Things that make you want to join Class War! Thread one: The Magie Noir cocktail

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http://www.luxist.com/entry/1234000717065278/

On par with the Starlight Room’s $650 cocktail, The Evening Standard writes about a new cocktail at Umbaba in Soho called the Magie Noir which can be had for just under $600. The drink was apparently invented on the spot when a pair of Goldman Sachs bankers wanted to celebrate their seven-figure bonuses with “something special.” The Magie Noir is composed of a £3,000-a-bottle Richard Hennessy cognac, vintage Dom Perignon, Creme de Mure, fresh lemongrass and lychees. The cocktail, which the bankers bought two rounds of, has been added to Umbaba’s cocktails menu and will debut at a party this Saturday where each glass will come with a cocktail pin made of 24-carat white gold

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:04 (twenty years ago)

I can invent another drink they might be interested in. It's in suppository form, and includes the entire contents of their wallets.

― when something smacks of something (dave225.3), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:09 (twenty years ago)

Would it make a difference to your class war impulses if these were sport types/athletes or movie stars toasting their 7 figure salaries with said cocktail?

― We might force K8 to change her name to Marie. (kate), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:12 (twenty years ago)

Luxist.com is nothing but that kind of shit, day in day out. I'm vaguely convinced it's all a gag. Check out the 'user comments' on this one

― TOMBOT, Monday, 31 October 2005 16:13 (twenty years ago)

Would it make a difference to your class war impulses if these were sport types/athletes or movie stars toasting their 7 figure salaries with said cocktail?

not at all! its the sense of wasted money that confounds, i guess, not who's doing the wasting. but, eh... a fool and his money are soon parted. perhaps this is some insanely fiendish act of wealth-distribution?

― foxy boxer (stevie), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:17 (twenty years ago)

redistribution, i meant.

― foxy boxer (stevie), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:17 (twenty years ago)

This one?
We bought one for or corpertate event this month. After the recomendations we recived from other companies it was hard not to take the plung. If Johnny Walker and Titleist say it's good..that works for us.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:18 (twenty years ago)

The drink was apparently invented on the spot when a pair of Goldman Sachs bankers wanted to celebrate their seven-figure bonuses with “something special.”

So snorting coke off a 1000 pound/night callgirl is passé?

― nathalie, a bum like you (stevie nixed), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:19 (twenty years ago)

"plung" = bonuses for the staff.

― when something smacks of something (dave225.3), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:19 (twenty years ago)

It took me a minute to realize that Nathalie meant 1000 pound as in UK currency, not as in TITANIC HOOKER.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:26 (twenty years ago)

xpost way back to kate.

Nope.

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:44 (twenty years ago)

Break it down!

OK I will.

1) The appalling waste of money for one. As per Foxy above.

2) The thought, on the other hand, that take a really expensive bottle of cognac, and hey improve it! Stick some champagne in it! And some creme de mure (who he, the chef?) Oh and some lychees! And some lemongrass! Now, and only now, is it good enough for some Goldman Sachs bankers to drink.

I think there's another ingredient missing.

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:51 (twenty years ago)

I have designed a cocktail that costs $10,000. It's just a regular Rob Roy, but it's served to you by ROB REINER. I call it the ROB REINEROY.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:56 (twenty years ago)

Always striving to improve, I have now designed another high-end cocktail. It's a whiskey sour, but before you drink it, IT SPENDS A YEAR IN ORBIT (the circle around the earth, not the ILX poster).

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:57 (twenty years ago)

Does this Magie Noir even taste any good?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 31 October 2005 16:57 (twenty years ago)

I don't really see the difference between them spending money on this cocktail and them spending it on, say, a sports car, or whatever. Actually, I think by getting worked up about this, one is implicitly giving the stamp of approval to other more conventional forms of luxury expenditure. A drink pollutes a lot less than a car, in fact, so it's better.

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:09 (twenty years ago)

As I say, see point two, above.

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:17 (twenty years ago)

http://www.petermissing.com/02disc.jpg

― PeopleFunnyBoy (PeopleFunnyBoy), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:20 (twenty years ago)

But they know it's not worth the money, that it's a stupid cocktail! That's the point! As I say, in a way they're just stripping luxury spending down to a purer form, being more honest about it really. Think of it like a KLF art prank.

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:23 (twenty years ago)

as a form of income redistribution, i'm fine with this. i hope they tipped at least 20%.

― my name is john. i reside in chicago. (frankE), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:23 (twenty years ago)

If true, that's incredibly tacky. Those bankers have no taste. I feel bad for them.

It just made me think of skimming through some of Joan DeJean's book on how the French invented high fashion. One of her theories was that there was a precise set of rules to follow, and one of the rules was "make it as expensive as possible." She gets it all wrong..

― dar1a g (daria g), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:25 (twenty years ago)

'Mure' is French for blueberry. This is pure cock-waving as far as I can tell 'cause only an idiot would mix all this shit together. I hope they tipped well. (Ha!, xpost)

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:25 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, when it comes down to it, the issues that spur me on to ideological class warfare are more "I wish I had the same access to education, health services, police treatment, and employment prospects as the middle and upper classes" rather than "I wish I could drink some dumb overpriced drink".

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:26 (twenty years ago)

Oh for..

It's not "I wish I could drink this"!!!

ach.

― mark grout (mark grout), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:29 (twenty years ago)

as a form of income redistribution, i'm fine with this. i hope they tipped at least 20%.

I expect they did. Usually with stories like this some pretty waitress ends up with a nice present. Like this one from a few weeks ago.

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:30 (twenty years ago)

Sorry, old, lonely, rich man.

― when something smacks of something (dave225.3), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:37 (twenty years ago)

Think of it like a KLF art prank.

Ah. you see, i hated that. for some reason this seems less offensive (because they got a drink out of it?).

― foxy boxer (stevie), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:39 (twenty years ago)

http://www.gotoreviews.com/ got to be the opposite of luxist.com/

"This site is your source for efficient product reviews. We track the latest recommendations, with a focus on well-designed and efficient products."

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Monday, 31 October 2005 17:39 (twenty years ago)

They're just uber-chavs afflicted by severe "flash git" disease - known in economic parlance as 'conspicuous consumption':

"In the late nineteenth century, the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term "conspicuous consumption" to describe the ostentatious squandering of resources by the wealthy classes. How could he explain the economic behavior of these very wealthy segments of society, he wondered. What guided their choice of habits and customs? Why did they favor certain hard-to-produce but not-particularly-functional goods, such as lace? Why did they engage in extravagent displays of leisure?

In The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen suggested an organising principle which could be used to explain all of these things and more: The wealthy engage in conspicuous consumption in order to advertise their wealth.

Certain forms of public consumption make better advertisements, and thus are favored; similarly, wasteful displays of wealth may provide the most conspicuous (and hardest to fake) signals."
http://octavia.zoology.washington.edu/handicap/veblen.html

― RON CRITCHLOW (duly noted), Monday, 31 October 2005 18:14 (twenty years ago)

SHOCKAH

― emilys. (emilys.), Tuesday, 1 November 2005 02:17 (twenty years ago)

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