The château neuf du vin de l'empereur

Hi All,

Having your own personal vineyards, winery, cellar and bottling plant was  one of the advantages of being the Emperor of the largest and most powerful civilisation in the universe. 

This wasn't on a planet either, but on a space ship, a million miles long , a further million wide and a million tall. If she -the ship herself is a living being, having been  germinated & grown in Jupiter's atmosphere [Martian ships can be conventionally constructed or be organic animal, vegetable and mineral varieties]  was placed through the sun , she would stick out at either end like a piece of Blackpool rock. 

She was designed and then grown by the entire staff and students at the Imperial University of Juipter, as a challenge given to them by the Emperor on a Royal visit.  There's also a beer equivalent and today the university is  , for staff, students and alumni granted beer and wine from the estate of these imperial ships . The château neuf du vin de l'empereur - the marketing and business studies students thought French would give her a "sexual"  appeal and in any case the outward appearance of the ship looked like some medieval castle- was quite a ship..

"As you can see Prime Minister Heidi Berkshire , this is one of the barrel cellars". There must have been millions of oak barrels stacked in the cellar, but these barrels were as big as any skyscraper." They've been there for a least a thousand years, slowly fermenting and making Martian red wine: the barrels are made from carbon dioxide and yeast wood,which leads to the fermentation of the wine , gives it distinct flavour and -".

Batset  cut off her sentence as she could tell  the human wasn't even listening. "Are my apologises , it must be difficult to take all of this in Prime Minister".

"It's too much , too much , a space ship that makes wine and a six foot  talking tiger wrapped in tin foil from Mars, with a Birmingham accent... it's , it's ... unbelievable!" 

" Well Scotsman Lord Hume took it in his stride as did Mrs Thatcher, Jim Callaghan loved it . Then the Russians are a good sport too ;   Yeltsin  and I used to drink like chimneys and smoke like fish as you say. Mind you Juncker gives even I a run for my money and I have three livers "  said Batest encouragingly . "And in any case I'm not a tiger  nor am I a wrapped in tin foil, I'm certainly NOT  Martian and my accent Birmingham? BIRMINGHAM? ! Black country if you don't mind: lot's of planets have a black country ".

"Then what..."

There was a crash, a boom and everything went dead..