Reviews

BROKER’S GIN—PART 3!

My Fellow Inebriates,

I’m delighted to tell you that things are back on with Julia Gale of BROKER’S GIN.

What things, you ask?

Well, for one thing we’re discussing how to get this elysian potion back into British Columbia, my home province. (You may have noticed some distance between us following Julia’s suggestion that I shop cross-border for BROKER’S GIN, a terrifying prospect for reasons I can’t fully elucidate. Perhaps I even mentioned a shift in my affections. Drunken madness!) Julia reassured me today that she is in my corner.

But first, the problem. It’s hard for a bear to drive to the United States. Even if I could (a) get sober to drive and (b) drive, the border guards present some very daunting obstacles:

  1. They insist on a passport with a smile-free photo so their facial-cognition software can work its mojo. Did I mention excess facial hair interferes with that? For me it’s always Movember.
  2. They like to fingerprint travelers. I don’t actually have fingers; my paws are more like little nubs.
  3. No searchable cavity here, peeps! Just a suspicious beanbag texture. What’s in there? they would surely want to know.

So the border’s a no-go. I was distraught to think Julia had left me with an unviable option, and may have said some dismissive things elsewhere on this site. But I was very wrong to do so. Julia told me today that BROKER’S GIN owner/director team Andy Dawson and Martin Dawson will be flying to BC in the New Year to fix things.

This is tremendous news, although I can’t fathom why they’d leave an asset like Julia at home. I am still basking in her warmth and concern for my liquor inventory; she is the most exceptional business development manager I’ve ever corresponded with. This is what I told her:

Very nice to hear Andy and Martin are visiting BC. Why are you not joining them? It sounds like a bit of a sausage fest, just the three of us boys getting drunk together and laughing at each other’s hats.

BROKER’S GIN seems almost within reach. Do I dare to hope?

HEINEKEN Lager—but DON’T read this if you’re underage

Tweet from HEINEKEN today:

“Thanks for following! Our content is intended for people of Legal Drinking Age so please don’t share it with those who aren’t. Cheers!”

I’m really glad HEINEKEN reminded me about this. I would never want to divulge the existence of alcoholic beverages to people under legal drinking age. To the best of my knowledge, most teenagers are unsullied by any awareness of beer. This is good for North America, because knowledge is dangerous, and knowing about beer could be a gateway for knowing about wine, and vodka, and tequila. OMG.

Drink responsibly.

Teenagers already make a decent effort not to learn anything, so if HEINEKEN’s on track with this idea, shielding them from any information about alcohol should enable them to glide past its temptations—at least until Dad buys them their inaugural 19th-birthday drink at the bar, little knowing they’ll have a dozen more with their friends later and need their hair held back over the vomit-gulping toilet.

I wonder if HEINEKEN would apply the same logic to sex. Don’t tell teenagers about sex, and it won’t occur to them.

Now, to whom would this logic be logical? Oh yeah—half of North America. The half that overlaps with the young-earth and intelligent-design clubs.

Amsterdam's Red Light District (Wikipedia)

I shouldn’t really single out HEINEKEN; this is obviously a policy thing, a hedge against a litigious world where, heaven forefend, someone might sue them for sewing the seeds of drunkenness in the impressionable. It just hit a funny note for me because HEINEKEN comes from the Netherlands, whose Red Light District is internationally famous for liberalism about sex, drugs and drinking.

Getting to the point, what is HEINEKEN, and should we drink it?

When people think HEINEKEN, they think skunky. The skunkiest of popular beers, this lager nevertheless holds mainstream status. HEINEKEN pours yellow, fizzy and watery, the carbonation dissipating quickly. The fizz is essential to HEINEKEN’s drinkability, as whatever pleasant malty taste might be in there is playing second fiddle to the headlining aromas, so some fireworks are necessary to distract the mouth from the nose, or reconcile them, or something.

Knowing about alcohol leads to deviant behavior.

All that said, I really enjoy HEINEKEN. It reminds me of Amsterdam, where I’ve never been but where I expect I might find interspecies couplings like the one I sometimes enjoy with my girlfriend Dolly when she’s in the mood and her nose is plugged up.

ESCORIHUELA 1884 RESERVADO MALBEC (2009)

My Fellow Inebriates,

I’ve been really caught up with ebay since I decided to bid on a painting yesterday. It’s easy to set up an ebay account, but let’s face it, I’m a bear, so I have no idea how to conduct myself in an auction.

I put my bid in yesterday, and it immediately went up 50 cents. OMG! So I raised my bid by 50 cents. Again! Another 50 cents! And again! Somebody wants the same painting I do, and very badly.

A new Barack Obama & Penelope the Unicorn painting, celebrating this most special season. This unique piece of art also features Baby Jesus in a manger, who is visibly overwhelmed by the unexpected display of reverence. This original painting is certain to become a family heirloom for the lucky bidder; unpacked with reverence each holiday season and displayed in a position of honor. - Artist Dan Lacey

Just then my dad walked by and yanked me off the computer. He told me somebody has an automatic bid in there, and that if I sit with my paw on the bid button, five days before the auction closes, I will just drive up the price unnecessarily, because no matter what I enter, my opponent will automatically raise me 50 cents (up to whatever his/her max is, which I can’t possibly know). Whoa! I had no idea.

Maybe this is what comes of art shopping while sky-high drunk.

But isn’t that what all art connoisseurs do? Don’t they stagger around art galleries whisking champagne glasses off omnipresent waiters’ trays, ready to splurge on objets d’art? Isn’t that what wealthy, cultivated people do?

My mum said yes, it is what they do. However, she added, the terms “wealthy” and “cultivated” have never before turned up in the same sentence as “Liquorstore Bear,” so it’s sort of moot.

I was bored out of my furry head and anxious to boot about whether I would ever possess this painting. So I figured I’d drink a bottle of malbec.

My last tango with an Argentine wine was the Escorihuela 1884 Reservado Syrah, a thoroughly enchanting wine. I’ve been wanting to try S.A.E.V. Eschorihuela’s other varietals, starting with the malbec, but for ages I couldn’t get my mum to buy it. That’s because she once had a bad malbec experience with some Marcus James back before she became middle-aged, and has ever since associated malbec with gouda and feet.

I love exotic aromas and tasting notes, so this just intrigued me all the more, and finally we bought the ESCORIHUELA 1884 RESERVADO MALBEC. Would it smell like feet, I wondered?

Malbec is a pissy varietal, prone to rot and basically the sort of grape that drives vintners to consider setting the whole vineyard on fire. A good malbec is hard-won,  full in the mouth, plummy and purple, bursting with fruit.

We pulled the cork and poured the wine into Reidel stemless glasses. I think we should have decanted it, but we were too lazy. “Breaking Bad” was at a season-end cliffhanger and we wanted to start drinking right away. “Breaking Bad” has some seriously nasty scenes in it, and I wanted to get good and drunk before I saw anybody get waxed with a shotgun.

My dad has this client who often skips the decanting stage too; he just puts his wine in the blender. If I weren’t scared of the Cuisinart I would have done that with this wine, because it benefited by opening up, and probably needed more time than I was willing to give it.

Fresh cherries hit me with the first sniff, an earthy chorus of purple fruit playing back-up. The wine had a parching dryness and fierce tannins  from eight months’ ageing in American and French oak barrels. The mouthfeel was big and concentrated. And the good news: I couldn’t detect either feet or cheese.

At 13.7% I didn’t expect this malbec to be such a creeper, but it got me really loaded—so much so that I almost returned to the computer to make another bid on my painting. Luckily I passed out instead.