red wine

ASTROLIQUOR for December 28 to January 3—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

Aries, your finances are good and fucked. You spent a ton of money this holiday season, and you haven’t slowed down. If you don’t get yourself under control, you’ll be crying for months. Start by eliminating solid food. It costs a lot of money. Next, stop buying Skyy and Grey Goose. Stick with rotgut vodka until your bank balance looks up. Good luck!

Taurus, you’ll finish an important project this week. Don’t be shy to brag! Modesty will get you nowhere, and if you start muttering about how “it was nothing,” people will think you’re a douche. An Aquarius will ask you to be Designated Driver at New Year. Consider it a compliment, and graciously accept. Stay away from lottery kiosks, fruit, depilatories, and Kool-Aid.

That person you met in June is starting to annoy you, Gemini. As your relationship falls apart, another person steps in to console you. Don’t misread this as poaching; your new friend isn’t into you at all, and really just wants to mooch your Jack Daniel’s. The next few months will be frivolous and shallow, just the way you like.

Cancer, you’re in for a harmonious week. Communication is excellent with partners and friends; work is productive; your ideas are irresistible; and the stars aren’t calling for any bar fights. You have the boss’s ear at work, so speak up about what you want. (Leave the flask of Absolut at home.) A Pisces might give you flowers.

Leo, there’s a creepy Sagittarius hanging around. Stay sober around this weirdo. You can, however, get loaded with Aquarians. You’ll experience wild mood swings as you party with them, however; everyone knows Aquarians are constantly lit up on vodka and vermouth, and they tend to lurch drunkenly into other people’s horoscopes.

Virgo, you’re being goaded by Aries and Aquarius types. They want you to mix up a great big batch of this:

  • 1 cup vodka
  • 2 cups white wine
  • 2 cups lager
  • 1 cup blackcurrant liqueur

Hurry up and mix it, because a Pisces is going to try to talk you out of it.

Libra, take the week off work and consume nothing but vodka, gin, light rum, tequila, and Blue Curacao. Friends will drop in unexpectedly; when they see what you’re mixing, they’ll stay. This means that if you’re wearing a thong, you should put some pants on over it, just to be polite. February looks good for love, and you don’t want to scare anyone off.

You had some troubles in October, Scorpio, but things are looking better. Continue to avoid conflict, and chill out if colleagues are being lazy at work. Everything is going to improve in January, although the voices in your head might get louder. They’re asking for Grand Marnier with coffee and chocolate sprinkles.

Sagittarius, you’re entering an extra-happy phase. Only do those things you feel like doing. Make some artwork, play games, and speak your mind. A Cancer figures prominently…a crazy drinking buddy on a scale you haven’t experienced before. Who on earth would frappé red wine, Coke, tequila, bananas, raisins, and champagne? You might, this week.

Remy Martin and Mountain Dew, Capricorn—that’s what this week has in store for you, along with family cuddles, and one or two late (and weird) Christmas gifts. You are very precise at Sudoku and crosswords, even while gooned. This is very special indeed, but don’t be tempted to think your driving will be similarly enhanced this week. No car keys for you!

Aquarius, you wander in and out of a lot of other astrological signs’ lives this week, mostly being a nuisance, but also inspiring them to break out the Bacardi. Try not to panhandle outside the liquor store; better opportunities are coming up in January. Watch out for Scorpios; one of them wants to take you to an Anthony Robbins seminar.

Pisces, get ready for a week of sexy talk, or at least some graphic descriptions of potentially sexy things. What that means the stars won’t be specific about; we all know how stupid the stars are and that if we’re being honest they are just massive balls of gas exploding in space. If you listen to them, they say: apply for a loan, have a big party, give some flowers to a Cancer, and volunteer to be Designated Driver at New Year. Someone has to do it. Rent a bus and be a pal to all your friends.

CONCHA Y TORO WINEMAKER’S LOT 148 CARMENERE—Perfect for the antepenultimate Day (unless your mother is going to rip your heart out by “gifting” it to one of the kids’ teachers)

Scarybear says when we see the flash two days from now, we have to immediately fill the bathtub with water. He read that in The Road. Scary adds: Isn’t it typical of our parents that they haven’t bothered to stock up on water or provisions for the coming Apocalypse?

