Vintage

Vintage, in winemaking, is the process of picking grapes and creating the finished product (see Harvest (wine)). A vintage wine is one made from grapes that were all, or primarily, grown and harvested in a single specified year. In certain wines, it can denote quality, as in Port wine, where Port houses make and declare vintage Port in their best years. From this tradition, a common, though incorrect, usage applies the term to any wine that is perceived to be particularly old or of a particularly high quality.

Most countries allow a vintage wine to include a portion of wine that is not from the year denoted on the label. In Chile and South Africa, the requirement is 75% same-year content for vintage-dated wine. In Australia, New Zealand, and the member states of the European Union, the requirement is 85%. In the United States, the requirement is 85%, unless the wine is designated with an AVA, (e.g., Napa Valley), in which case it is 95%. Technically, the 85% rule in the United States applies equally to imports, but there are obvious difficulties in enforcing the regulation.

Andy

Andy may refer to:

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See also

Plymouth

Plymouth (ⁱ/ˈplɪməθ/) is a city on the south coast of Devon, England, about 37 miles (60 km) south-west of Exeter and 190 miles (310 km) west-south-west of London, between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west where they join Plymouth Sound to form the boundary with Cornwall.

Plymouth's early history extends to the Bronze Age, when a first settlement emerged at Mount Batten. This settlement continued as a trading post for the Roman Empire, until it was surpassed by the more prosperous village of Sutton, now called Plymouth. In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers departed Plymouth for the New World and established Plymouth Colony – the second English settlement in what is now the United States of America. During the English Civil War the town was held by the Parliamentarians and was besieged between 1642 and 1646.

Throughout the Industrial Revolution, Plymouth grew as a commercial shipping port, handling imports and passengers from the Americas, and exporting local minerals (tin, copper, lime, china clay and arsenic) while the neighbouring town of Devonport became a strategic Royal Naval shipbuilding and dockyard town. In 1914 three neighbouring independent towns, viz., the county borough of Plymouth, the county borough of Devonport, and the urban district of East Stonehouse were merged to form a single County Borough. The combined town took the name of Plymouth which, in 1928, achieved city status. The city's naval importance later led to its targeting and partial destruction during World War II, an act known as the Plymouth Blitz. After the war the city centre was completely rebuilt and subsequent expansion led to the incorporation of Plympton and Plymstock along with other outlying suburbs in 1967.

Fountain pen

A fountain pen is a nib pen that, unlike its predecessor, the dip pen, contains an internal reservoir of liquid ink. The pen draws ink from the reservoir through a feed to the nib and deposits it on paper via a combination of gravity and capillary action.

Filling the reservoir with ink may be achieved manually (via the use of a Pasteur pipette or syringe) or via an internal filling mechanism which creates suction (for example, through a piston mechanism) to transfer ink directly through the nib into the reservoir. Some pens employ removable reservoirs in the form of pre-filled ink cartridges. A fountain pen needs little or no pressure on the nib to write. World Fountain Pen Day is celebrated on the first Friday of November every year by the lovers of fountain pens.

History

The earliest historical record of a reservoir pen dates to the 10th century. In 973, Ma'ād al-Mu'izz, the caliph of the Maghreb, demanded a pen that would not stain his hands or clothes, and was provided with a pen that held ink in a reservoir and delivered it to the nib, which could be held upside-down without leaking, as recorded in Kitab al-Majalis wa 'l-musayarat, by Qadi al-Nu'man al-Tamimi (d. 974). No details of the construction or mechanism of operation of this pen are known, and no examples have survived.

Barcarolle

A barcarole (from French, also barcarolle; originally, Italian barcarola or barcaruola, from barca 'boat' ) is a folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers, or a piece of music composed in that style. In classical music, two of the most-famous barcaroles are Jacques Offenbach's "Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour", from his opera The Tales of Hoffmann; and Frédéric Chopin's Barcarole in F-sharp major for solo piano.

Description

A barcarole is characterized by a rhythm reminiscent of the gondolier's stroke, almost invariably in 6/8 meter at a moderate tempo.

While the most-famous barcaroles are from the Romantic period, the genre was well-enough known in the 18th century for Burney to mention, in The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771), that it was a celebrated form cherished by "collectors of good taste".

Notable examples

The barcarole was a popular form in opera, where the apparently artless sentimental style of the folklike song could be put to good use. In addition to the Offenbach example, Paisiello, Weber, and Rossini wrote arias that were barcaroles, Donizetti set the Venetian scene at the opening of Marino Faliero (1835) with a barcarole for a gondolier and chorus, and Verdi included a barcarole in Un ballo in maschera (i.e., Richard's atmospheric "Di’ tu se fidele il flutto m’aspetta" in Act I). The traditional Neapolitan barcarole "Santa Lucia" was published in 1849.