные фигурки, среди которых встречаются типичные представители своеобразного каталонского юмора, например, знаменитый canager - фигурка пастуха, справляющего естественную нужду - символ плодородия и урожая. Впрочем, подобный юмор ничуть не портит испанской народной любви к вкусной и роскошной пище. Будучи на ярмарке, обязательно посетите Can Culleretes , ресторан 1786 года основания, где подают сочного молодого гуся, фаршированного свежими грушами .Как и все прочие праздничные рынки в Испании, весь месяц на Fira de Santa Llucía будут проходить яркие громкие шествия, шоу и музыкальные парады. Основное кушанье, которое обязательно нужно попробовать на Пиренейском полуострове на Рождество - сладкая плитка из нуги с орехами - turron.

[fan_ta]

http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/fantazarka/24680478/741710/741710_original.jpg

[Izold]

жывые белыи мидведи, которых Христос никогда не видел! вот бы он порадовался празднику...

[crazy-mike]

http://img1.etsystatic.com/000/1/6549100/il_fullxfull.305719749.jpg

[XCNY]

MERRY,MERRY
НУ ЧТО, КТО ПЕРВЫЙ ! ?ПОДХОДИ ЧТО ЛИ

[Дженни]

да ну вас :303:

[crazy-mike]

да ну вас :303:
http://www.exportlawblog.com/images/santa_f16.jpg
Под крылом самолёта о чём-то поёт...
http://www.andrews.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/web/2012/12/121208-F-RY372-010.JPG
http://i.ebayimg.com/t/18-PARATROOPER-SANTA-CLAUSE-CHRISTMAS-CARDS-Gifts-Overseas-US-MILITARY-TROOPS-/00/s/Mjk4WDIxMg==/$(KGrHqEOKo4E6(lkUi98BOqYOcTe8w~~60_35.JPG

[Bob Stein]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eHD7Yxs0tNA

[Izold]

[vi]

such a lovely couple! я плакаль

[Aurbo]

Ко всем Гринчам,которые хотят в этой ветке украсть Кристмас:
вот я вас щас всех! Брысь! Здесь постят только приличные сообщения в духе Кристмаса! :320::320:

[Izold]

:120:а кто хотел Christmas украсть, Гринч или Гингрич?

[Bob Stein]

Costco wine surprises: ‘If you see it, buy it’

Vice President Joe Biden pushes a freighted cart during a Christmas-shopping visit to a Costco store in Washington.

Marriage, it’s said, is all about compromise, knowing when to resist and when to let go. I recently made a fairly minor concession and reaped some rather nice rewards: I agreed to get a Costco card.

My husband had been petitioning to join the warehouse club for many months, and I finally ran out of reasons why we should not. (Most of those reasons had to do with its space-straining merchandise — everything at Costco comes in extra-extra large.) But the real reason that I finally surrendered had to do with its wine department: I’d heard there were great deals in Costco COST -0.05% stores.

With more than 68 million members, the population of Costco customers is close to the size of Italy’s (with room left over for Ireland’s, too). And like the citizens of those two countries, Costco customers drink a fair amount of alcohol: Costco’s wine sales reached $1.4 billion in the 12 months through August.

Costco sells both foreign and domestic wines under its own Kirkland brand name, but the Kirkland Signature label represents a small percentage of the chain’s overall wine sales, said Annette Alvarez-Peters, Costco’s assistant general merchandise manager for wine, spirits and beer. Domestic wines account for 70% of Costco’s wine sales, and the company does a great deal of business in large brands such as La Crema Chardonnay and Folie Deux.
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• Slide Show: Top 10 cities for bar flies

But Costco also sells wines from small producers and prestigious estates, and this was what interested me the most: I’d heard stories of people finding bottles of first-growth Bordeaux at their local Costcos, of first-rate Champagne and fancy Napa Cabernets, too. Most of these stories seemed to take place far away from my home state of New Jersey, which has only two Costcos with liquor licenses (in the towns of Wayne and Edison). State law limits the company to those two licenses, according to Siobhan Clements, Costco’s Northeast regional wine, spirits and beer buyer.

Would I be better off driving to a nearby state, like, perhaps Connecticut? Did its Costcos have a better selection of wines? (None of the New York Costcos has a liquor license.) Clements assured me that the New Jersey Costcos had a good selection of wine, thanks primarily to a good network of distributors. (A good Costco wine selection is “all about the distributors,” according to Clements.)
Click to Play
Starbucks uncorks wine offerings

Starbucks is trying a new approach, with "Starbucks Evenings" cafes serving wine, Champagne, and boutique chocolate along with its standard fare.

In fact, Clements added, the Wayne Costco, the one closest to my home, had a very good selection. She checked her list and read off a few names: “Silver Oak Cabernet, Insignia, Tignanello in large format and Chateau Giscours” (a Bordeaux third growth). These same wines could be found in the new store that she just helped to open in Washington, D.C., said Clements, adding that Costco liked to stock new stores with particularly good wines.

