wine tasting

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.

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.