{"id":111291,"date":"2017-11-14T13:59:43","date_gmt":"2017-11-14T18:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=111291"},"modified":"2017-11-17T09:27:22","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T14:27:22","slug":"look-what-we-found-kirk-reads-super-magnum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2017\/11\/14\/look-what-we-found-kirk-reads-super-magnum\/","title":{"rendered":"Look What We Found: Kirk Read’s methuselah bottle of champagne"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the fourth floor of Roger Williams Hall, Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kirk Read has a huge bottle of Perrier-Jou\u00ebt champagne sitting on a shelf. But he won\u2019t ever drink from the bottle. For one thing, it\u2019s empty and always has been.<\/p>\n

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Read purchased the display bottle in 2005 after the closure of one of his favorite haunts, Austin\u2019s Fine Wine and Foods on Main Street in Auburn. Located in a former bank, Austin\u2019s offered sandwiches, cheeses, and meats, along with a wide selection of wines. Customers ate in cozy wood-paneled rooms; in the bank vault, owner Austin \u201cAudie\u201d Conrad stored champagne and more-expensive wines.<\/p>\n

As proprietor, Conrad was \u201csuper friendly and a great local citizen,\u201d says Read. So when Conrad sold his store memorabilia, Read grabbed the large bottle (a bottle size known as a \u201cmethuselah\u201d) and a smaller bottle. \u201cSomething I could take away to remember him by,\u201d he says. \u201cA sentimental attachment.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Oversized champagne bottles sit amidst family photographs and other memorabilia on a shelf in Kirk Read’s office.<\/p><\/div>\n

Not that the bottles don\u2019t serve a practical purpose. Combining Read\u2019s interests in language, culture, and theater, his course in oral French asks students to act out the adventures of a fictional North African heroine. It\u2019s a long-running set of skits developed with colleagues and students during Read\u2019s 27-year career at Bates.<\/p>\n

The two bottles are humorous props for Read\u2019s students,\u00a0especially since\u00a0several recurring characters have been known to display poor choices in alcohol consumption \u2014 they\u2019re\u00a0\u201calcohol-dependent,\u201d says Read. \u201cSo it can happen that we pull out the Audie champagne bottle just for a little local color.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A shuttered shop\u2019s model bottles are now applaudable props for pedagogical dramas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":111296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,133,31,234],"tags":[5060,11321],"class_list":["post-111291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-creativity","category-lewiston-auburn","category-teaching-education","tag-kirk-read","tag-look-what-we-found"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111291"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111449,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111291\/revisions\/111449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}