Reviews

GRAY FOX CHARDONNAY (2010)—choice of sociopaths

My Fellow Inebriates,

Last year my mum caused me spasms of horror by pouring a bottle of Henkell Trocken over the roasting Christmas turkey. (Henkell Trocken is really not for that, people—it’s citrusy and dry with good acidity.) I died inside when she did that, so this year she had a little mercy on me and opted for a dirt-cheap bottle of chardonnay instead.

Gobbling up a hand

I did try to persuade her not to do it at all. But my mother can be very cutting. Her eyes narrowed, and she said, “Sometimes I look at you and suspect you’re inanimate.” Then she opened the oven and poured a bottle of GRAY FOX chardonnay all over the bird.

I did get a small glass before the culinary sacrifice. But I wasn’t optimistic; $6.99 is just about as cheap as wine gets at my local booze shop, and at that price I expect a tastebud offensive, a chorus of plonky mismatched notes with manure and hell-knows-what-else in the background.

So it was a relief to find that GRAY FOX chardonnay tastes like…white grape juice. Really.

With orchard fruitiness dominating the nose and very little of the excessive oak that’s typical of a try-hard California chardonnay, GRAY FOX qualifies as mostly harmless. It won’t make you retch, nor will it appeal to you with complexity and butteriness. At 12% alcohol it sure kicks Welch’s Grape Juice’s ass, yet it seems like too much of a kissing cousin to that kid-friendly beverage. Forgive me, but it doesn’t taste done. Now, you guys know I’m an idiot with a furry mouth and not a ghost of an oenophile’s qualifications, but this wine tastes like it needed to ferment a little longer. It’s grapey, and I’m not sure how intentional that was on the part of the vintner.

I told my mum GRAY FOX would make a good gateway wine for children, only to get the obligatory reminder that I mustn’t encourage irresponsible drinking. So I’ll put it this way: Kids would really like this wine, but don’t give it to them.

But don’t throw it all over a turkey either—OMG, what a waste of alcohol. The fact that my mum thought it made good gravy doesn’t make it okay. But when a sociopathic hausfrau covered in giblets and poultry grease seizes a wine bottle, you just have to let her do her thing.

VIU MANENT ESTATE MALBEC (2009)—LB gets shafted again on a booze opportunity

The house was quiet last night, which is both always and never a good thing.

It meant five hours of quiet contemplation (good), cursing my paws’ inability to open bottles (bad), enjoying safety from pre-K torture (very good), but wondering if my parents were drinking wine without me (heinous).

And indeed they were. Someone had invited the family to an open house.

Now, I would never invite my parents anywhere. They do not know how to conduct themselves. Typically they blunder around trying to make small talk until one or both of them finally realizes they can’t comport themselves without alcohol, and next thing you know they’ve downed several glasses and wrestled somebody into a conversation about transubstantiation or genetic engineering or abortion. And then an invitation doesn’t come the following year.

Nevertheless, some well-meaning persons invited my parents to their home and off they went without me. Reportedly there was a sumptuous feast (don’t care, don’t care) and a selection of lovely wines (YEAH!).

After installing the kids in the basement to watch “Elf,” they made a beeline (I’m sure) for the decanter, which held VIU MANENT ESTATE MALBEC (2009). You remember we tasted an Argentine malbec not so long ago, so I would have liked to get in on this. But unfortunately I have to rely on my parents’ limited tasting notes:

“Dark and fruity (!!—it’s made of fruit, dumbass parents) with gentle spice and smokiness; supporting notes of chocolate and licorice with medium finish. An accessible, easy-drinking wine and a good choice for parties.”

Their hosts made the right choice decanting this wine. I don’t know how long any given bottle at the party was able to open up, with my parents holding their glasses out every two minutes, but a good malbec particularly benefits from decanting and tends to reveal a different character every quarter-hour if it’s allowed to sit.

My parents were very lucky to be invited to such a lovely Christmas Eve gathering, and bastards for not taking me along in a purse or pocket.

Merry Christmas, my fellow inebriates. Raise a glass to peace on earth.

 

JOHNNIE WALKER BLACK LABEL—RIP Christopher Hitchens

My Fellow Inebriates,

I promised one of my mum’s Facebook friends that I would weigh in on the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. But first I have to disclaim a bit:

  • I’m no expert on religious relics. I’m not sure there are any bears in the field.
  • This isn’t a sindonology forum, although admittedly the topics get a little loose.
  • I am totally freaked out by religious artifacts, especially wraps for the dead.
  • I was completely hosed when I offered to comment.

But here goes.

We still don’t know definitively how old the shroud is. Three teeny pieces of it were sent to three separate labs for radiocarbon dating; in 1989 Nature pronounced its age “AD 1260-1390, with at least 95% confidence.” This was a tough pill to swallow for those who believe it to be Jesus’s burial wrap, so they disputed the findings, suggesting that the wrong pieces of the garment (medieval repair patches perhaps) had been sent to the lab and that other, better pieces (which could not be spared) would have yielded a much older date—say, AD 30. Enough criticism was generated that the issue could be labeled a controversy, and so it’s all up in the air.

I know this is an awfully dumb question, but why don’t they send some more fibers for carbon dating? Some better fibers? I know they don’t want to wreck the shroud, but it’s really big! It’s bigger than a beach towel. And then everybody could stop arguing about its age—the biggest piece of the puzzle.

The latest scientific buzz on the shroud is that its image could have been made only by an electromagnetic discharge—a camera obscura effect that arguably could not have been achieved by any known mechanical method at the time, whatever time it was.

I thought I would contact Christopher Hitchens for a quote on the issue but it turns out he’s dead of pneumonia following a very public battle with stage IV (“there is no stage V”) esophageal cancer. Esophageal cancer is a major bitch; it claimed the grandfather I never knew way back in the eighties when Madonna first started warbling away on MTV and before the Shroud of Turin got carbon-dated.

A lot of theists are speculating where Hitchens has ended up. Some of the happier, nicer characters posit that if he repented in the last second of life, he could very well be enjoying Johnnie Walker Black Label in the sky right now. It’s a very comforting vision, especially given what a friendly mixer Black Label makes, with its introductory, welcome-to-scotch aromas of wood grain, butter, fruit and just a touch of peat. For anyone who’s not sure about scotch, Johnnie Walker is a good starting point: softer and more drinkable than some of the more peaty single-malt whiskies. Hitchens called it “the best blended scotch in the history of the world.” Humans have been making booze of various kinds since the beginning of time, so that’s a decent accolade.

Hitchens’s death is especially poignant, leaving me as it does with a sumptuous pile of good reading that has suddenly been rendered all the more finite. If only I had some Johnnie Walker Black Label to go with it.