I've been threatening to hold a contest for a while now, and for those of you who didn't think I was good for it, I say PHOO! Behold, the first ever Know-Nothing Wine Contest, where you can win this badass sucker:
You know you want it. Impress women and make men fear you as you wrench corks out of bottles with your awesome knuckle power. Protect your precious wine from would be thieves. Slick back your hair, slide this bad boy over your fingers and start a street gang called "The Sour Grapes". You're as tough as you wanna be with this superior Knuckle Duster Corkscrew.
What do you have to do to become the owner of this treasure? Read on:
1)You have to be a follower of this blog. This means I need to see your little icon deely under 'Followers'.
2)You need to submit a minimum 250 word description of your best/funniest/most-memorable wine experience. Please post your submission in the Comments section of this thread.
3)The winning submission will be selected by an esteemed panel of judges (likely me and a buddy as we kill a bottle of wine).
4)The winner will be announced on this blog on December 15th, 2010, at which time the winner will email me their mailing address. With any luck, you'll have this piece of awesomeness in your hands before Christmas.
Well, what are you waiting for? Get writing! I want them wine stories!
'Til next time,
Barb
Where am I?? I am following your blog but my icon doesn't show up!
ReplyDeleteMost mysterious, I say.
Is it a conflict of interest to enter if I want to be the one to drink wine and help choose the winner? Um, I have a few words right now: I probaby don't remember my most memorable wine experience, lol. Can I just type "I was with my friend Barb Rowlandson and we drank some great wine" about twenty times? Ooh, I could replace wine with each kind of wine we've tried. I don't remember them all though. But I have this blog to check back on. Okay, well, let's give it a shot: (Can I choose my top 3 and write just a little bit?) Well, you know me, I'm sure I'll be way over the limit (just like wine drinking, it's hard to stop at 250 sips).
ReplyDelete1. place: UCF campus, domaine du Mont Leuze, Villefranche-sur-mer, France: year: 1994 (wow, that was hard to remember): occasion: Getting to know each other bash at a very small university campus offered through Laurentian University. At this point in time, I was not accustomed to wine drinking, but the overabundance and inexpensive nature of wine ($3/bottle..cheaper that bottled water and Coca-cola) in France was the order of the evening, and I was drinking some sort of generic red. See, I drank a lot, don't remember how much, that's how drunk I was, and somehow ended up by the pool, which was in an out-of-the-way, mysteriously secretive sort of location. I woke up there, dangerously close to the edge thinking (possibly fictionalized here)"Hey, it's the pool. I didn't know there was a pool here." And realized I could have stumbled drunkenly into the pool and never come back out. But the wine gods must have decided there was more wine in my future, so I just passed out beside it. So I hied back to my villa, where I threw up violently (yes, I remember garlic, and was shocked by the black vomit....yes, that is what red wine looks like in reverse...ew, definitely memorable) in the shower. Nice. Thanks OSAP. :)
2. place: Cambridge MA, (really nice hotel, sorry Barb don't remember the name) year: May 2010: occasion: travels with Barb and Lorri (I figure name-dropping can't hurt my chances): wine: AIA Falanghina...best white wine ever.(Thanks Eileen, the wine steward) And two more bottles of other wine later, we almost had the Mr. Burns impersonator report us for noisiness. Yes, three rabble-rousing thirty-something women, debauching reclusive business-type older gentleman. He wishes ;)
3. location: lake Shebeshekong: year: August 2010: occasion: hanging out at the cottage with Barb ;)
wine #1 (memorable for hideosity): Chamblaise (of the esteemed u-brew vintage). wine #2 (most delicious red wine ever): Belle Pente Pinot Noir from Oregon, inspiring deep, insightful conversation about life, the universe, and everything!!
Ta-da. Yours truly, Karen Maurice :)
Although you call yourself a "know-nothing", I think I probably deserve that description more than the rest of your followers!!
ReplyDeleteBefore I met you, I drank wine twice a year: Christmas and Easter, apart from a brief stint in university where I attended a Lutheran church where they actually used wine instead of grape juice at Communion. Actually, it may have been paint thinner instead of wine!
Now I know that "Baby Duck" is not a "cute" wine and that Chablis is a white wine. (Also, people don't seem to appreciate Baby Duck or Spumante Bambino as much as the commercials would have you believe--who knew?)
Now I know that I like Vionnet (sp?) and I prefer white wine to reds.
Mostly I like the Rickman rating scale of wines and the funny things you have to say, but I am enjoying the experience of wine more than ever.
Cheers!
frabjous day! I fixed it--I have an icon!
ReplyDeleteThe Knuckle Duster Corkscrew – well that is an amazing prize – for the sophisticated thug. Gimme another pitcher o’ Beaujolais, or I’ll punch your lights out! Nice.
ReplyDeleteIf Steven Segal owned a wine opener, this would be it for sure, but I’m pretty sure he just karate chops it off, or has Kelly LeBrock remove it with her...well...never mind, they’re divorced anyways, but probably not because of her cork removing abilities.
Onto my submission: Best/Funniest/Most Memorable Wine experience in 250 words or less – actually at this point I only have 171 words left because of my intro. CRAP! Now only 160 words left! Ok, I’ll get to it.
So many to pick from – I but one of my fav’s has actual legitimate interest to wine aficionados.
A few years ago, I travelled with our pipe bad to Switzerland for a 10 day tour of performing (and drinking). Well, go figure – it’s a pipe band –what do you expect? Anyways, most of you know that Switzerland is nestled between France, Germany, Austria, and Italy. Of course, each of those adjacent countries are each well known and highly regarded for their wines, which are each remarkably different considering the proximity of each of those countries - which really made me wonder about the wine available in Switzerland – which country are Swiss wines most like? I guessed Germany. I guessed completely wrong.
