Avoid the drudgery of wine pouring..

Check out this bad MF'er...


You can purchase this mega-monster of a glass on Amazon. I love the tag line: "Just the thing for a cozy night in." What it should say is: "Just the thing for a night in of lying on the floor, crying and dialing your ex-boyfriend/ex-best-friend/that cool ex-high-school teacher that always 'got' you." And look at the ship weight--2lbs! Alternate arms with every sip and you'll have some wicked pipes in no time (although your abdomen may become distended from, well you know, the liver damage). I mean, think of the possibilities! This way, when you're filling out your Weight Watcher's food diary, you can say you only had one glass of wine and you won't be lying. When you get pulled over you'll be telling the truth when you say "Yesh oshifer, I only had one." Thank-you, I'll be here all night!

Pardon my brain...

Pardon my brain, as it is old. Well, not old-old, just older than it used to be. I used to have a mind as sharp as a tack. Now it's as sharp as a butter knife. Chalk it up to childbearing and 10 years of not sleeping through the night. My poor brain cells were bound to jump ship under such conditions. Oh well, as long as I lose my mind and stay happy, I'll be content whilst the smarts slowly leak out of my brain. If I could just figure out a way to stop losing stuff--like the sheet I filled out from my Viognier tasting--I'd be so much better off. My current strategy for not losing stuff is putting important things on the top of the pile. You can see how well this is working for me.

ANYWAY, here's what I remember from the experience: the wine was Alamos Viognier 2008. Was totally looking forward to it, as Karen MacNeil describes it thusly: " Viognier's appeal is its exotic, honeysuckle, musky fruit, it's round body, and--most of all--its mesmerizingly lanolinish texture." My experience didn't quite match up to that description. In this wine, I tasted apricot/peach and gravel. It was more acidic than I expected. I guessed the alcohol content correctly (ok--I was a half point off, but I'll take it!). Because there were no tasting notes on the bottle, I had to go online to find out what others were saying about this wine. I got the apricot and peach part right, but missed citrus blossom. I read somewhere that someone tasted banana in this wine. Sorry, I disagree. After years of feeding banana to little people--from mashed up baby food to the brown ugly things I find at the bottom of the schoolbag--I consider myself an expert on banana and banana this wine ain't. So all in all, I did pretty well, but I was not wowed by the wine. Try again? Twist my rubber arm!

Moving on, last night we had an awesome dinner of homemade hamburgers (made with pork and Italian herbs), yellow beans in butter and sour cream, Trevor's deadly amazing homemade Cesar salad and corn on the cob infused with thyme from my garden. I washed this delightful meal down with my very first Bordeaux--Chateau Cherchy-Desqueyroux 2005. Yum, yum, yum. I opened this wine and put it in my mason jar decanter about 2 hours before drinking, having read a lot about those 'structured tannins' in Bordeaux wines. Not sure if it was the extended breathing time or just the wine itself, but the tannins were soft, soft, soft, so lovely! It really made for very easy drinking and went so nicely with the pork. I wasn't paying too much attention whilst drinking as I was busy cooking and serving, but the predominant flavour to me was prune. Alcohol measures up to 12.5%, so it wasn't burny in the nose either. Definitely one to repeat! : )

Okay, that's it for me this time 'round! I've enjoyed the Bordeaux so much I'm going to see if I can get my hands on some more. Perhaps another horizontal tasting is in my near future?

Kisses,

B.

Sand, Sweaty Armpits and Dirty Diapers. Yes, those are tasting notes.

Even my crappy cell phone camera cannot diminish the beauty of this scene. I call it "Chamblaise and Chesterfield".

Indeed, I'm not describing a day at Wasaga Beach when I talk of diapers and armpits. Those were precisely the descriptors I would use to talk about wines I've tasted over the last 24 hours.

Now before I launch in, I did do a sort-of blind tasting of Viognier 2 days ago. But I'm skipping ahead a bit, 'cause I've gotta get some other stuff out of the way first, before my thoughts dissipate into the nebulous cloud that is my memory. More on that tasting to come, promise.

