Reviews

JAMES MITCHELL CABERNET SAUVIGNON—Big enough to chase away your trauma

My Fellow Inebriates,

Unless you are unnaturally hirsute, if you haven’t started cultivating your Movember stache you are pretty much shit-out-of-luck. Even if you start now, there you’ll be on November 30 going, Look everybody, look at my upper lip, look at my rad…baby-soft down. You’ll have to watch your copiously moustachioed pals head off for their triumphant end-of-Movember shave while your own peach-fuzz trophy succumbs meekly to the Hair-Off Mitten®.

Despite this logic, my dad has steadfastly refused to get his stache on. At first he cited work policy: “No facial hair.” But then he slipped up and mentioned that several coworkers were doing it.

“So you have to do it. You have to do it, Dad, because I can’t.” You see, I had only recently realized the static nature of my own fur growth. It is what it is, people; it doesn’t grow! (I’d always thought I was just growing and shedding simultaneously like wild bears do. OMG! This revelation was almost as traumatic as the one about my missing genitals.)

I meant to keep bugging my dad but was distracted by the severed arm we saw on the way home from elementary school drop-off. Any other day of the year I would have panicked, and for a second I did, but then my two brain cells reminded each other that yesterday was Halloween.

At afternoon pick-up the arm was still there although it had been tossed from the curb to someone’s front yard. Five-year-old Miss V asked casually if it was real or fake. She seemed receptive to either answer.

When you see something as shocking as a severed arm, you need to process the image so the horror doesn’t overwhelm you. You might even need a sedative to arrest the involuntary recapitulation of the unspeakable apparition by your unwilling retinae. I sought such a chemical this evening in JAMES MITCHELL CABERNET SAUVIGNON (2009). Its 13.9% alcohol seemed just the ticket.

Grapes from the Lodi region of central California enjoy a Mediterranean-style climate with warm days and cool nights, along with rugged, loamy soil. JAMES MITCHELL CABERNET SAUVIGNON is a good example of the area’s brawny viticulture. From the moment the cork is extracted this wine takes no prisoners—boisterously rich black cherry and lingonberry come out swinging with a hefty dose of oak, flaunting the wine’s quintessential Cabernetness like a handlebar moustache.

With these olfactory harbingers, the sipping doesn’t disappoint. This is a big, gorgeous Cab that doesn’t pull punches. If it’s been a while since you’ve had a Cabernet, get ready for a striking one. Tannins parch the tongue masterfully as berries, oak, and licorice go to town on your mid-palate; the finish reverberates with lingering dark fruit. This is a serious wine for those who like getting down with big, bold booze. And if you get some in your moustache, well, you get to enjoy it even longer.

All of which is much better than dwelling on severed arms or your dad’s non-compliance with Movember.

3 rules about wine labels, and what happens when you violate them

My Fellow Inebriates,

Last night an animal clawed through our garbage. Presumably it was a raccoon, but it could also have been Scarybear. Or it could have been the neighbors’ cat Cuddles, a monumentally dense animal that refuses to exit our driveway when Dad backs the car out.

One day the kids drew a chalk circle around Cuddles, who stayed within it for the whole afternoon and was still there when Mum called everyone for dinner. Trapped by its magic boundaries, Cuddles seemed indifferent and probably would have loitered all night, but I’m guessing Fluffy tapped into some higher evil realm and released her with his mind while the family was eating. Fluffy may well have empowered Cuddles to ravage the trash as well, although she seems a bit dumpy for that level of exertion. Scary isn’t known for physical feats either, and he doesn’t smell any more garbagey than usual, so it probably was a raccoon.

My dad’s job tonight is to stay awake until the raccoon comes back. If he can catch it in the act, slay it, and skin it, then Mum won’t need to buy stewing meat for the YELLOW TAIL bourguignon she’s planning. A barely touched 2010 Cabernet-Merlot has been languishing at LBHQ since our very good friends brought it over for dinner, unwittingly violating three rules about wine labels:

    • BEWARE OF PRIMARY COLORS

    • BEWARE OF ANIMALS

    • THIS GOES DOUBLE FOR MARSUPIALS

Call my parents snobs (not me! I wanted to drink it) but they avoided consuming YELLOW TAIL even at the cost of remaining sober throughout the evening. They’d better hope our friends don’t read this review, because they slagged that wine. This is what happens when you get picky about wine: it ruins your appreciation of cheap wine and turns you into a pretentious douche who decides to make beef raccoon stew instead of knocking the YELLOW TAIL back with your favorite little bear.