DSCN2776I’d been ignoring the countdown to Armageddon because it’s been feeling like Armageddon already. Plus we’ve had things to do, like planning P’s birthday party at Captain Kid’s indoor hellmouth fun centre, trying to figure out why the middle section of our Canadian Tire Christmas tree doesn’t light up, and getting ready for our holiday road trip to Vancouver Island. What with Santa breakfasts, mall shopping, and the fact that every other kid at school has decided to have a birthday party this week, things are pretty freaking busy at LBHQ. Oh yeah, and there’s this big dump of snow this morning—a phenomenon our city is totally unready for. Traffic is a disaster, there are only a handful of snowplows in the entire Lower Mainland, schools are closing (OMG! Nooo!), and if we get half a foot more of it they’ll declare it an official emergency (like, for real). Yes, we are f#cked when it snows in this part of the world, because it so rarely does. We don’t know how to drive in it, we don’t have the tires for it, braking hard on a skid seems to be a natural Vancouverite intuition, and half the drivers don’t need to be on the road—they’re trying it out for the sheer novelty of it.

Scary says we’re really screwed now because Mum won’t drive to get provisions. This is true—if there’s one person you don’t want operating a car in the snow, it’s my mother. But at least, Scary says, we’ll have snow to get water from when everything goes dark on Friday.

Scary’s obsession with water is starting to freak me out. He seems to have narrowed down his apocalyptic speculations from many (collapse of the vacuum, solar flares, asteroids, rogue black holes, gamma rays, volcanism, magnetic field reversal) to one: nuclear annihilation.mushroom cloud

I wish Scary would read books that weren’t about the end of the world. I would happily lend him a bartending guide or some Nabokov if he’d have it, but he won’t. (Maybe he will in two days, but he says it will be hard to read by candlelight, and that reading will be an absurd luxury anyway.)

Right now, Scary says, it’s important to do Meaningful Things. Society is ending, and we have to treasure those things that are Important. For example, Scary is going to binge-watch Stargate, because that was always his favorite.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve been saving a bottle of CONCHA Y TORO WINEMAKER’S LOT 148 Carmenere (2010). That would be perfect for Apocalypse Eve, wouldn’t it?”

“Wrong, weirdo,” he said. “That would be dehydrating. On December 22 we’re going to be rationing water. Don’t expect any extra because you’re hung over.”

Who made Scary the boss of the Apocalypse, I don’t know. How does he even know that wine would dehydrate us? I had no idea myself. Let’s investigate this, my fellow inebriates.

Does alcohol cause dehydration?

OMG, apparently people have known about this for years. Shakespeare mentions it in the Macduff-Porter scene about erections:

PORTER

‘Faith sir, we were carousing till the second cock. And drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.

MACDUFF

What three things does drink especially provoke?

PORTER

Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes. It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.

He said "cock."

He said “cock.”

Alcohol does make you pee. But why?

The diuretic quality of alcohol is still not fully understood. According to Dr. Karl:

After all, beer is about 95 per cent water and only five per cent alcohol. And the liver converts that five per cent of alcohol into roughly the same mass of water and some carbon dioxide.

So if you drink 200 millilitres of beer, the end result is 200 millilitres of water. But you don’t urinate just 200 millilitres of urine. No! You urinate a total of about 320 millilitres of urine.

What the hell? Dr. Karl says that for every shot of alcohol, you pee an extra 120 mL. Where does it come from, my fellow inebriates?

Alcohol interferes with the body’s ability to regulate water levels.

Ordinarily your pituitary gland releases ADH (anti-diuretic hormone) to keep water in the body (based on electrolyte levels and so forth) so you don’t get dehydrated. ADH curtails peeing. But alcohol reduces your ADH production, sending you on multiple bathroom trips. Even if you try to catch up by drinking water, you don’t get to keep that water—most of it will get tinkled out, and you’ll still end up dehydrated.

And, according to Scary, it’ll be your fault if you get hammered the night before Armageddon and end up thirsty. Smart survivalists like himself will be hoarding water and looting grocery stores. (“Idiots like you, LB, will be looting liquor stores and HMV.”)

