wine

ESCORIHUELA 1884 RESERVADO SYRAH (2009)

The house was feeling downright funereal, and wine seemed in order. One of my visitors had urged an Argentine malbec upon me recently. No objections here, so I hustled my mum out the door to fetch one.

She really took her bloody time. I had to distract myself by reading the news, which filled me with paranoia and dread—especially this item, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/05/MN3V1LOKC9.DTL, about an asteroid that will barely (bearly) miss us next Tuesday. If only I’d been able to contact my miserable parent to exhort her to get three or four bottles so we could have a properly apocalyptic evening.

Unfortunately restraint ruled the day, and she returned with one wine bottle, and not a malbec (she was not to be, seemingly, commanded by a 7-inch ursine alcoholic) but a syrah, albeit from Argentina as per my instructions. Fair enough.

Scientists tell us very casually that asteroids skirt our atmosphere by mere hundreds of thousands of miles every decade or so. OMG, people. I had no idea. I thought the main threats to my life were young children bent on torture. I thought I might get accidentally beheaded one day maybe, or lose an eye. But here we have massive rocks the size of city blocks careening toward us with a frequency I couldn’t have imagined.

I asked my friend Scarybear if he knew about such things. He told me to chill out and added that I am a “retard.”

So when the wine came back I was relieved. I just had to endure some DTs throughout dinner/bedtime and we were on.

The 1884 RESERVADO syrah (2009) had a real cork, something I hadn’t seen in a while, and of course yet another reminder of my limitations vis a vis dexterity.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of this wine was that it was perfect out of the gate. No need to decant—my tremors bowed instantly to this supple, intensely violet, complex syrah.

As the wine opened up it revealed ripe black fruit, hints of mocha and vanilla, and lovely, balanced tannins. Aged in French and American oak for eight months, this wine lingers on the tongue with an unforgettable intensity.

And at $16.99 it’s an absolute steal: the sort of wine I RECOMMEND buying by the case—the sort of wine I’ll be hitting Santa up for this Christmas.

By the time we finished this bottle I didn’t even care about that stupid asteroid. But I’m still preoccupied with my thumblessness. Find me an invention so I can open bottles, people, and I’ll be yours forever.

RAVENSWOOD Belloni Zinfandel 2009

My Fellow Inebriates,

Last night, ever so secretly, my parents opened a bottle of wine without me. As I lay innocently sleeping off a Malibu bender, they violated what I consider a tacit agreement to share all alcoholic beverages with the resident alcoholic bear, who has proven himself by starting his own blog and filling it with 30 articles demonstrating boozer status and general authority on liquor.

But the bastards got out the corkscrew and guzzled down a bottle of RAVENSWOOD Belloni Zinfandel (2009). Without me. Did I mention…without me???

So I rely upon their tasting notes. This apparently was a big, succulent zinfandel redolent of berries, nice tannins and almost as long a finish as my selfish parents would have liked. The wine developed in the glass as it sat, starting pleasantly and ending superbly.

The dregs were lovely, I must say. The few molecules I managed to scavenge of this lovely zin hinted at black cherry, raspberry and mocha.

My mum had an itching fit immediately after drinking it, but that’s her problem. I highly RECOMMEND securing a bottle of this soon as it was a limited run of 600 bottles.

MARTINI & ROSSI Extra Dry Vermouth

My Fellow Inebriates,

I promised you the skinny on vermouth, and now that my head’s clear I can tackle it.

Vermouth is one of those sometimes mystifying products that figures in a truckload of high-falutin’ drinks without necessarily being any great shakes on its own. Or at least that’s what my drinking buddy Blackie Bear tells me.

Blackie says there’s no big mystery—it comes in dry or sweet varieties, and a good drink-mixing recipe book will tell you which one you need.

Try this mix for instance:

  • 2 oz dry vermouth
  • ½ oz white curacao
  • 2 oz club soda (if you insist on dilution)

Serve over ice with a twist.

I don’t know what would happen if you used sweet vermouth in this, but Blackie says he’d probably end up handing it over to me to finish off, which would be fine because I would.

My local booze store, like yours probably, carries only a handful of vermouths, and Martini & Rossi is the only one I’ve tried, although I plan to have a party tasting at my house the next time my parents go away. They scoffed when I originally said “vertical tasting,” as vermouth is non-vintage, standardized stuff that doesn’t change from year to year or batch to batch. What can I say? My alcoholic journey is only just beginning.

Vermouth is classified as a fortified wine, running at about 18% alcohol typically, as in the case of Martini & Rossi Extra Dry. At $12 for a one-litre bottle, it’s a steal, and drinking it all in one go won’t trash your pocketbook—just you.

Regardless of where they’re made, dry and sweet vermouths are referred to by heavy vermouth users as “French” and “Italian” respectively. This is because people who are really messed up on vermouth are often humping someone and need a separate vocabulary that doesn’t include words like “sweet” and “dry” that they might be employing otherwise.

And then there are “wet” versus “dry” martinis. The more vermouth a martini has, the wetter it is. Predictably, I favor a dry martini as I like to keep my alcohol levels pretty jacked. Blackie Bear says this is one of the things that makes me similar to Winston Churchill.

You do need to keep your vermouth in the fridge if you’re not planning to pound it all at once, as it will oxidize within three months or so. My mother kept her bottle of Martini & Rossi in the cooking cupboard for over two years, tightly capped to thwart my thumbless efforts. Picture me mocking her saying, “It was just fine for making lemon-caper chicken.”

 

I RECOMMEND trying all the vermouths your liquor store stocks, starting with this awesome product.