red wine

ROBERT OATLEY SHIRAZ (2009)—Fails to lure Glen Bear back to LBHQ

My Fellow Inebriates,

Glen Bear has disappeared.

Glen Bear attacking Miss P

Glen Bear attacking Miss P, 2006.

You may not remember Glen…. Big fluffy polar bear…hates summer, likes the freezer, could devour a whole seal if one flippered its way through the house….

I started looking for Glen last week when the temperature dipped under 0° (Celsius, my fellow inebriates, otherwise I would have been dead). Glen only really likes his environment when it’s freezing cold, and it’s the only time he’ll allow a cuddle. I needed him to warm me up. And that’s when I realized he’d vanished.

Scary, me, Glen Bear, and Carnivorous Duck, late 2006. Only Glen was happy about the snow.

Scary, me, Glen Bear, and Carnivorous Duck, late 2006. Only Glen was happy about the snow.

My dad said he moved with us for sure back in August. But I can’t really remember. The last time I saw him, the kids had stuffed him into some tight space—maybe a backpack or a box—but what happened to him after that? I don’t even remember which house we were living in then!

It’s sort of a good lesson about drinking, really. Being blasted all the time, I haven’t paid enough attention to Glen’s whereabouts. A big animal like Glen could lumber off anywhere. Polar bears have ridiculous olfactory sensitivity; he might have smelled a female down the street and gone off in pursuit.

Miss P says he didn’t go anywhere. She says Glen “doesn’t really walk.” I said of course not, of course Glen doesn’t walk—he has more of a four-legged gait.

Glen looks more like this when he drinks Polar Ice

Glen looks more like this when he drinks Polar Ice.

When Glen gets mobile, the floor shakes. He’s at least 50 percent bigger than Scarybear—a massive, awesome creature (also our under-recognized resident vodka expert).

So where is Glen???? The kids are curiously unconcerned. One thing is clear, though—if I’m to manage my anxiety, I’ll need some liquor. Not vodka, though—that would remind me of Glen. Maybe ROBERT OATLEY SHIRAZ (2009).

The Mudgee region is one of Australia’s less-advertised wine areas, known mostly for providing blending grapes for such larger wineries as Hunter Valley. ROBERT OATLEY SHIRAZ represents a Mudgee play for higher status. Let’s open it.

Glen has helped me open bottles occasionally, mostly by smashing them, but in his absence my parents had to help. First impressions are earthy, peppery, dense fruit with a hint of taxidermy. The scent does not radiate good behavior, but 14.1% is what’s needed to contend with an anxiety like Glen’s disappearance.

robert oatley shiraz 2009The first sip of ROBERT OATLEY SHIRAZ is a reinforcement of concentrated fruits: blackcurrant, tinned jam, decent acidity, moderate-to-aggressive tannins, and distant wombat farts. Which is to say: it’s not half bad. For you solidovores, it would pair nicely with savory foods, barbecued meats and such. For my “liquids-only” friends, it’s a bit of a chore on its own. Likely you’ll be comparing it to the last really good Australian Shiraz you enjoyed—and there are so many out there that comparisons will pop out immediately. ROBERT OATLEY SHIRAZ approaches the good-natured drinkability of its typical $20 Australian cohort, but it evinces too many conflicting and barnyardy notes to hang with truly awesome Shirazes. It’s just okay, and maybe even a little obnoxious.

Drinking a bottle of Shiraz did not sharpen our memories as to where we last saw Glen—not mine or my parents’. As for the kids, they think maybe he went with them to Nana and Papa’s. Or to school. Or no, maybe not either. They don’t care; they’re watching TV.

JAMES MITCHELL CABERNET SAUVIGNON—Big enough to chase away your trauma

My Fellow Inebriates,

Unless you are unnaturally hirsute, if you haven’t started cultivating your Movember stache you are pretty much shit-out-of-luck. Even if you start now, there you’ll be on November 30 going, Look everybody, look at my upper lip, look at my rad…baby-soft down. You’ll have to watch your copiously moustachioed pals head off for their triumphant end-of-Movember shave while your own peach-fuzz trophy succumbs meekly to the Hair-Off Mitten®.

Despite this logic, my dad has steadfastly refused to get his stache on. At first he cited work policy: “No facial hair.” But then he slipped up and mentioned that several coworkers were doing it.

“So you have to do it. You have to do it, Dad, because I can’t.” You see, I had only recently realized the static nature of my own fur growth. It is what it is, people; it doesn’t grow! (I’d always thought I was just growing and shedding simultaneously like wild bears do. OMG! This revelation was almost as traumatic as the one about my missing genitals.)

I meant to keep bugging my dad but was distracted by the severed arm we saw on the way home from elementary school drop-off. Any other day of the year I would have panicked, and for a second I did, but then my two brain cells reminded each other that yesterday was Halloween.

At afternoon pick-up the arm was still there although it had been tossed from the curb to someone’s front yard. Five-year-old Miss V asked casually if it was real or fake. She seemed receptive to either answer.

When you see something as shocking as a severed arm, you need to process the image so the horror doesn’t overwhelm you. You might even need a sedative to arrest the involuntary recapitulation of the unspeakable apparition by your unwilling retinae. I sought such a chemical this evening in JAMES MITCHELL CABERNET SAUVIGNON (2009). Its 13.9% alcohol seemed just the ticket.

Grapes from the Lodi region of central California enjoy a Mediterranean-style climate with warm days and cool nights, along with rugged, loamy soil. JAMES MITCHELL CABERNET SAUVIGNON is a good example of the area’s brawny viticulture. From the moment the cork is extracted this wine takes no prisoners—boisterously rich black cherry and lingonberry come out swinging with a hefty dose of oak, flaunting the wine’s quintessential Cabernetness like a handlebar moustache.

With these olfactory harbingers, the sipping doesn’t disappoint. This is a big, gorgeous Cab that doesn’t pull punches. If it’s been a while since you’ve had a Cabernet, get ready for a striking one. Tannins parch the tongue masterfully as berries, oak, and licorice go to town on your mid-palate; the finish reverberates with lingering dark fruit. This is a serious wine for those who like getting down with big, bold booze. And if you get some in your moustache, well, you get to enjoy it even longer.

All of which is much better than dwelling on severed arms or your dad’s non-compliance with Movember.

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?