OMG, Scary is mean sometimes. I do realize there won’t be any electricity. But liquor? Liquor could have its uses.57911_469184923103527_1148624302_n

That bathtub of water is going to get pretty crappy pretty fast. At least it won’t have traces of bathroom cleanser in it, though—it doesn’t occur to Mum to scrub it very often. We just have to get the kids to stop peeing in the tub. Still, within a couple of days of the blast, that water will have all kinds of floaties in it. We’ll be wanting some beer then, I reckon.

But beer’s dehydrating, isn’t it?

Not if you’re already dehydrated. Then other bodily regulatory forces will override the dehydrating effects of ADH, to a point at least. And beer is 95 percent water, so you’ll get to keep at least some of it. “Yeah,” says Scary, “but water would be better, douchebag.”

Okay, so what about our bottle of CONCHA Y TORO Carmenere? Maybe we should drink that tonight rather than on Apocalypse Eve.

But OMG, according to my mum, it’s not our bottle. “That’s for V’s kindergarten teacher.”

Holy crap, we’re giving our wine away to teachers??

“We really like V’s teacher.”

This is the end of the world.

Concha y ToroWe’ve had this CONCHA Y TORO Carmenere before, and it is luminous. Inky and full-bodied, it wafts generously layered aromas of black cherry, espresso, leather, and floral notes. Decadently concentrated yet incredibly complex, this Carmenere is epic on the palate—supple and smooth, structured and long-finishing. This wine is a powerhouse of fruit orchestration, commanding your attention from first to final, reluctant sip (if you had an absorbent paw, you could get the last of it that way, knowing no one will be operating the Maytag after December 21). And at a $20 price tag, this CONCHA Y TORO offering is all the more magnificent.

Personally, I think V should be doing long division and reading Beowulf if we’re giving her teacher this particular bottle.

“LB, don’t be a dick,” said my mother.

“He can’t help it,” said Scary.

VALLE LAS ACEQUIAS BONARDA (2010)—Almost missed it

My Fellow Inebriates,

Last night my parents sneaked a wine past me—and not just a wine but a dinner guest as well. Usually, when someone comes to LBHQ, I like to make an appearance, attempt a sexy dance, get some unsolicited cuddles, and otherwise secure blog content, but yesterday I was distracted by the People of Walmart when D arrived. All I noticed was the smell of chicken being cooked by my mother, which wasn’t exactly a lure. Little did I know, social activity was commencing with UGLY SWEATER MILK STOUT followed by a 2010 Bonarda that D had kindly brought over.

I was distracted, okay?

I was distracted, okay?

I would have clued in sooner or later, but it was an unusually short visit. D arrived, then promptly received several (say, 15) text messages from her daughter asking that she pick her up from work, a good 45 kilometres away, just as dinner was being served. The 20-year-old had forgotten her house key and needed not just a ride home from work but assistance getting inside. Right away. Like, right away! Which meant dinner went by in a flash, my mother drank most of the wine, D left hurriedly, and I arrived just in time for a small leftover and not-very-social sample of the wine. Oh well.

las asquiasBonarda is a varietal that’s currently achieving some ascendancy in Argentina. Originally from Italy, it’s historically been used as a blending grape to supply acidity and structure to jammier blends with its dark, highly tannic profile. Increasingly, Bonarda grapes are headlining in products such as VALLE LAS ACQUIAS. Generously fruity with a violet-black tinge and weighty mouthfeel, this 2010 wine exudes fresh earth and parches the palate with tannins accompanied by mild barnyard notes (my dad called them “fierce”), falling short of the fruity orgy we tend to favor at LBHQ. The wine is certainly not ungenerous with fruit—dark berries and currents are readily discernible—but these chords are submerged somewhat beneath some palate-chapping oakiness that tends to make the tasting experience a bit clipped.

Despite the wine’s minor shortcomings, I was highly offended to have been left out of a social occasion. I would certainly have embarrassed everyone behaved myself and not mentioned the Apocalypse, thongs, or the ongoing paranormal activities at LBHQ, nor would I have suggested that a 20-year-old could find something to do for three hours while her mother enjoyed an evening out, rather than psycho-dialing her on her cellphone until her mother, offering profuse apologies, scarfed down supper and went to pick her up.

I hope neither of them reads this, and I feel pretty confident that they won’t, but if they do, they should know it all comes from my inner alcoholic, who feels burned at having missed out on almost everything, even though he doesn’t really believe in eating supper at all.