Let’s hope Cuddles doesn’t encounter the raccoon. Come to think of it, we haven’t seen Cuddles for a few days…

If my dad succeeds in catching the raccoon, justice will be served in more than one way. Not only will he punish it for strewing our trash all over the street and causing the garbage dudes to reject it (which means we have to guard it from raccoons for a further week), but he’ll punish raccoons as a species for shredding the swimming pool in the back yard of the very neighbors who brought us the YELLOW TAIL!

I don’t know what sort of weapons my dad will use against the raccoon. I don’t like thinking of its furry bandit face getting brained by a shovel or choked by a length of Monster Cable. Let’s hope he does it quickly so the animal doesn’t suffer. Dad probably doesn’t want it caterwauling in our driveway at 3:00 a.m. either, especially since we’re new to the neighborhood.

He’ll have to bleed it out properly so the meat doesn’t get ruined. Whether this is a family-friendly activity remains to be seen, but I’m guessing the kids will wake up and want to be part of it.

As for your humble bear, I will be nowhere near this action. I don’t eat stew. I sympathize with animals. I want to drink the YELLOW TAIL CABERNET MERLOT. Yes, it has a schoolhouse grape-juiciness, lacks any depth at all, clouts you over the head with tannins, and features a stylized kangaroo leaping beneath a crayon-blue banner. All these characteristics say to me easy drinking, fun, approachable, chill-out wine. To my mother they say (beef) bourguignon.

So it’ll be a big surprise for her when Dad emerges from his dead-of-night scuffle with a reeking freegan trophy. She’ll swoon when he plunks it on the counter for her to butcher. And she can tell our good friends with a wink, “That YELLOW TAIL did not go to waste.”

MARQUIS DE LA TOUR—Sacrificed to a turkey

My Fellow Inebriates,

When we changed headquarters this summer, we lost the camera charger.

Dozens upon dozens of boxes have been searched, and it has not turned up.

But if we buy another one, it will turn up immediately. So we haven’t. And therefore it hasn’t turned up.

Where the hell are you?? Where did you go? Did my dad put you in his jacket pocket and then throw away the jacket? Did he insert you somewhere and forget about you? Arrrrghhhhhh!

Meanwhile the camera has lost its charge. This means no more drunken pictures or bear porn for the time being. And while it’s not such a loss in terms of yours truly, whose appearance follows an imperceptible but predictable trajectory from mangy to filthy, the kids in the house are aging, getting taller, growing their hair, losing their teeth. Undocumented.

They may well be teenagers by the time my dad breaks down and buys a new charger. He’ll arrive home with it, having surrendered the battle against Murphy’s Law and finally ponied up at the NCIX counter, only to interrupt Miss P necking on the couch with some scurrilous unworthy kid—because she will be 15 by the time he finally caves in. OMG!! We are dying without that little connector. The children are losing their recorded childhood, not to mention any documentary evidence they might one day proffer to Child Services. This is serious shit.

Surely not? Not in…in there?

It’s almost as awful as when my mum poured an entire bottle of MARQUIS DE LA TOUR over the Thanksgiving turkey. She does this every year, and I always cry when she does it. She says it “makes the gravy,” which seems to neglect the contribution of the gigantic dead bird being baptized by $12 sparkling vino.

Admittedly she did give me an infinitesimal sample before wasting the bottle. My thimbleful (NO PICTURES AVAILABLE) was pale gold with teeny moustache-tickling bubbles. The scent was delicate and pleasing if somewhat simple. On the tongue the bubbles danced with more sweetness than expected. While the flavor was crisp and clean, it nevertheless suggested melons and other fruits that appeal especially to the rapidly maturing kids (NO PICTURES AVAILABLE) who reside at LBHQ. Were one allowed to have a full glass of MARQUIS DE LA TOUR, the sipping would be easy and refreshing.

I don’t honestly think a small swallow of sparkling wine is adequate for a fair tasting, but my parents countered this argument by saying that Robert Parker regularly swishes as many as 50 wines around his gob in quick succession, rendering judgments within 30 seconds. Essentially they called me on my bitching and donated a bottle of perfectly good booze to a dead turkey. And then they said: “You’re lucky we’re not cooking a bear with an apple in its mouth.”

Hello, Child Services?