wine

MARTINI & ROSSI Extra Dry Vermouth

My Fellow Inebriates,

I promised you the skinny on vermouth, and now that my head’s clear I can tackle it.

Vermouth is one of those sometimes mystifying products that figures in a truckload of high-falutin’ drinks without necessarily being any great shakes on its own. Or at least that’s what my drinking buddy Blackie Bear tells me.

Blackie says there’s no big mystery—it comes in dry or sweet varieties, and a good drink-mixing recipe book will tell you which one you need.

Try this mix for instance:

  • 2 oz dry vermouth
  • ½ oz white curacao
  • 2 oz club soda (if you insist on dilution)

Serve over ice with a twist.

I don’t know what would happen if you used sweet vermouth in this, but Blackie says he’d probably end up handing it over to me to finish off, which would be fine because I would.

My local booze store, like yours probably, carries only a handful of vermouths, and Martini & Rossi is the only one I’ve tried, although I plan to have a party tasting at my house the next time my parents go away. They scoffed when I originally said “vertical tasting,” as vermouth is non-vintage, standardized stuff that doesn’t change from year to year or batch to batch. What can I say? My alcoholic journey is only just beginning.

Vermouth is classified as a fortified wine, running at about 18% alcohol typically, as in the case of Martini & Rossi Extra Dry. At $12 for a one-litre bottle, it’s a steal, and drinking it all in one go won’t trash your pocketbook—just you.

Regardless of where they’re made, dry and sweet vermouths are referred to by heavy vermouth users as “French” and “Italian” respectively. This is because people who are really messed up on vermouth are often humping someone and need a separate vocabulary that doesn’t include words like “sweet” and “dry” that they might be employing otherwise.

And then there are “wet” versus “dry” martinis. The more vermouth a martini has, the wetter it is. Predictably, I favor a dry martini as I like to keep my alcohol levels pretty jacked. Blackie Bear says this is one of the things that makes me similar to Winston Churchill.

You do need to keep your vermouth in the fridge if you’re not planning to pound it all at once, as it will oxidize within three months or so. My mother kept her bottle of Martini & Rossi in the cooking cupboard for over two years, tightly capped to thwart my thumbless efforts. Picture me mocking her saying, “It was just fine for making lemon-caper chicken.”

 

I RECOMMEND trying all the vermouths your liquor store stocks, starting with this awesome product.

CHOOK SHED Shiraz (2008, Australia)

It’s pretty hard for a little bear to get to the liquor store, so sometimes I ride along in my mum’s coat (which is no less humiliating than my friend Scarybear watching Avatar from inside a purse). From behind my mother’s lapel I can scan the bottles and wallow in nostalgia for my days as a party-animal charity bear.

There is this really great consultant dude at my local store. He approaches in an unassuming way, with this crazy, unidentifiable accent, and immediately intuits what your budget and tastes are. He’s a wine superhero, really. And on our last visit, he pointed to CHOOK SHED.

He was on the money about our budget. At $14.99, CHOOK SHED is in that magical price zone where wine occasionally sings.

When you think about it, price is a great first reference point when shopping for a wine. A while back my parents had a friend over to dinner who is pretty much always a pretentious dick. For these types of people you need to spend $15. That way you can find a bottle that will keep them guessing what you spent on it. Unfortunately for all at dinner that night, the wine they shared was not CHOOK SHED; it was some overrated cab (to be reviewed another time). Fortunately for Liquorstore Bear, my parents brought out the CHOOK SHED when their loser friend had gone home and I was allowed into plain sight.

It’s just that I sometimes embarrass them. If I’m in the room they talk to me, and then guests get weirded out. They try not to, which used to hurt my feelings but bores me now, but inevitably they keep looking my way and next thing you know it’s LB wearing the lampshade and telling stories.

Anyway, CHOOK SHED. Their tool of a friend having gone home, we broke it out and relaxed. Slightly less serious and considerably more of a fruit orgy than the previously reviewed NEXT OF KIN, this shiraz delivers on everything the Barossa Valley is about: soft, layered fruit with symphonic contributions of vanilla, pepper, tannins, and just enough oak.

With its splendid mouthfeel, lasting finish, and respectable 14.7% alcohol content, I have no idea why this shiraz is only $14.99. You could easily pass it off on a boorish dinner guest as something special from your cellar.

Buy a couple of bottles, pound them while watching TV, and tell me what you think.

Cariboo Brewing Cream Ale

My Fellow Inebriates,

As promised, here’s a companion review to my rave about Cariboo Brewing’s honey lager. It took me until late this afternoon to compose my thoughts because I missed my habitual bender last night when one of the kids elected me stuffy du nuit, which meant I couldn’t escape her five-year-old clutches all night long, people. Fast asleep, she couldn’t sense my delirium tremens but nevertheless maintained an iron clutch all night long. Love those kids…

Where was I? Oh yeah, I woke up grumpy—grumpy and discarded, forgotten in the breakfast scramble, and not a drink in sight to get me back to normalcy.

Once I resigned myself to pancakes on the table and not shooters, I skulked around the empties for a while, slurping out the dregs. This is how I have to pull myself together, living as I do under the veil of hypocrisy that surrounds drinking in this house. Just as my parents frown on pre-breakfast imbibing, so do they also point fingers at my lack of any ID indicating a legal drinking age. I’m a bear, humans—how many bears do you know with a driver’s license?

The empties gave me what I needed, and now I can tell you about Cariboos (that’s what it looks like on the can) Cream Ale. Ahhhh! Delectable stuff. Creamy, smooth, not too sweet: everything a cream ale should be.

My dad commented that it wasn’t as fizzy as he would have liked. But it’s not like my dad’s writing any liquor reviews, is he? I liked it fine. It wasn’t lacking effervescence the way Boddington’s is; it was absolutely within the typical fizz range and enough to tickle my fur. Yes, this morning’s dregs were completely flat, but they retained the character of several nights previous, which tells me I could do anything with Cariboos. I could let it sit out a few hours, heat it up, put it in the blender, whatever, and it would still be awesome.

I totally RECOMMEND buying a case of this beer, because Cariboo Brewing plants a tree for every case sold, which gives me something to climb up when toddlers attack.

http://www.cariboobrewing.com/campaign/reforest/