If you've been following my blog, you'll know that bald honesty is my new policy, and that I had a heck of a time about a month ago when my marriage seemingly went BP on me. Well I'm here to tell you that my husband and I are officially in the happy camp again. Sorry, Dan the cheese man. You'll have to use those muscular forearms to hold yourself up over some other horny 30-something Canadian woman. But we'll always have Guinness cheese, and that free corkscrew you gave me. *smooch*

ANYway, as I was saying, we're back in marital Pleasantville, doing things like going on actual dates with no children. For reals. AND we're even going to places other than the local pub. AND we're going to places that have a wine list that goes beyond Woodbridge and Yellow Tail. Pair all that up with great make up sex, and you can practically see the hearts and rainbows hovering over the roof of our house.

Last night, our date night landed us at the Explorer's Cafe in Midland. I hadn't eaten there since it opened a couple of years ago. Liked it then, but it never seemed to be open when I was free to go. But, that's a thing of the past: the Explorer's is now open 7 days. You should get your butt down there, because I had the best meal out in years. And best of all, they've got a killer selection of wine. GOOD wine.

For starters I wanted something light and enlivening, so I picked Masi Mascianco Pinot Grigio/Verduzzo. (The wine list said 2008, but when I asked to see the bottle it was 2009. Tsk tsk!) Verduzzo was new to me, and I always love tasting grapes I've never had before. Peoples, from me to you, I could drink that stuff all summer. This was a very lively wine, that even gives you a million little prickles on your tongue, as if to say "WAKE UP MOUTH!". Just a little more than medium acidity, this wine has the same effect on your mouth as Sweet Tarts (and tasted a bit like them too). Fruit flavours were apricot/peach; the non-fruit descriptor I came up with was sand. I guessed medium alcohol (13%). Num num num! This wine can be found at our puny lcbo, and almost certainly at that bigger, sexier lcbo near where you live ('cause every lcbo is bigger and sexier compared to Midland's).

Next up, Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Villages 2008. I really wanted a glass of red (for health reasons! Gotta get in that resveratrol every day!), but was having seafood fettuccine, so Beaujolais was the best I could come up with. Truthfully, not sure if this wine was spoilt or not. The overwhelming flavour, well I would charitably describe it as ripe cheese curds, and uncharitably as a Frenchman's sweaty armpit. I've always read that spoilt wine tastes like mouldy cardboard or the barn, but sweaty flesh? In amongst the cheese curds I detected violets and raspberries. I didn't finish the glass.

Lastly, a lovely near and dear friend had me taste her mils' home brew today, just for fun. Her charitable description was 'swill'. I was treated to a mouthful of something called 'Chamblaise' (apparently this is not a grape, but rather a trademarked name of some DIY wine kit company). Pale yellow. Aromas of dirty diaper. As flat and varied as tap water. Sewage aftertaste. Sweet merciful Jebus, people. DO NOT HOMEBREW! Seriously, do you think you can do better than winemakers who do this FOR A LIVING? Do you cut your own hair too? Life is too short for bad wine!

Tomorrow: Viognier tasting. Night night buttercups.

B.

Cambridge! Sob!

My sister is in Cambridge. Cambridge! *sigh* Best. Roadtrip. Ever. The company, the wine, the cheese, the photo-ops, even the weather was so perfect. It's my new Mecca; with any luck I'll get to make another pilgramage in the near future. In the meantime, I am full of the sighs, because my wicked sister just sent me a teasing message from Cambridge; she's there on her course (my sister's at Harvard! That never gets old) for the next couple of weeks. If only I could blow off real life and fly down for the weekend. *SIGH AGAIN*

So Lorri has had the pleasure of re-connecting with Eileen the brilliant wine steward and Dan the muscular-forearmed cheese man. Eileen, if you're reading, I just know you are the Diana Barry to my Anne Shirley. Or you can be Anne, I don't care. I so loved the wines you steered me towards. If my wicked sister decides to do me a kindness and bring back a bottle or two of liquid nectar, please do the picking for her! Not that I don't trust Lorri (she's got great taste. Yes I'm sucking up), but let's face it, Eileen, your wine chops are smokin'. To give you an idea of how my taste runs, on my last visit, I LOVED the Fleur Pinot Noir and Aia de Colombi Falanghina. I tend to prefer cool climate wines. Anything you pick will be glorious. Dan, if you're reading, if you could pose for a picture for my sister, that would be great. If your shirt happened to fall off right before hand, that'd be okay too.

Anyhoo, I have been trying stuff lately but not posting. Not that it matters, because I think about 6 people read this blog. But no matter--I will have new wine reviews coming shortly. Tonight I'm trying Viogner for the first time! Karen MacNeil describes this wine as a supple gymnast, so I'm keen to try it.

'Til next time,

B.