wine review

Pssst! FINCA LOS PRIMOS TORRONTES (2011) is cheap and good

My Fellow Inebriates,

It’s light, fruity, pleasantly refreshing with not one bad note. Cheap and delicious at $9.98 (that’s cheap here in Canada). For that price you should buy a case and get really loaded.

This wine deserves a better review, and it will get one! (Or a least,  a longer one.) But not until my parents decide to do my typing, damn it. My paws suck!

Here’s what FINCA LOS PRIMOS TORRONTES (2011) looks like.

finca los primos torrontes

And here’s one of the People of Walmart.

2011

Having a budget is important. Walmart can help, and so can FINCA LOS PRIMOS.

ERRAZURIZ ESTATE RESERVA SAUVIGNON BLANC (2012)—None for Fluffy, damn it

As soon as I said Fluffy Bear’s paranormal activities had ceased, I knew it was a mistake. Sure, he’d been staring blankly at the wall for weeks without incident. Sure, the bumps in the night had settled into the normal noises of a 30-year-old house. But you never want to take the occult for granted.

I could kick myself for saying Granny had departed Fluffy’s body. Of course she hadn’t; the two of them must have been hibernating. Because as soon as I posted it, our television died. With one psychic zap, Fluffy annihilated our plasma, and now we have no TV.

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You are so dead, LB.

Scarybear is devastated. Television is his whole life, and naturally he’s pissed at yours truly for foolishly saying Fluffy had gone dormant. Of course he hadn’t!! If anything he was saving up his telekinetic powers. Who knows—maybe it was Fluffy who broke the dishwasher in October, and he just needed to recharge so he could attack the TV.

You never want an animal like Scary mad at you, so I offered him some ERRAZURIZ ESTATE RESERVA SAUVIGNON BLANC (2012). To this he made a politically incorrect limp-wrist gesture, and then kicked my ass. Scary isn’t very enlightened.

DSCN2986Too bad for Scary. This Chilean wine is crisp and zingy with hints of tropical fruit and sharp green apple. Produced from grapes grown in the Aconcagua Valley, a region thought for many years to be unsuitably hot, ERRAZURIZ proves naysayers wrong with its elegant and substantial (13.5%) Sauvignon Blanc. In perfect character for the varietal, ERRAZURIZ would be refreshing on a hot summer day or when you’re sweating after an ass-kicking. It disappeared very quickly at LBHQ.

Would we buy it again, though? It’s light, it’s zingy…but Scary may accidentally be right about it being too airy and bright—at least in winter. It’s certainly worth noting for when the hot weather comes.

As for Fluffy, he’s getting no wine. Seriously, he likes TV. The dishwasher he may not have given a crap about, but TV?? Breaking Bad? What the hell, Fluffy?

COPPER MOON SHIRAZ—Cheap stress relief when you almost lose your Chihuahua

OMG, we almost lost Chihuahua today. In the hurried exchange at the ferry terminal, Mum and Dad remembered to pick up the kids but left behind an Important Gym Bag containing Chihuahua, Fluffy Chihuahua (its newer doppelganger), Cookie (nondescript but beloved puppy) and Purple Bunny, who has been with our family as long as I have. OMG!!! The family drove away, leaving the bag in Arrivals.

Only when Nana sent a text to let Dad know there was also a pie in the bag did the family realize there was no bag. Panic set in. They left urgent messages with BC Ferries Lost & Found, scarfed down lunch at the restaurant where they were catching up with relatives they hadn’t seen in two years, and flew back to the terminal where, thankfully, the bag was waiting.DSCN2457

Thank goodness those animals are safe. Bedtime would have been a nightmare—it wouldn’t have happened without those animals in safekeeping. And thank goodness—as my dad said on the way home—we don’t live in a place where a bomb squad would have been called in to blast Chihuahua & Co. to smithereens.

But mostly, thank goodness I didn’t have to see V and P upset about their precious animals. Not that I mind being the occasional Comfort Animal—but I couldn’t have filled the void left by those yappy creatures.

Not without losing stuffing at least.

Not without losing stuffing at least.

copper moon 750mLBottom line: big stress, big relief. Which calls for wine. I’m thinking—since we burned $25 extra in gas today—we should buy some cheap wine. Maybe COPPER MOON Shiraz, which we first tried on Vancouver Island. Available in three sizes, starting at $8.69 for 750 mL, this Canadian offering is soft and drinkable—thoroughly inoffensive, but not at all playful or suggestive of any particular character.

Even if you’re not stressed out, COPPER MOON would be fine for you solid-foods eaters as a dinnertime accompaniment, and chances are you wouldn’t guess its low price. By extension you could foist it on dinner-party hosts without arousing their suspicions about your parsimony; with its tasteful label and mellow notes, they wouldn’t be the wiser—unless of course they’d espied the big honking box at BC Liquor Stores for $27.99. And who really skulks around the liquor store that much?

I know, I know…It’s how I cope with stress.