Swiss wines have an amazing flavour all their own – the reds are particularly spectacular but both red and white are great. They had the light yet complex flavour unlike any other wine I have tasted – really I believe some of the best wine in the world. My favourite Swiss wine experience? We did a tour of one of the Police Stations, and on the way out, the police gave us a case of their private label wine – Yep! Police Wine! With a beautiful architectural rendering of the police station we had just toured on the outside of the bottle, and the name of the police unit delicately emblazoned on the label with a delicate platinum foil lettering. Why am I not living in Europe again? Remind me please.
Anyways – we drank the wine on the bus, which I am sorry to say was probably a graceless thing to do to I think the best bottle of wine I have ever tried. And, it wasn't because we drank several bottles of it - it was quality as well as quantity. Truthfully, I expected it to be kind of lousy, and was completely surprised – it was I think one of the best wines I have EVER tasted . High praise indeed knowing my love of Californian wines.
My condundrum? Other than knowing it came from a winery local to the Swiss police station, I have no idea what kind it was. Try going to the LCBO and asking for Police Wine – they just laugh at you. On a more serious note, I have tried to find Swiss wine anywhere in Canada without any success. Does anyone know how / where to find? I would long to enjoy those amazing Swiss wines again – surprisingly complex, light and completely delicious. And apparently, completely legal.
PS – since mentioning this story to Ms. Know Nothing, we may need to rename this blog to “Know Something” because she has since enlightened me with the knowledge that Switzerland has spectacular Pinot Noirs, and the Swiss translation for Pinot Noir is “Blauburgunder” which indeed did appear on the bottle. Hmph! Brilliant! Thank you Barb....and Google. *snicker*
The Knuckle Duster Corkscrew entry - here we go.
ReplyDeleteIt was 1995 and I was piss-poor, living in the heart of the Okanagan Valley wine region in Penticton, British Columbia, working as a server at a local restaurant.
In a desperate effort to educate the slightly hooligan-esque serving staff, our Manager had convinced a Vintner from one of the local wineries to offer us a wine tasting. We were duly seated, a polite, albeit ignorant audience of twenty, breathless in the anticipation of getting hammed for free on a weekday at 10am.
The Vintner was a tall, elegant woman with sharp features and expensive shoes. We were captivated by this strange and alien creature. It all started smoothly. She taught us how to hold our glasses, how to swirl and marvel at the sugary legs, and how to enjoy the bouquet of the wine by sticking one’s entire snot-locker right into the glass. We were impressed.
For the first while, we followed correct wine-tasting etiquette; a few refined sips from the vintage being presented, then into the swill bucket with the remainder. A new glass, a new wine. Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, Chianti, Cabernet… this was the “No Wine Left Behind” tasting.
We were well on our way to being nicely drunk when the tasting took a left turn.
The Vintner, having really hit her stride, took a particularly enthusiastic slurp of wine and held it in her mouth, drawing air over it with the classic wine snob’s “puckered slurp”. We looked on with mild interest as the unfortunate Vintner then got a panicked look on her face. Her colour went increasingly deeper shades of crimson, and then she choked completely, blowing a firehose of wine out of her nose, soaking both her delicate white blouse, and the entire first row of her audience in a jaunty Beaujolais.
The tension broken, we cheered with delight, losing whatever faux-dignity we had managed to pull off to that point, clapping and hooting wildly. Mayhem ensued. Bottles were passed mouth to mouth as we milled around, hysterical with giggles, stealing bottles off each other’s tables.
After blowing her nose in a tea-towel the completely flustered Vintner tried to regain order, but it was no use. I signaled the formal end to the wine tasting by standing on a chair, tipping a swill bucket up to my lips and drinking the contents.
It had been a very educational wine-tasting indeed.
That is one very wicked looking corkscrew!
ReplyDeleteHmm, a funny story to do with wine.
Martinborough is a wine making region near Wellington, New Zealand. Every November they have a wine & food festival called Toast Martinborough. We used to go over for it with Derek’s firm and/or his clients and it was always a good time. We would wander the length and breadth of the town through the various vineyards during the day. Each vineyard offered tasting of their wines, live bands, and also food from great chefs and restaurants, always a yummy day! My embarrassing memory is actually about some cheese, though wine was part of the problem. I fell in love with a local cheese and raved about it. This was near the end of the day. I thought this new cheese was simply delicious and couldn’t wait to buy more. A few weeks later I saw some of it in the city and bought it. When I went to eat it, it was awful! Hmmm, I think wine might have had something to do with my first opinion of it. Obviously, I’d had enough wine to make me think it was a great cheese, oops!
In case you’re interested this is a link to an article about this year’s Toast Martinborough.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/arts-life/4367492/A-guide-to-surviving-Toast-Martinborough
One New Years Eve many, many years ago, up at the bach (cottage for you Canadians) some of us youngsters decided to fix the oldsters’ bottle of bubbles for midnight. We grabbed an empty champagne bottle and filled it with cold tea, beer for bubbles, and I don’t remember what else went into it, possibly vinegar even, oh, I think we were being a little bad. Then on went the cork, foil, and wire thingy and voila, it was ready. The parents had been having a lovely evening and we brought in our little offering. They cracked it open and began to drink it. It took them a few minutes to realize that something was wrong & I think we gave it away when we couldn’t stop laughing. Oooh, bad kids we were, lol.