wine tasting

YALUMBA “THE CIGAR” CABERNET SAUVIGNON (2009)—Probably good with bunny

My Fellow Inebriates,

The greenspace near our townhouse is teeming with baby bunnies. On the way to school the kids look out for these distant relatives of the Easter Bunny, hoping to catch a glimpse through the blackberry bushes.

If you pay attention, you can see the occasional cottontail bouncing along, but almost as often you can see them eviscerated by the path. With apologies to my friend Violet, bunnies are some of the dumbest animals that ever lived—they just don’t know how to avoid cats and coyotes. Nor do they look both ways when they cross the road, which means my parents sometimes have to stage a diversion on the way to school so the kids don’t get an eyeful of leporine gore. “Check out those dandelions!” my mum said, for example, while passing a fur-and-blood pancake on 66 Avenue being sampled by a dog whose oblivious owner apparently didn’t mind her animal venturing into traffic.

Sorry, Violet

If bunnies were a little smarter, the Easter Bunny wouldn’t have to do everything each year. He could delegate, the way Santa does, sitting on his ass all year exploiting the elves until his big night. But bunnies are not so bright.

Which is why I haven’t bothered to bug the Easter Bunny for anything. I mean, does the Easter Bunny even have a postal code? I can hit Santa up at H0H 0H0, but where the hell do I send my Easter list? And does the Easter Bunny even care whether I’ve been good or bad? Does the Easter Bunny keep track? Because I get the sense that bunnies are about as smart as a sack of doorknobs.

For instance, when my mum suggested to the kids that they write the Easter Bunny a letter, Miss P said, “Nah, he doesn’t know how to read; he’s a bunny.” It made perfect sense to her that, despite the daunting logistics of delivering eggs to the world’s children, despite the cleverness and stealth required to get them inside houses protected by Alarm Force, and despite his enormous commitment to inducing a global diabetic coma, the Easter Bunny cannot read.

This is precisely the sort of epistemological compartmentalization at which our Fraser Valley demographic excels, which is to say that if we ever let Miss P get into the wrong hands we may find her embracing Noah’s Ark while remarking that the biomass of all known insects on the planet—two of each—would exceed the capacity of the Titanic, and happily allowing the two ideas to coexist.

But who wants to mess with magic? The Easter Bunny is undoubtedly a magical creature—a creature whose activities cannot be specifically disproven. So I thought I’d make a list for him, just in case he’s literate enough to Google his name and read it:

You have to hedge your bets, right?

Or not.

But were we right to shield the kids from the sight of roadkill? They’ve seen lots of dead birds and insects before. Miss V once used a magnifying glass to bash the shit out of a snail at pre-K while the teacher wasn’t looking. They eat animals from time to time… just not car-flattened ones. But there’s something so cute about bunnies…my mum didn’t want them to see a dead one.

For those who don’t mind the sight of a dead bunny—especially one that’s been dealt a glancing blow off the car hood and isn’t flat—why not scoop that dead little critter up? Take it home and make a stew. Wild animals have a favorable nutritional profile: high protein and low fat. And roadkill is free, which means you don’t have to yank out your debit card at Walmart; you just need a good recipe book and an open mind.

Ahhh, you solid food eaters, you have it made if you live in a neighborhood full of stupid bunnies who can’t get to the other side of the road.

Not being a solids fan myself, I’ll leave that to you all. But I have a wine pairing suggestion: YALUMBA MENZIES “THE CIGAR” CABERNET SAUVIGNON (2009). Coonawarra residents refer to the uniquely shaped  strip of terra rossa soil that is home to some of Australia’s most famous vineyards as “the Cigar.” The Menzies Vineyard, founded in 1987, is part of this region and enjoys rich, red soil, limestone, pure artesian water, and a long, cool ripening season.

You may think I’m going to trash THE CIGAR as an offensive accompaniment to possum stew, but I only mention it in connection with roadkill because of the wild kangaroos that pose a driving hazard in Australia, accounting for 71% of animal-related insurance claims (eight times as many as dogs and 14 times as many as wombats). Kangaroos, who are obviously as cognizant of traffic safety as rabbits, pose a serious nuisance—enough to warrant “roo bars” on vehicles driving in the bush. They are well known for wandering onto the road and into a high-protein, low-fat stew.

The reason for "roo bars" on vehicles

While you may have qualms about scraping a rabbit off 66 Avenue and cooking it up, a kangaroo is a much more worthy feast, although, in the hot Australian climate and with all sorts of competing predators, you probably want to harvest the roo from the road while it’s going toward the light and not too long after.

You need wine with depth and earthiness to stand up to wild game, the euphemism you’d probably use if serving roadkill to dinner guests. THE CIGAR, with its distinctive forest-floor earthiness, bursting blackcurrant and tobacco notes, would pair very well with game. It is delightfully balanced with plenty of complexity, good tannins, and a long finish.

Truthfully, I’d advise drinking THE CIGAR by itself, undistracted by other flavors. But—if the Easter Bunny has a mishap this year and ends up on your neighbor’s barbecue, this would be a good wine to show up with.

MORSE CODE PADTHAWAY SHIRAZ (2009)

My Fellow Inebriates,

If only I could catch up on reviewing the wines we tasted over the holidays without becoming morose about the lack of wine in the house now. It’s tragic not to have any wine in the house—unreasonable really and a general travesty.

