asteroid

The end is near!

My Fellow Inebriates,

My friends the Beer & Whiskey Brothers have the right idea with their question of what beer to drink before a city-block-sized boulder hits us tonight. My fur’s been quivering since I read about this asteroidal mutha, and if it indeed has our little planet in its sights, there’s nothing to do but drink, people.

But I don’t advise sipping.

The prospect of our little blue marble getting plowed by an asteroid is so bowel-emptyingly fearful that you need to render yourself insensible for the impact. So here’s a list of non-sipping beers you can pound or shotgun as you brace yourself.

  • Budweiser
  • Labatt Blue
  • Molson Black Ice
  • Kokanee
  • Corona

You see, on the brink of an apocalypse, your tastebuds are just about useless. The fight-or-flight response galvanizes your body—your heart pounds, your lungs heave, blood rushes from your stomach, your pupils dilate, and you get a metallic taste in your mouth.

You’re ready to freak out, but you’re not the best judge of beer. This is why I RECOMMEND racing to your local booze shop to buy any or all of the aforementioned brews.

If this is the end, I’ve enjoyed getting wasted with you in cyberspace. Be strong, humans, and drink up.

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.