#53: Ambrosia

1 oz Brandy
1/4 oz Triple Sec
Combine in a wine glass filled with ice, then fill with champagne

I missed an important milestone last week that I wanted to write about. February 13 was the 20th anniversary of the famous “pale blue dot” photo – Earth as seen from Voyager 1 while on the edge of our solar system (approximately 3,762,136,324 miles from home). Carl Sagan’s words at the time are always worth remembering:

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

*****************

We finally get to break out the wine glass! Hmm, maybe my life isn't so exciting after all.

Basically this was Champagne with a touch of Brandy. The 1/4 oz of Triple Sec is pretty much the equivalent of a dash, and I couldn't taste it. I almost couldn't taste the Brandy either. This seemed like overly sweet Champagne. I did notice that as the carbonation of the champagne went down a bit, the flavor of the brandy came through more, and the drinker tasted much more interesting. Perhaps the bubbles interfered with my taste buds.

I'm not much of a Champagne drinker to begin with, so this was sort of ho-hum for me. I can't imagine a serious champagne drinker would do this to their champagne, I am certain a brandy aficcianado would have my head if I even mentioned making this drink for them. But, to each his own. Just don't ask me to stick up for you on this one.

The drink looks nice in a wine glass though.

Check out today's featured item.