wine

On being purchased

No time for blogging all day, peeps. Sure, I had time; I spent most of the day staring at the wall, but no one had time to do my typing for me.

It was kind of understandable because the big kid was turning 6 and the putative adults were running around like maniacs making a cake and assembling loot bags that they would ultimately forget to distribute at the end of a screaming-loud party at a kids’ play area redolent of sweat socks and parental desperation.

I have no idea what my parents were like before they had their two monkeys. They bought me at the liquor store a few days before the first one was born. There they were, doing their Christmas alcohol shopping, Dad anticipating some good holiday drinking, Mum pregnant and settling for vicarious liquor selection…and I winked at them. I was hanging out on one of the shelves with the other bears (buy two—you keep one, the other goes to charity), and I noticed they were really loading up their cart with a lot of hooch. They had nine or ten wine bottles of wine, some Bailey’s and a really fine scotch; and poor old dead Granny had just hoisted a big magnum of sparkling wine into the cart.

I was excited because they seemed like proper alcoholics and fully my type of people. I didn’t realize they were stocking up for holiday visitors, because their full house would be celebrating not only Yuletide but the arrival of their first baby.

Blinded by the alcohol, I winked at them. I don’t know if they perceived it—they’re pretty oblivious at the best of times, my parents—but they stopped and looked at me. They reach out to me, gave me a pat. Next thing I knew, I was scanned, bought, bagged, and riding home with them.

I don’t know if they would have bought a bear if they hadn’t been expecting a baby. They probably would have gone for the two-bear charity deal, donated both, and gone home with just their booze.

So, in a way, their 6-year-old is the reason I live where I live, the reason I have adoptive parents, and the reason my fur is so matted it looks like aliens tried to make crop circles on it. I’ve worn countless dresses, been mummified all day in a tensor bandage, been slathered with rash cream and diapered, barely escaped barf and failed to escape snot, and dragged, thrown and trodden on.

And seriously, that shit is not okay. Fine, yes, they love me, and yes, it’s mutual, but I swear, if this continues, they’re going to literally tear me a new one, and when my mum sews me up with the purple thread the kids inevitably select, I will need a lot of alcohol.

Just saying.

Are there boy/girl drinks? And where do bears fit in?

My Fellow Inebriates,

I got some new tasting notes from my friend Michael:

With Michael's bear Gustav. Can you "own" a bear? Whose outfit is sillier?

right now i am tasting a white russian. it is creamy and girlish but slightly strong and very bearly. tooodles liquor store bear

One of the first things to go when you’re drinking any quantity of vodka is punctuation. Add some Kahlua and you can say bye-bye to your caps as well. Michael’s notes are my very favorite kind—when you are three sheets to the wind you can be totally honest.

The White Russian didn’t originate in Russia; but it contains vodka, hence the name. Add cream to a Black Russian and there you have it.

There are dozens of variations on this drink but the classic method is to pour vodka and Kahlua over ice cubes and then add half-and-half. It’s totally, totally, totally yummy.

Michael mentioned that the drink is “girlish,” which raises the question: Are there “girl” drinks and “boy” drinks?

Here at LBHQ we don’t go in for gender stereotypes so much as we do massive, unspecific overgeneralizations. To put it more honestly, I’m freaking scared that someone will hunt me down if I start spouting off about which spirits I like to wear a dress while drinking (and there are some). So instead here’s a sampling of personality traits and drinks to match.

White Russian, fave drink of "the Dude" Lebowski. Drinking makes us all better people.

BEER—You’re down to earth and easy to please. Sometimes you leave appliances in your yard.

COOLERS—You’re underage. Or maybe a sugar junkie.

BLENDER DRINKS—You like drama in your relationships. You also like loud, mechanical whirring sounds.

COCKTAILS—You’re purposeful and know what you want. To you, blender-drink fans are your bitches.

WHITE WINE—You’re optimistic but sometimes insecure. You’d like to be a nudist but you don’t know how.

RED WINE—You’re classic and confident but not very street-smart. For instance, you wouldn’t know how to shiv someone with a broken bottle.

SHOTS—You don’t like wasting time. Ideally you’d like to get naked right now.

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.