Wine Giques

Beer and Biblical Plagues

Being from the South, my mother is prone to using very colorful metaphors.  Some of my favorites:  "He didn't know me from Adam's housecat," "Happier than a dead pig in the sunshine," and "Busier than a three-legged cat covering up shit."  Aside from the middle one (how can that pig be happy about being dead?), I often find these little idioms very useful when attempting to get someone's attention in a conversation --- particularly if that someone is one of my fellow Crazy Californians.

And when it comes to Crazy Californians, my mother also has a special turn of phrase for describing where we live.  She calls it "The Land of Biblical Plagues."  And, having lived through two major earthquakes, a couple of floods, and, lately, a slough of wildfires, I'm inclined to agree with her.  All we're missing are the locusts and the frogs, although we certainly see many facsimiles of the aforementioned in my neighborhood around Passover time.

So, what does all this have to do with a wine blog?  Well, everything:  Living in the Land of Biblical Plagues has encouraged me to abandon wine for a while in favor of its more bourgeois sibling, the lowly beer.  You see, it's been hot, hot, hot down here -- roaring Santa Ana winds, sand in the air, roses blooming their heads off just like it's the fifth of July.  It makes you thirsty.  That deep-down dust-bowl kind of thirst that a petite glass of Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine just can't satisfy. 

It makes me wonder, this thirst for beer, if this is what the Israelites were feeling when they were wandering the desert.  The relationship between human beings and beer has been long, uh, brewing:  It trumps even red wine as the oldest alcoholic beverage on record.  Yes, it seems the Stone Age had its frat-boy equivalents.

My beers of choice:  Well, Fat Tire is a perennial favorite, as is Widmer Hefeweizen.  (Like those Biblical beer drinkers, I have a predeliction for ale, not lager.)   And I always look forward to Pete's Wicked holiday releases -- beer-brewing and a sense of humor go well together, in my book.

So, next time you hoist a few, give a little thanks to the Stone Age brothers who brought us the brew, that eternally-reliable thirst quencher after days spent trolling the desert.  And, while you're at it, give a little dough to the folks who've been suffering in the latest round of wildfires.  Even our President-Elect is helping out.

Drunk Corking

Suenarita and I had a rather serious conversation the other day.  Well, as serious a conversation as was possible under the circumstances, considering that she was on the way to visit her friend, who had scored some Madonna concert tickets and was taking her to the show.   It was also the eve of that election everyone's been talking about.   But it was the giddy circumstances that brought us to a serious subject -- how to prevent a travesty that nearly always happens when folks start celebrating and drinking too much wine:  Drunk corking. 

You know you've done it.  'Fess up, we all have.  It happened to me just a couple of weeks ago, during one of those regular rantfests we held this fall, otherwise known as the Presidential debates. 

I had my usual wine-swillin', food-makin' posse over to watch the last debate.  We were in the kitchen, cooking up a storm, when we quickly consumed the entire bottle of Hanna Sauvignon Blanc.  We moved on to the Angeline Pinot Noir.  And the debate hadn't even started yet.  We dragged our homemade pizzas into the parlor, empty wine glases in hand.  And I started rummaging in the wine cabinet.

Slim pickings.  There were a few sad bottles of some random Austrian stuff, left by our second au pair.  A bottle of Two-Buck Chuck, presented to me as a joke.  And, shining like a light somewhere near the top, a jewel:  2005 Domaine du Grapillon D'or 1806 Gigondas.   "What the hell," I thought.  We drank it.    And it was very, very wrong. 

Wrong, you ask?  How can consuming a delicious blend of Syrah and Grenache with an elegant cedar and cigar box aroma, as well as a rich, full fruity taste, from a winery that's been in the same family since 1806, be wrong?  Especially when you're drinking it with fresh homemade pizza and even fresher friends? 

Because we were tipsy, that's why.  And because we'd dulled our senses with the Hanna and the Angelyne (not to mention all those anchovies that were supposed to be on the pizza).  We lost half the experience, because we didn't drink the great wine first. 

Suenarita and I are working on some devices -- perhaps an iPhone application that calls you when you're about to cork that bottle of The Prisoner after downing two or three 750's of Turning Leaf.  The application will shout "Don't do it!," give you an electric shock, and then hide the corkscrew.  We're also working on a little alarm that you can attach to your wine storage unit that will emit a very high-pitched whistle and make your dog start howling when you yank out that bottle of 1995 Heitz Cellars Bella Oaks Cabernet that was given to you by Belle Rhodes herself, after you've consumed a whole bunch of cheap champagne.  (Yes, dear readers, I actually did this.  When I was packing up my house in Napa in 2001.  And those of you who drank it with me:  you know who you are.)   

We ended our conversation sadly, knowing that the urge to drunk cork can strike any time, anywhere, without warning. 

Friends don't let friends drunk cork.  Just say no, y'all.