tasting

HARVIESTOUN OLA DUBH—ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

My Fellow Inebriates,

I was shattered when Christine left our house this morning. By which I mean, when I woke up hours after she’d gone and realized the fact, I felt betrayed. Not by Christine, who can do no wrong. (Christine arrived at our house yesterday afternoon with her special canvas bag containing two fine whiskies, two unique craft beers, and an outstanding Shiraz she’d been cellaring since 2003.) Christine is beyond reproach.

But I felt sort of let down by my parents, who didn’t bother to shake me awake to say good-bye. I actually meant to stow away with Christine this morning in the canvas bag. Although it was still occupied by two bottles of Scotch, it had a compartment I could have slipped into if I weren’t comatose at the time of her departure. Evidently my parents couldn’t entertain Christine until I finished sleeping off last night’s alcohol; I didn’t even get a chance to pant after her booze or press my nose against the window.

Why are my parents so boring? I can’t imagine why anyone visits them at all. What a testament to their dullness that any visitors they do get must bring alcohol to make the visit tolerable. (Come to think of it…well, it’s kind of a wash. If my parents were more interesting they would get more visitors, but the visitors wouldn’t need to get hammered to endure their company.) But still, last night was pretty cool.

First out of the canvas bag was HARVIESTOUN OLA DUBH SPECIAL RESERVE (18). Translated as “black oil,” OLA DUBH is so named for its “gloopy and viscous” mouthfeel. It is “the first ale to be aged in malt whisky casks from a named distillery and, with traceable casks and numbered bottles, the first with genuine provenance.” Christine found this 8% brew at a specialty liquor store in Olympic Village where it commanded $8 for its Highland Park–cask aging. Short glasses seemed fitting, so the humans poured it three ways (I gadded about between the three glasses, ending up with the lion’s share).

“Black oil” is not a misnomer. In the glass OLA DUBH is thick, oily, and darker than Coca Cola. Harviestoun compares its appearance to that of “used motor oil,” but I don’t know of any automotive waste that exudes such symphonic waves of dark chocolate, espresso, sherry, and peat. This breathtaking aroma is but a prelude to an exquisite cascade of malty, smoky, leathery toffee-tinged gloriousness—enveloping the palate and winding up with a soulfully bitter cocoa finish. Prickling the tongue with gentle carbonation, OLA DUBH is a rhapsodic hybrid of whisky and beer, warming and mellow yet curiously tingly on the palate. Sweeter than a stout and infinitely more complex, OLA DUBH wrenches a forbidden word from even the most hardened and obdurate taster—the taster who has sworn never to utter the word—yes, against his will and without resistance, my dad said it: OLA DUBH is sessionable.

Because if you could—if you possibly could—you would want to draw your experience with OLA DUBH out over several hours. With its glass-clinging, massive body and absolutely subjugating intensity, this beer takes over your mind; it controls you; it OWNS you.

After everyone drank their two fingers of OLA DUBH, there was no way we could immediately sample another beer. It wouldn’t have been fair. So everyone sipped Carmenere while my mother concocted one of her meals seemingly designed to bother and disconcert everyone’s palate, and together those incongruous new tastes helped arrest everyone’s pining for the OLA DUBH.

In all honesty—although this may be the sort of creeping determinism my furry head cooked up to cope with the emptiness of the OLA DUBH bottle—I doubt you could drink such a viscous beer all evening. At least humans probably wouldn’t want to. But we bears have some crazy stomach enzymes. 😉

PASO CREEK ZINFANDEL (2010)—Restoring you after, if not during, that playdate

My Fellow Inebriates,

Miss P has a friend (A) over for a playdate, so we animals are mimicking that famous ET scene and playing statues. This might be overkill; at 6 years old, she and her friend would probably eschew stuffies anyway in favor of some vapid online game whose object is to “make the nerdy girl pretty.”

My mum doesn’t know how this evil game came to P’s attention, although she suspects a particular classmate, friend B—the one who introduced Justin Bieber (“Beaver”) and who wants P to join her after-school cheerleading and beauty pageantry groups. This is the reason friend A has been invited over but not (“never!”) friend B.

OMG! OMFG!!!

My parents are realizing, though, that whatever control you exert over your kids’ friend choices when they’re tiny drops precipitously with the onset of school. As soon as you start doing drop-off playdates—and unless you’re a saint you know you want to—you consign your kid for several hours at a time to the unknown. Who knows what the hell those crazy people are feeding your kid, telling your kid, asking your kid, showing your kid, saying in front of your kid…

And that, no doubt, is what friend A’s mother is asking herself after dropping her child at our messy house, with its yardful of random unidentifiables, its imposing kluge stereo which, for all she knows, could have live wires sticking out everywhere, and my mother answering the door with an apology for not having vacuumed because V won’t let her (for a month—is that even credible?). Never mind the wild bears playing statues on the bookshelves, our hairy asses blocking her from reading worrisome titles.

