alcohol

If you’re reading this, Santa…

I don’t enjoy getting hosed by retailers at any time of year, but the festive season seems the most predatory. When I heard on the radio this morning that one-sixth of all gift cards go unredeemed, I was jolted into sobriety. One-sixth! That’s a lot of languishing gift cards—between 8 and 10% of all gift cards purchased.

Across North America, that’s over $8 billion dollars that’s been paid to retailers and never exchanged for goods. Talk about money for nothing!

Gift cards were on my mind because my mum was reading my list for Santa, and she said: “Why don’t you just ask Santa for a gift card so he doesn’t have to waste his time hunting for bizarre alcoholic products?”

Well, I would never want to put Santa out or embarrass him by asking him to wheel a cart full of Malibu around his local booze shop, so I thought my mum had a pretty good idea there. But then this radio report made me paranoid! What if… What if Santa brought me my card, but it got lost in the wrapping paper on Xmas morning and thrown away? OMG. What if somebody else picked it up by mistake and took it away with them? OMG! What if my parents, in their parental way, put away my gift card for safekeeping and forgot about it? OMG!!

According to statistics, there are about $300 worth of forgotten gift cards lying around in the average North American’s sock drawers. What do retailers think about this?

Capable of forgetting to use a gift card? I'd say so.

Well, when gift cards first became popular, retailers did worry about cards going unredeemed—but strictly from an accounting perspective. So they programmed them with expiry dates. If you forgot to clean your sock drawer for too long, then tried to buy a toaster at Sears with an old card, you were out of luck. Finally regulations were introduced prohibiting retailers from selling these suicide gift cards. And retailers weren’t too sad because they realized they were raking it in regardless of whether they programmed the cards to expire or not.

But how do retailers feel about their customers spending money but getting nothing in return?

Yo, they totally love it!! This has become an industry unto itself. Take Best Buy, a place that specializes in hosing customers by placing loud price tags on things so they look like they’re on sale when in fact they’re not. In 2006 they profited $43 million dollars from unredeemed gift cards.

All of this worried me. But my mum said she was sure I’d pester her so hard to use the card that it wouldn’t get forgotten. I guess that’s true.

So Santa, if you’re reading this, you can send a gift card if you like, so I can buy my own Goldschlager, Bacardi white rum, Bacardi 151, blackberry brandy, strawberry liqueur, banana liqueur, Hypnotiq, Malibu, Pernod, champagne, melon liqueur, Bailey’s, Crown Royal, Frangelico, peppermint schnapps, Kokanee, Capistro and Domaine D’or. But please bring some Broker’s Gin because we don’t have any at our liquor stores in BC, and Julia Gale of Broker’s didn’t offer to send me any. Oh yes—and that tequila that comes in a gun-shaped bottle. I want to try that.

Yours truly,

Liquorstore Bear

()wned! by CALIFORNIA CULT CLASSICS 2010 CHARDONNAY

My Fellow Inebriates,

California Cult Classics new label

I got my paws on something very special this week—something that probably should have been saved for a special occasion. But a new booze arrival is impossible to resist after the sort of liquor drought we’ve been suffering at LBHQ. I couldn’t help it—the bottle was urging me, speaking to me, singing to me—and once the voices in my head chimed in I couldn’t help it. I pestered my parents to get out that big bottle-opening thingie and save us from sobriety.

The bottle in question contained a 2010 chardonnay bottled at California Cult Classics, an elite North Vancouver outfit where oenophiles, celebrities, and Vancouver Canucks convene to produce and enjoy wine made from extremely select Napa Valley grapes and painstakingly crafted to a world-class standard. Ahhhh!

You cannot find CCC wine in your neighborhood liquor store; it is strictly for personal consumption and not for resale. CCC members plunk down $10,000 to embark on a two-year wine-making journey, at the end of which they walk away with 288 bottles of vino so exquisite as to make them weep with joy. At approximately $35 per bottle, CCC wine compares favorably with wine that retails for $150 in stores. It is not something alcoholics, or alcoholic bears for that matter, usually invest in.

So how on earth did I acquire it?

Well, my dad knows a lovely person named Pixie, who read my lament about our near-bare liquor cabinet, and asked him to take me some wine and vodka.

So how would you interpret that, my peeps? I think she meant these gifts were just for me, don’t you? Predictably, my parents thought they were included, and since they have thumbs that enabled them to extract the special Sardinian Ganau cork from the wine bottle, they did open it and freeload off me.

Not my granny but she could be yours

I felt a particular urgency to drink this chardonnay because that varietal was the favorite of my granny who died last month. I was afraid that if we left it in the house she would come back from the dead as a zombie and look for it.

And so we poured it.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! A heady tropical aroma wafted to my nose with knee-weakening significance—this is not a wine to be messed with. At full refrigeration it was almost too cold to appreciate fully, and I had to battle some mean-ass DTs while I waited for it to hit optimal temperature.

People talk about chardonnays being buttery, and sometimes I think those people are full of crap, but I kid you not, friends, this chardonnay is buttery. Buttery and creamy, rich with vanilla, sensuous and transporting. This is not a wine to swill absentmindedly while you play Farmville. This wine will make you weak at the knees. Full-bodied and subtly oaked, it beckons from the glass, tantalizing, urging, promising, fulfilling. This wine OWNED me, people.

I can’t imagine I’d be very welcome at California Cult Classics in North Vancouver. It’s a very pristine winery, and bears have been known to host at least 30 types of parasites, including “coccidian protozoans, flukes, tapeworms, intestinal roundworms, lungworms, filarial worms, lice, fleas, ticks, and mites.” I don’t think the CCC people would let me add the yeast to the fermentation tank.

A better bet might be getting to know Pixie. Between you and me, I can’t stop thinking about her. Maybe she would let me ride to California Cult Classics in her purse. That’s how my friend Scarybear went to see Avatar.

I’m going to stalk Pixie from afar for a while and see what happens.

Why alcohol is so good for us

My Fellow Inebriates,

As always I welcome friends’ tasting notes. I’m catching up on a bunch of especially adventurous ones, including this from my friend Shannon:

I must say, I REALLY like rum. My rum of choice is Sailor Jerry. In fact, Sailor Jerry is so choice that as a sign of respect, I dressed up as a total slutted-out sailor for Hallowe’en and called myself Jerry. I carried around a mickey of Jerry in a little sparkly red clutch purse all night. I drank Jerry for 12 hours straight that night and the only challenge I had was trying not to fall off of my platform boots. I think Jerry brings out the best in people. I know I am a better person when I have Sailor Jerry in my life. 🙂

My favorite thing about Shannon is her continuous pursuit of excellence. She obviously knows the importance of high aspirations, and moreover she’s made the critical realization that alcohol makes us all better people. And there are plenty of reasons:

  • Alcohol causes euphoria. Whee! What better way to go back to one’s best, most idealized state—a condition of irresponsible immaturity, characterized by dress-up and relentless pestering of other people?
  • Alcohol induces lethargy. We live in an age of information overload. Slowing the brain down is a great way to avoid absorbing any data. You know the kind—what you said to your boss at the Christmas party, who took you home, why your underwear are on your head.
  • Alcohol creates confusion. Drink enough and all your senses will get mixed up. Next thing you know, that toothache is no longer bothering you, wearing platform boots becomes challenging, you can’t remember why boundaries are important, and you use adjectives like “choice.”
  • Alcohol leads to stupor. This is a great way to get that elusive nap. Not only that, but if you get to this stage you’ll probably toss your cookies too, and that makes everyone laugh.

    You have your San Francisco treat, I'll have mine.