review

BARAHONDA ROBLE MONASTRELL SYRAH (2008)—Whatever the hell Labor Day is, this wine should be part of it

In diapers

For bears like me and Scarybear (and lately Fluffy too), Labor Day marks not the beginning of an arduous work cycle but the end of two months of being dragged through the yard, decorated with flowers, festooned with miniature ponies, draped with various dishtowel-cum-frocks (you know what I mean, don’t be dirty)—in short, a laborious summer. We bears don’t care if we can’t wear white shoes after September 3, as long as we don’t have to don any more dresses—at least not before 3 p.m. each weekday. Yes! The kids—both kids—are returning to school, and we bears will be left to hang out and stare at the walls, or whatever you might think we do when nobody’s looking.

In bondage

What the hell does Labor Day signify anyway? Who really has the whole summer off? Nobody at LBHQ had the summer off. Dad worked, Mum worked (here and there), the kids worked on their X-box skills, Scary and I got worked over by the kids, and we all changed headquarters, which was a lot of damn work.

Despite the bear abuse freely countenanced by my parents, I’ll miss summer. The best thing about it was that, as soon as it got hot out, my dad would buy beer. In fact, everything about our summer was a trigger to buy beer. Packing? Beer! Moving? Beer! Unpacking? Beer!

But surely autumn offers equivalent booze-buying triggers. If anything the approach of inclement weather should spur us to polish off the gin, pound any lager occupying the fridge, and welcome heavier, more robust delights like the BARAHONDA ROBLE MONASTRELL SYRAH (2008).

Also known as Mourvèdre, Monastrell grapes are known for producing intensely fruity, tannic, high-alcohol wines that, if not aged correctly, can evince barnyardy notes. The grapes are hard to please, preferring hot sun and high irrigation plus a crapload of viticultural TLC. Monastrell is often blended with Syrah because of the tannic structure it imparts, as with BARAHONDA ROBLE.

Our favorite liquor store consultant hadn’t yet tried this wine; he said it was new to the store. But he did advise pairing it with food—barbecued animal perhaps, or pasta with red sauce. Even though this dude is the full-on maestro when it comes to wine tasting, we decided to ignore his advice. My mother assured him she would cut some cheese, which was a lie, at least in one sense.

At the time of drinking, the kids were on Vancouver Island with their (our) grandparents. The house was very quiet and calm. The mess hadn’t ratcheted up throughout the day. There wasn’t the usual post-bedtime fallout and clean-up. I’d spent the day on the same part of the couch all day, unsummoned for play. It was eerie.

Now, either this weird calmness conjured up some crazy, silvery sensitivity on our palates, or BARAHONDA ROBLE was freaking awesome. Maybe both. Rich maroon in the glass, it demonstrated generous legs as it whispered huskily of blackberries and oaky refinement. Swirled in the glass, those blackfruit flavors concentrated into an olfactory rush, layering on luscious dark fruits.

And the sip? OMG, my fellow inebriates!! Does wine really taste that much better with the kids out of the house or was this wine just that insanely good? Ahhhh, to ever know that, we’d have to buy another bottle and drink it with the kids at home. But yes, this wine is—apologies, Robert Parker—this wine is fucking-A. Crossing the front palate like an old-money guest with an armload of gifts, BARAHONDA ROBLE redoubles the fruit-laden generosity promised to the nose with cherry, dried fruit, and gorgeous minerality. It unloads its parcels in the foyer then charges to mid-palate, still producing gifts—well-integrated oak, rich jam, and deep earthiness. It continues rhapsodically discharging these wondrous flavours, finishing with grippy tannins before depositing its wonderful 14% alcohol in one’s furry tummy.

Was it a sensory orgy? BARAHONDA ROBLE was too disciplined, too structured for that. It stopped just short of that, and just as well. You wouldn’t—couldn’t—get the impression that this wine wasn’t in control of the dance.

What a marvelous under-$20 find from the Spanish wine aisle in our local booze shop. A spectacular summer ender, too, and a product to stock for the coming cold months.

With a product like BARAHONDA ROBLE warming your fur, who needs summer? Labor Day’s arrival is welcome, especially if it occasions another wine purchase.

CANADIAN CLUB—an appropriate response to a day at the PNE

We bears had the house to ourselves all day yesterday. Meanwhile my parents were observing carny people—not just the blue-shirted PNE ride operators, but other, more interesting people, squeezed into all sorts of unfortunate outfits, bouncing along feeding themselves corndogs. My mum saw a woman with four nipples, arbitrarily arranged beneath a stretched-to-the-limit-of-physics tanktop. And when she took the girls to the bathroom she met a new mother dressed as a stripper.

Needless to say, they had an awesome day, although they spent a great deal of our alcohol funds on PNE-priced items such as, well water, at $3.50 for a half-litre bottle.

Now who needs water?