Ken’s not playing statues; he wants you to see his junk.

But at least we’re not drunk. True, it’s only 4:00pm, but in some households (and if I had my druthers) we’d be throwing up already. With hard-thrumming rain like today’s, a nice hearty zin like PASO CREEK (2010) would be perfect. I don’t know if friend A is used to her parents breaking out the booze immediately after school, but who knows? You just never know with playdate kids. Maybe it would make her feel at home if we pulled the cork right now. At 15% alcohol, this Zinfandel has “playdate” written all over it—or at least recovery from same.

The label features a freaky-looking little owl, the kind that can do a 360° head spin. This is a boozy wine with a bold nose. You might want to decant it to give that owl a chance to settle down, if you can delay gratification while being overcome by earthy redolence. Swish this deep garnet liquid around and you get berries, plums, and black pepper. Waiting half an hour does pay off with this wine; the flavors are deeply concentrated and need a bit of oxygen to fully strut their stuff.

By the time you finally sip PASO CREEK you may well be having conniptions, what with three little girls screaming around the house playing dress-up and this voluptuous wine seducing you from the decanter. The sip is big and robust, delivering lush berries and plums while maintaining good balance. Weighty and palate-coating, PASO CREEK has a lengthy finish, much the way little girls’ happy shrieks echo in your ears after they’ve gone to bed. It’s boozy, yummy, and worth the $18.

TOMMASI VALPOLICELLA (2010)—Well done, Tom

My Fellow Inebriates,

Mum and I both feel fully justified having a glass of wine (or two) every single night my dad’s away on his corporate team-building week. After all, he’s getting paid to golf. He’ll come back bronzed and well exercised, wined and dined, and, as I pointed out to my mother, no doubt there’ll be strippers and hookers and who knows what else.

Despite this last bit, my mum kiboshed any additional booze spending. LBHQ has some upcoming expenses, including a change of digs, which means we need to sock away some moving money.

When I asked how on earth I would manage without a new wine to review, my mother said, “Well, how did you manage before last October?” I said I didn’t have the same maelstrom of anxieties to contend with back then—the school hadn’t begun scaring us about lice yet, no one had shown me any handbags made of severed teddybear heads, my granny was alive, there wasn’t a haunted bear named Fluffy living in the house (he turned the alarm clock off on us with his mind yesterday and almost made us late, would you believe it?), my nana didn’t have any bionic bits yet, and we weren’t facing a change of headquarters.

“Too bad,” said my mother, “and half these things have nothing to do with you anyway.”

With that I had to scour my furry head to remember a recent tasting. Last time my nana and papa were here they brought over a 2010 Italian Valpolicella by TOMMASI VITICOLTORI, translated “TOM’S WINE.”

Left to my parents’ buying habits and almost Parkerite leanings, Valpolicella is as unlikely to enter LBHQ as, say, a Canadian Pinot Auxerrois. The style—a mixture of Corvina Veronase, Rondinella, and Molinara—is typically light and aromatic with a lower alcohol content. Nana and Papa came away from a 2011 tour of Italy with an appreciation for lighter Italian table wines that can be sipped at length without getting you plastered, and which are often dispensed from giant grocery-store wine machines for about a buck a litre.

I don’t know if TOMMASI VALPOLICELLA is the sort of wine you’d find in an Italian grocery store’s bulk section, but if so, we should pack our bags for that sunny country and stop messing around in Langley.

I suspect my dad’s parents, knowing their son’s preference for big, weighty wines, had some mischief in them when they brought it, and may well have been testing to see if he would dismiss it out of hand. Even the appearance of TOMMASI VALPOLICELLA would worry my dad, with its vibrant ruby clarity and brightness.

When swirled in the glass, it releases a sumptuous fruity bouquet dominated by fresh cherries. Fruit bursts on the palate with lovely acidity and balance. The body is light to moderate without being astringent, and at 12% alcohol TOMMASI VALPOLICELLA won’t land you on your back unless you bogart the whole bottle. For solid-food fans, it would pair nicely with sharp cheese and tomato-based dishes (I imagine).

Predictably my dad had faint praise for Tom’s wine, most likely because he hasn’t acquired a taste for the style. Everyone else thoroughly enjoyed it with dinner (or without, in my case), although—if we’re being honest—my parents and I do prefer heavier wines that get us gooned faster. But it’s always nice not to throw up after a family gathering, isn’t it?