zinfandel

Six more weeks of winter? How about “no more weeks” for you, groundhog?

My Fellow Inebriates,

I had nothing to do with this. I don’t eat solids, especially fellow mammalian pests. But if one of those pesky vermin is going to prognosticate more winter, it might as well put a target on its furry back.

Groundhog Stew

  • 2 lbs groundhog, preferably one that’s seen its shadow
  • 4-5 cups  vegetable stock (do not be tempted to use wine)
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 3 stalks celery, chopped
  • 3 carrots, chopped
  • Potatoes
  • Bunch parsley
  • 1 bouillon cube
  • 1/4 tsp white pepper
  • 1/2 tsp sage
  • 1/2 tsp thyme/rosemary/whatever
  • Ketchup if it still doesn’t taste right
  • More broth if it’s too thick

groundhog in saucepanOkay, so you solid-foods eaters know how to make a stew, right? Chop up all the vegetables and fry them in oil or butter. Then add your “wild game.” This is a good day to find groundhogs. If you see a local news van, they probably have one still hanging around after their annual “soft news” Groundhog Day feature. They’ll probably just give it to you. After all, they can get a new one next year, and they’re not that cute.

It may seem really wrong to cook up a groundhog, but chances are you’ve eaten all kinds of fellow mammals. Be really quick, and use a sharp knife so it doesn’t suffer. (OMG, that’s hard to really write—blame my evil typist.) Remember to get a groundhog, not a bear (my friend Scarybear looks sort of like a groundhog). And…hey…enjoy yourself.

Oh wait, I forgot the most important part!

You need wine.

Groundhog meat is red and sort of gamey. Choose a big, bold red with lots of tannins. This is the time to bust out a good Cab or Zin—maybe even a Shiraz with some sort of marsupial on the label.

 

CAMERON HUGHES LOT 313—A yummy way to get your resveratrol

My Fellow Inebriates,

Even with full-on exploding-out-both-ends stomach flu, the kids don’t want to sleep. They want endless games of Uno, Sequence, Sorry…hours of Power Rangers Samurai episodes (accompanied by a parent and some bears, of course)…as many books as can be read between vomiting spells…but not bed. Not at all.

A hundred years ago, everybody’s grandma would have given those kids some Scotch. Or in our case, Malibu, because that’s all we have. But in their predictably boring way, our parents are toeing the line when it comes to alcohol and children, which means they’re passing up twin benefits—health and peace.

Sure, alcohol depresses the immune system. None of my hobo friends is going to be on the cover of Men’s Health anytime soon. But a small sip of wine would confer some heart protection and lower the odds of developing Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related dementia (“which we’re not concerned about just yet for the kids,” my mum said).

Resveratrol

But what about my parents? Just a couple of weeks ago my dad locked his keys in the trunk of the car. My mum sent Miss V off to school without her lunchbox. And somebody consistently forgets to flush the toilet…a somebody under 7 years old. Surely Miss P could use red wine’s memory-boosting resveratrol?

“You are really reaching,” said my dad. “This is a good opportunity for you to dry out.”

But why? The bears aren’t affected by the LBHQ stomach bug. We bears have nasty-ass enzymes that allow our digestive systems to process anything. There’s nothing my mother could cook that would kill us, and that’s saying something.

It’s really hard to watch Power Rangers Samurai while sober. It is a totally stupid show. IMDB rates it 4.8/10, which is the lowest rating I’ve ever seen. If we are going to sit on the couch letting it melt our brains, we must have some resveratrol.

A good source would be CAMERON HUGHES LOT 313 CALIFORNIA FIELD BLEND (2010), a captivating mixture of Zinfandel (71%), Petite Sirah (10%), Syrah (10%), and Carignane (9%). We sampled it about two weeks ago while watching Fringe, which made the show less scary and less comprehensible. As with lots of J.J. Abrams programs, if you miss a couple of episodes you’re really f*cked, especially if you don’t have enough resveratrol. At 14.5% alcohol, the wine didn’t do J.J. Abrams any favors, but who cares? This is the last season for Fringe, he is probably totally bored with it, and he will probably end it in a totally unsatisfactory way.

Cameron Hughes is not a vineyard or a vintner. Describing itself as an “international négociant,” the company sources and finances small lots of high-quality wine from the world’s best regions. By partnering with high-end producers it creates 100 unique wines per year and sells them at a fraction of the price of bottles bearing the source wineries’ official labels.

If this seems crafty, consider the term “Field Blend.” A field blend is produced from a bunch of different varietals all grown in the same field and harvested at the same time (but since they don’t reach maturity at the same time, a best-guess average picking time is chosen and the vintner hopes it works out). This is kind of like trying to guess when everyone in the house will stop barfing so you can disinfect the sheets, and apparently very few winemakers use this old-school method any longer because of the risk that many of the harvested grapes won’t be optimal. But with Zinfandel comprising more than two-thirds of CAMERON HUGHES LOT 313, the method is somewhat less risky than with a more evenly distributed blend.

The hue is deep, ripe cherry. Wood smoke and lush fruit exude from the glass along with spice and berries. Oak aging provides tannic weight; the wine parches just slightly past mid-palate after enveloping the tongue with a burst of berry and smoky, rich, balanced Zin fruit. The finish lingers and lingers.

CAMERON HUGHES LOT 313 is one of those fabulously concentrated wines with enough structure to make it a conversation piece. Given CH’s approach to wine production, it would probably compete with a wine twice its $20 pricetag. Moreover, this particular blend will never exist again.

All of which recommends it highly as a post-flu restorative, if not a kiddie sedative. Of course I proposed it to the family, but my dad said he was still grossed out by toast. I said, “Oh, well, I’ll have some CAMERON HUGHES without you.”

My mum said, “If you mention wine one more time, I’m going to read you The Velveteen Rabbit and substitute “bear” for every occurrence of “rabbit.”

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.