garnacha

GARNACHA DE FUEGO—The cure for the End of Days, but not Fluffy

When we bought GARNACHA DE FUEGO (2009), we did so just in time. Some dude was grabbing up all the bottles! Naturally this made us eager to hang on to our treasure and maybe even taunt the guy with the one bottle in our basket.

Ahhhh, the liquor store. The clinking! The tinkling! The samples! The atmosphere! The scent of empties being returned…I don’t accompany my parents there very often because they don’t trust me, but if my mum’s using her big patent leather bag I sometimes jump in just as they’re leaving. On this particular day I wasn’t just lured by the thought of thousands of booze bottles. I wanted to get the hell out of LBHQ. Scarybear had just mentioned that we were approaching Fluffy’s first Halloween in the house.

On this day last year, Granny was very sick, and Fluffy was with her. Far away in Ireland, he sat on a chest of drawers, observing Granny’s last days…waiting.

Fast-forward to today. Granny: dead. Fluffy: haunted by Granny, who didn’t always get along with my mother. Scary: preoccupied with the earth’s overdue magnetic field shift and needing to project his apocalyptic anxiety onto the easiest victim, yours truly.

Scooping that one bottle of GARNACHA DE FUEGO felt like such a score that I forgot about these problems. Spain has been lucky for us lately, $15.99 wasn’t painful, and 14.5% alcohol gets two paws up any day. Situated high in the hills of Calatayud (say that drunk), old vines produce grapes bursting with concentrated sweetness and depth. And when the guy ahead of you in the checkout is buying 15 bottles of the stuff, it’s a strong endorsement.

My dad was afraid of the silly label. True, it’s a little over the top, but at LBHQ we are much more leery of a wine label bearing wombats or chooks than one depicting “Grenache of Fire.” Indeed, the former type is more frightening than Fluffy’s paranormal antics and the great magnetic pole flip put together.

What Scary doesn’t realize in his countdown to December 21, the generally agreed-upon End of Days, is that a magnetic reversal would take tens of centuries to occur. It’s not like planes will fall out of the air or birds will start bonking into each other suddenly. The change will be subtle. Some scientists believe the shift is already in its early stages but is so slow as to be imperceptible.

North is magnetic by virtue of atomic majority rule in the planet’s molten core; more atoms face north than south. As individual atoms flip, eventually the dominant magnetism may shift to south, but a long and middling interval will precede any definitive magnetic south. During this time—and this is the potentially dangerous part—the earth’s magnetic field will weaken as its atoms’ polarities split roughly evenly between north and south orientations, leaving the planet more vulnerable to the solar flares that a strong magnetic field would deflect. In turn the ozone layer will be more susceptible to holes, although, as Scary should know from his other theories about Armageddon, by then we’ll have torched the whole protective layer anyway. We’ll (well, you will, and I if I shave my fur off) be running around with skin like crispy KFC, but not this December 21, people.

Scary is a total dumbass but at least he stayed out of the GARNACHA DE FUEGO. The “fire” may be a reference to the peppery spice that characterizes the wine, especially at rear palate after it’s dealt you much-welcome lashings of rich, earthy fruit with a nice acidic backbone. Considering the reported desolation of the Calatayud region, it makes some kick-ass grapes, which translate into a gorgeously balanced wine with just the right tannic profile. You could drink it with food, but if you’d prefer to get ripped out of your head, enjoy this quaff solo (especially if “solo” means you don’t have to share with Scary, Fluffy, or your dad).

The best thing about having a whole bottle of GARNACHA DE FUEGO to yourself is that you’ll lose all concern for magnetic shifts, tectonic upheavals, solar flares, and the like. But you might still worry about the occult potential of any possessed members of your household, especially on a night like tonight. I hear that when you’re really wrecked you become more susceptible to suggestion, and this was probably the case when I thought I heard Granny asking me if I had any cigarettes. I didn’t (holy shit, my fellow inebriates, I’m too flammable to mess with stuff like that, and where would I keep them—being ever-nude I don’t even have a pocket for a flask), but when I turned toward the voice, all I saw was Fluffy with his vacant eyes.

And how was YOUR Halloween?

BESO DE VINO (2009)—Worth drinking but not saving

Get this, my fellow inebriates: My parents are so disorganized that they actually had to call the movers and ask them to come a day later. Luckily they picked an odd time of month to move, or we’d have been S.O.L.

Why could they not get their shit together in time? What is wrong with them?

In addition to being video-game addicts and procrastinators, over the last six years I’ve come to suspect they possess a gene or gene combination responsible for hoarding behaviour. Tell me, who has 14 non-working stereos? Who hangs on to books that are embarrassing (The Yeast Syndrome, How to Write Erotica)? Who has just been forced to work backwards through four years of unopened mail?

There is indeed a genetic marker associated with hoarding, located on chromosome 14. Hoarding is a subtype of OCD that tends to run in families. But my parents can’t blame any familial line for their propensities, although you don’t have to delve too far into the family tree to find moderate insanity (and—as summer’s open windows bear our conversations aloft—our neighbours probably suspect my mother of another chromosome-14 disorder, Tourette’s).

In all likelihood my parents are just disorganized, which might explain why, without managing to pack all the stuff we’re not using, they’ve packed our few meager alcoholic items along with all the wine glasses. They won’t find that stuff for days, even weeks, which leaves us without glassware to christen the new LBHQ. Hell, it leaves us without glassware when we feel overwhelmed and desperate later today. And it means no one will be buying new wine until we find the glasses—OMG!