The bad news was that Clements couldn’t promise that any of the wines that she’d just mentioned would be there when I finally went shopping. Wines sold out quickly at Costco, she said. So I made plans to visit the next day.

The first temptations I encountered were predictably large: enormous five-pound tins of Belgian chocolate cookies (I succumbed and bought two) and very big bottles of Bailey’s Irish Cream (which I eschewed). I found the wine section all the way in the back of the store, near the vegetables and frozen food.

The first wine I encountered was Pommery Champagne, stacked in a pile of boxes across from an automatic player piano, which kept unspooling the same unidentifiable song. Occasionally a fellow Costco-ite would sit down at the piano and pretend to play a tune. Next to the Pommery (a perfectly decent brand, incidentally) was an even larger display of Duckhorn Merlot — and a few random bottles of 2007 Pio Cesare Barolo. This was a surprise: The Pio Cesare is a very good wine from a very good producer and vintage, and at $54, it was about $10 cheaper than standard retail. I grabbed one of the five bottles, and a man behind me took one as well.

I found a few more surprises among many highly commercial wines (most of which were stacked in boxes in the middle of the floor). There was a 2009 Clos de l’Oratoire Chateauneuf-du-Pape Blanc ($35), a very good white from the Rhone, and a 2011 Achaval Ferrer Cabernet ($18) from an excellent Argentine producer. There were even a bunch of bottles of 2002 Dom Prignon ($136about $10 to $20 cheaper than at most retailers). And there was a Kirkland Signature Champagne for $20. (It was real Champagne from the Champagne region, and it wasn’t half-bad, though as a friend said, “Nobody wants the Kirkland label on their table.”)

I didn’t see any Tignanello in large format or any Opus One, but I did find several bottles of 2009 Shafer Merlot ($43). That certainly was a surprise. What was one of the most acclaimed Merlots in Napa doing in Costco? I bought a bottle of that, too, and later contacted Doug Shafer. Was Shafer now selling to Costco? Shafer said the placement had actually been made “in error” and had been intended for a different store. Shafer didn’t make enough wine to sell to Costco, Shafer reminded me. It was only thanks to the chaos of superstorm Sandy that the Merlot somehow ended up in the Wayne store.

Oddly enough, the same thing happened with a Cava that I found. The terrific 2010 Naveran Dama Cava ($12) was not meant to be distributed to Costco, according to Ben Carson at Ole Imports. The basic Cava had been sent there instead. And yet, I was able to buy the Dama. What did Carson think happened?

“Someone at Costco ordered it,” he said. The distributor sent over 10 cases.

Of course, one’s Costco luck can run hot and cold. Happy surprises happen, but the good wines rarely last very long. When I returned to the store just four days later, the Pio Cesare, the Cava and the Shafer were all gone. I did, however, find some Roederer Estate Brut nonvintage, one of my favorite domestic sparkling wines. And yes, this too was a bit of a mistakeor at least an uncommon occurrence. According to Xavier Barlier, the U.S. senior vice president, marketing and communications, for Roederer’s importer, Maisons Marques & Domaines, “The Roederer portfolio is not generally available at Costco.”

(In another quirk, in some states, due to legal vicissitudes, one need not join such so-called warehouse clubs as Costco or Sam’s Club to shop in their liquor departments: Save money on holiday beer, wine and spirits. )

As lucky as I’d been on my very first visits, I knew plenty of Costco shoppers who had fared just as well thanks to Andrew Cullen’s Costco Wine Blog. Cullen — who isn’t a Costco employee, just a fan — receives emails from readers “at least once a week” about the wines that they’ve found.

Cullen has had his share of finds over the years, though none more dramatic perhaps than a terrific 2005 Chateau Pontensac, an excellent cru bourgeois Bordeaux that he bought for $13 — less than a third of its regular price. “I think it was mislabeled,” said Cullen, who bought five bottles of Pontensac and said it was still drinking “very well.” Cullen’s cardinal rule of Costco wine shopping? “If you see it, buy it.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Lettie Teague is a wine columnist for the Wall Street Journal, where this article first appeared. (Market Watch)

[crazy-mike]

Ко всем Гринчам,которые хотят в этой ветке украсть Кристмас:
вот я вас щас всех! Брысь! Здесь постят только приличные сообщения в духе Кристмаса! :320::320:
http://www.moroz-ded.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ded-moroz.jpg
В Мюнхене +20C!!!!!!!!!
http://www.vesti.ru/videos?vid=474858&cid=1
25.12.2012 01:26
На Рождество в Германии установилась аномальная 20-градусная жара

[Alter Ego]

C Рождеством!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysIzPF3BfpQ

[-Helena-]

Всех-всех католиков, протестантов и вообще всех-всех

С Рождеством!

Пусть сбываются добрые надежды.


Merry Christmas! :171:

[MariLi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6ygvoCacsY

[Alter Ego]

http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/63745_10151202780957205_469910202_n.jpg