The only time we really need water is when we buy CANADIAN CLUB instead of CROWN ROYAL. Which we did out of curiosity today. We had just chastised my dad for buying—at the PNE—a pan-flutist’s CD for $20, which was ultimately my mother’s fault because she spent 15 minutes coursing through the PNE prize home while my dad waited on a bench being wooed by the pan flute. My mother heard it too; he was playing “Unchained Melody,” and the teenagers behind her were grasping for the artist. “The Righteous Brothers,” my mother said, which they either ignored or didn’t recognize, then the girl told her boyfriend she was sure she’d heard her mom playing that song, which netted her some noises of disgust. And she added, she would never have a white kitchen, although the wine rack beneath the deer’s head was pretty dope.

My mother didn’t mean to buy CANADIAN CLUB today, but the liquor store is right beside the bank, where she had to go to spread a small cheque between two separate accounts to cover such liquor-unfriendly things as her gym membership and the car insurance. She was trying to be nice by buying a cheap mickey of rye so she could sip something guilt-free instead of getting into the more expensive CAOL ILA 12 my dad brought back from Vegas. She was trying to do a good thing, but you have to admit she just ended up looking like an alcoholic, especially when the mickey fell out of her gym bag at Steve Nash Fitness World.

I’ve come to the defense of CANADIAN CLUB many times, especially since it’s typically pitted against fit-for-royalty CROWN ROYAL, which is a nice, smooth rye. If you order a rye ‘n’ seven at the bar, the bartender will usually try to pass off CANADIAN CLUB on you for economy’s sake. And with 7-Up or gingerale, this is perfectly reasonable. CANADIAN CLUB is plenty rough compared to CROWN ROYAL, but who cares when you’re mixing it with pop? Neat, or even over ice, it’s a different story.

When I drink CANADIAN CLUB, I feel like a ruminant. I can taste grass and hay, along with some jagged alcohol, which I like. What it lacks in nuance it makes up for in straightforwardness. With a sweet, fizzy mixer, I actually prefer the rougher-edged CANADIAN CLUB; it asserts itself better, and the pop hides its earthier tones.

If I were a cow, like the one the kids observed giving birth at the PNE, I’d wonder what the hell humans were doing with grains, making things like CANADIAN CLUB. I’d also wonder why there was a set of crowded bleachers right beside me while a farmer stuck his whole arm inside me, tied a rope around my calf’s leg and yanked it out. (Miss P and Miss V did enjoy the whole business, but they thought it took too long.)

There are a lot of weird things at the PNE. It makes Walmart seem downright sedate, and apparently it takes a lot of energy to spend 10 hours there with a four-year-old and a six-year-old. I’m delighted it drove my mother to drink, even if it was just CANADIAN CLUB.

WHITE BARK Wheat Ale—The start of a good party

My Fellow Inebriates,

This morning, in a moment of disloyalty, I tried to stow away in Christine’s fabulous canvas bag. Yes, Christine had arrived the night before bearing wheat ale, red wine, and—treasure of treasures—Glenmorangie 18.

We kicked things off with the wheat ale. WHITE BARK is a traditional Belgian-style ale brewed by BC’s Driftwood Brewery. Intended to be cloudy, WHITE BARK pours a hazy golden hue with a fine off-white foam that settles down quickly. It announces itself to the olfactory centre with a wheat-borne flood of coriander, clove, and citrus notes—in some aspects (perhaps I have gin on the brain) channeling Bombay Sapphire down to the very bottle, which sports a similar vertical row of tasting-note glyphs.

As we inhaled WHITE BARK we noted a strong yeasty backbone, which played out on the palate along with Belgian-style fruitiness and malt. Refreshing at ice-cold temperature, the ale became slightly cloying as it warmed and the flavors cut loose. The carbonation was prickly and pointy, urging WHITE BARK toward mainstream Pop Rocks quaffability even as the intriguing fruit notes insisted that no, it was not in any sense an ordinary beer.

And it wasn’t. But you have to really like wheat beer to appreciate an ale like WHITE BARK. It’s crisp and dry but still belongs unmistakably to the fruity-yeasty-wheaty camp. There’s a lot going on in it—sort of like a party that splits off into several factions, one of which decides to chuck a seven-foot cactus off the roof into the pool while the rest continue their obliviously sedate conversations. Which is to say I liked it, although I might not buy it again immediately.

And that was when I noticed, one of the compartments contained not booze but paper towels. Paper towels!!

Finishing the WHITE BARK bottle left a compartment empty in Christine’s canvas bag. (We didn’t get to the red wine, although some other, magnificent booze was shared.) When I peeled myself off the counter this morning, the first thing I saw was that empty space—just roomy enough for a little bear. So I climbed in.

And then I started to worry. My initial thought had been: Every time Christine comes over, she brings tons of booze! But my worry was this: If Christine has tons of booze, it’s because she saves it, and that means she doesn’t drink it very often. OMG!!!

At that moment my mum found me and helped me out of the bag. She said I had a blog to write, and some cheap crap to drink later—hooch so cheap we can drink it every day.

I’m right where I belong. (But Christine is welcome to come and live with us.)