In fact, we’re all caught up on wine reviews, except for one bottle.

Wine Advocate gave BESO DE VINO (2009) 90 points, a too-good-to-be-true score for a $13 wine. Not that we haven’t had awesome $13 wines, and for all we know, reviewer Jay Miller was taking into consideration the low price. But this ain’t no 90-point wine.

Antonio the Bull, amorous animal with low-swinging balls, is the frontman for this Spanish Syrah/Garnacha blend. Usually my mum knows better than to purchase wines whose labels feature livestock, but  the pricetag talked her into it—especially since it had a blue-and-black label rather than a yellow-and-red one (avoid!). BESO DE VINO seemed safe, and we’ve been having good luck with Spanish wines lately, so she plunked down the $13.

It’s hard not to like this goofy little bull and his mondo testicles, but you can’t rely on his tasting notes. Sure, the wine is a lush and opaque purple, but it doesn’t serve up the promised aromas of “roasted coffee, baked berry, chocolate covered espresso bean…” It serves up a grape-juice fragrance—pleasant, fruity, and full, but juvenile somehow, even though I couldn’t detect any nuts. Now, maybe we were primed for an impression of immaturity by the bull’s jouncing teabags, but honestly, there isn’t much on the nose.

Does Antonio realize bulls don’t often live past 15 years old?

On the palate BESO DE VINO comes through with full-bodied dark fruit and a generous mouthfeel along with some modest tannins, but it still suggests a kid’s juice box rather than the Reidel glasses we’ve prematurely stowed. Although I could pick out some of the suggested coffee notes, some earthiness, and some spice, BESO DE VINO isn’t much more than a half-decent table wine. It would taste just fine, for instance, with some cheese strings or Lunchables.

Still, you can’t argue with $13, and there’s nothing offensive about BESO DE VINO, except maybe Antonio the Bull’s dangling yarbles. It’s worth drinking once, but not worth hoarding a supply (really, parents).

CASTILLO DE MONSERAN OLD VINES GARNACHA (2007)

My Fellow Inebriates,

If I hear another parental exclamation about how expensive this season is and how booze is a “luxury,” I’m going to lose my furry mind. The budgeting conversation was so boring today that I rested my head in the curve of a bunch of bananas for most of the day, drowning out the banality.

Okay, maybe that doesn’t sound too understanding. As a bear without a social insurance number, I’ve never felt any obligation to bring home any bacon (barf—that’s for you, Hanukkah Harry—bacon is blech). So I don’t know how to budget, shop, do taxes, save, open an RRSP or any of that financial stuff. Why would I? It’s totally boring.

Except. Except that all this budgeting curtails my wine consumption.

I like exploring wines a lot, especially nuanced vintages and off-the-beaten-track varietals. I love detecting the layered scents before taking that first, tentative sip and disappearing into a wondrous, sensory ravishment by an exceptional wine.

But let’s face it, I’m a raging alcoholic, and the important thing is to keep wine in the house. If that wine is in a box, so be it.

My parents do not agree. They draw the line at boxed wine and will not stoop below the $10 mark. No matter how engagingly a liquor store’s $9 shelf talker ogles them, they will not purchase wine they can actually afford. Instead they keep a dry house for days on end and then spring for an occasional “decent” bottle.

Of course this is total BS. It means long periods of dreadful shakes and shivers, not to mention desperate cravings and urges to taste Windex and Clorox. The other day I drank half the vanilla in the baking cupboard, only to discover it was artificial and devoid of alcohol. If only my parents would invest in a friendly box of cheap plonk, I could park my mouth under the spout during these dark times and stop being the nuisance they say I am.

Still, I have to applaud my parents when they find something cheap enough to buy and drink without feeling guilty. The latest find, CASTILLO DE MONSERAN CARINENA OLD VINES GARNACHA (2007), was recommended by their local liquor store consultant, who pointed out that Spanish wines at the store often boast slightly older vintages, presumably because they tend to trickle more slowly to the North American market. Thus you can find, with a good consultant, some spectacular buys on mature wines that can certainly hold their own against the pricier Australian, US and Canadian bottles.

I’m wondering how we can get to know this wine consultant of ours a little better. My parents say he’s young and very friendly (which puts him out of their league as a potential buddy). If I wish to meet him, I may need to stow out of the house inside a purse or jacket pocket. The only problem: the liquor store is currently overrun by bears for its annual Share A Bear program, and I’m not sure what species they are. If they’re grizzlies like my friend Scarybear, then they will make things very difficult for a handbag-riding interloper, and I might end up getting the crap kicked out of me.

The reason I want to get to know this wine consultant (whose name my parents can’t even remember) is that I suspect he goes to tastings, and he might not object to taking along an alcoholic bear. Of course he might not have a man-purse that I could ride in, but maybe he has a backpack or some pockets. It would depend which pockets and where they were on his anatomy, because I wouldn’t want things to get weird.

That dude would be good to go to a tasting with because he certainly has good judgment. CASTILLO DE MONSERAN OLD VINES GARNACHA ($13.99) was a phenomenal surprise; even before it opened up, one inhalation revealed its promise. Ripe and full, this traditional old-vine Grenache bursts with plum and dense cherry, balanced oak and hints of olive. Remarkably complex for a Grenache, CASTILLO DE MONSERAN is lush yet structured, with a deliberateness about it that tells you these particular Spanish dudes know their craft.

I felt such sorrow when the last drop was drained, I had to curl up with the bananas on the counter. A spectacular value, CASTILLO DE MONSERAN OLD VINE GARNACHA is worth buying by the case.