I can’t dwell on the superlative festive wines we drank last month or I’ll end up in tears. Instead let’s talk about MORSE CODE PADTHAWAY SHIRAZ (2009), a reasonably decent Australian offering ($13.99) with a healthy alcohol content (14.7%), a nice-looking label and a catchy name. Reviewing MORSE CODE won’t plunge me into desperation, simply because it wasn’t extraordinary. It was pretty good and certainly inoffensive, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to have it again, unless you were sitting beside me bogarting it or perhaps playing keepaway with it to hurt my feelings and impress on me how short I am and how much of a loser.

To wit: MORSE CODE is pretty good. I want to tell you that it’s fruit-driven but just saying that reminds me of this recipe for Chemical Apple Pie, described by its originator as “an old chemistry lab experiment to teach the limits of human senses.” The pie has no apples, if you follow me—but it apparently tastes like it’s made with ‘em.

So if I tell you a wine is fruit-driven or fruit-forward or fruity, well, I’m not trying to differentiate the wine from a UVIN chemical experiment in which fruit was not used. I’m just saying it’s a fruity-tasting Shiraz, meaning you can pick up on various berry and currant notes, plus the grapes that reviewers usually don’t think to mention.

MORSE CODE isn’t even the most fruity Shiraz—not by miles. But its product literature emphasizes that aspect of it, perhaps because the all the other flavors in MORSE CODE comprise an imperfect orchestra.

There’s a bunch of them: berries, currants, licorice, tannins, eucalyptus and—almost intrusively—tobacco. The whole thing is sort of tight, as though some of these flavors would like to knock the tobacco out but they’re too nervous to get a posse together.

We probably should have decanted this wine, and more importantly we probably shouldn’t have drunk it second to a better merlot that spoiled our palates. So I would give MORSE CODE another chance if somebody (the vintner maybe) sent me another bottle. I would decant it and let it open up for a good 45 minutes. I wouldn’t have any other wine before it; I would simply wait, twitching with DTs. Then I would knock it all back and dance on the table, wiggling my bum.

The resulting review would probably be more positive than this one, but unfortunately the experience I did have with MORSE CODE (sedate family dinner, better vino first) is all I’ve got. It tastes pretty good, and it would really appeal to fans of mouth-drying tannic and tobacco notes. The good news is it’s definitely made from grapes.

So would my mum ever make a Chemical Apple Pie? Holy crap, I hope not. Although if she did it would probably indicate a lowering of standards that might allow her to get out the debit card at the local UVIN and cook up 200 bottles of abysmal plonk for the dark days when I just need to pollute myself.

VALDEPEÑAS ANCIANO TEMPRANILLO GRAN RESERVA (2001)—Aged, just like my mum

Today my mum said, “Stop mooning around liquor cabinet and make yourself useful.”

I have no idea what that means, my fellow inebriates, do you?

Just look at me: I’m a little 7” bear with a severe alcohol addiction. What possible use is my mother thinking of? I’m not meant to be useful; I am strictly decorative.

She tends to get self-righteous when she’s just put in a solid half-hour’s worth of honest work herself. Then it’s time to eat five chocolate bars, turn the heat up so she doesn’t have to move around, and otherwise reward herself for that massive effort.

Younger, fluffier times

Granted she’s a little stressed out. Today’s the big 43, and neither of us is as fluffy as we once were. Aging is tough, and especially tough when you don’t feel you’ve accomplished enough for your years.

The best thing I can really do for my aging mother is make a yummy wine recommendation: VALDEPEÑAS ANCIANO TEMPRANILLO GRAN RESERVA (2001), barrel-aged for 10 years.

There are plenty of young tempranillos out there, and they can certainly be consumed young, but a tempranillo with ten years’ oak aging under its belt is a spectacular find for $15.99. Whereas it’s difficult to find inexpensive wines of this vintage from most wine-producing countries, Spain is proving itself a trove, with tempranillo enjoying a renaissance among growers with the mettle to coach the finicky black grapes through the growing season.

The grapes are challenging to grow because they require a cool climate to achieve good acidity, but they need heat to reach optimal sugar levels. Like my mother, they are difficult to please, and inclement weather pisses them off. Thus they are used more often as blending grapes than as single varietals.

My parents are basically philistines about wine; that’s why they gravitate to plummy, jammy fruit explosions that satisfy their immature tastes. It’s the reason I’m steering their venerable tastebuds toward the VALDEPEÑAS ANCIANO TEMPRANILLO—they are old enough to handle a more demanding taste experience.

Swirled in the glass, this purply, brick-red Spanish wine gives off a spicy, leathery essence, with vanilla chiming in lightly. Decanting is not a must, but it enhances the wine’s ability to morph its high notes into more subtle, rounded flavors.

If you’re a shiraz or cab fan this tempranillo will surprise your palate, perhaps not positively at first—its opening notes are sharper, pointier—but if you let it linger on your tongue, velvety stone fruits, currants, white pepper and licorice will emerge. This wine is dense with complexity, and if you can manage it, you should drink it undistracted.

So turn off the porn, get out the decanter, and give it a good swirl. And as I told my mum, “You can get away with drinking it slowly—43 isn’t so old that you’ll die before the bottle’s finished.”

And that was when she told me to go and make myself useful.