WINE TASTINGS!

I shouldn’t have to tell most of you this, but frankly being a grown-up sucks.

First of all there’s the bill-paying, the apartment cleaning, the necessary day-to-day activities of adult life that you can conveniently ignore when you’re the age where you REALLY want to be a Jedi when you grow up. Frankly, I STILL want to be a Jedi when I grow up, but that’s beside the point. All of that crap is crap, but you knew it was going to be crap right around when wanting to be a Jedi changed to wanting to be an accountant (this is a joke, nobody wants to be an accountant, not even accountants).

Worse than all of that though is the fact that being a grown-up means caring about things you really, really wish didn’t exist. Like elections, body-fat percentages, personal finance, and tax laws. All of that stuff, I can conclusively say, is stupid and boring and dumb. Unfortunately, as an adult, it is now part of my life to give a damn about this nonsense. I do not appreciate being made to give a damn about this nonsense.

Luckily for us, there is a cornucopia of ways to distract our adult selves from the obnoxiousness of what we insist is “The Way Things Work.” Some people use TV, some people use magazines, and a few diseased minds cope by immersing themselves entirely in business (I’m looking at you, Boyfriend!) None of these things work for me. TV gets boring fast, magazines get insipid even faster, and my giveadamn gets broken after about fifteen minutes of business news.

So instead, as you all have probably figured out by now, I drink copious amounts of wine.

On April 30’th I went to another wine tasting at the Iron Bridge Wine Company in Columbia. This is a fantastic little restaurant and wine bar frequented by old hippies and current government employees. It is exceedingly small, so don’t expect to just show up for dinner. You must make a reservation. Luckily for me and my Boozery compatriots, you do not need a reservation for a wine tasting, we just Showed Up!

“We” in this case refers to myself, my roommates DesignBroad and Beersnob, GrogLass who is BeerSnob’s girlfriend, Disaster and CartoonSailor. One may ask about these new nicknames. Disaster, you see, is consistently breaking shit in my house. His name is apt. CartoonSailor… well, he’s a cartoon character. You’d have to meet him, but if you do you’ll know. He is a cartoon.

Unfortunately, there was a distinct lack of Spectacular Wines. There were a few Very Good wines, but really only one or two that jumped out and said “I AM SUPER DELICIOUS!”

We began with sparkling wine.  The Chateau Gaillard “Clemence Query” Cremant de Loire was a fantastic Chenin Blanc/Chardonnay blend. It was delightfully crisp, bright, and balanced. It had a few light fruit notes that were pleasantly backed by the delicious yeasty flavor of a truly good sparkling wine. At nineteen dollars, this is too expensive for a graduate student, but ought to fit nicely within the price ranges of those who want to celebrate an event without truly breaking the bank.

On the other hand, the Rialto Moscato completely failed to impress. It was sugary sweet with weak carbonation. It tasted more like a flat energy drink than it did a fine wine. RieslingSnob might like it, but personally I do not find it worth the fifteen dollars it is reported to cost.

The next wine, a Riesling, got me VERY excited, because it was from Eltville am Rhein, the town I grew up in in Germany. Unfortunately, I was unfamiliar with the winery, J. Baumer. It was a middling sweet white with notes of pear and honey. Not being a sweet wines kind of person, I was a little unimpressed. Frankly if it hadn’t had the connection with my childhood, I probably would not have bought it. As it was I bought two bottles. I am not good at impulse control.

The Shaya Verdejo Old Vines white was, according to my notes, “minerally.” This is the only note I have. Unimpressive.

The Dry Creek Fume Blanc Sauvignon Blanc was next, with earthy, barnyard notes in the nose and minerally flavors on the tongue. It would likely be better with food, but as a sipping wine I found it to be a bit too strong on that ammoniac flavor that sometimes happens with Sauvignon Blancs.

I was very pleased with the Tre Monti Vigna Rocca Albana Secco. While the name may be a tongue twister, the wine itself is light, airy, pleasantly fruity, with a little bite of alcohol flavor at the end that keeps things interesting and clean. I very much enjoyed this wine and recommend it highly, though at 16 dollars it is a bit out of my personal price range.

On to the “Rich, Savory, Toasty & Luscious Whites”

The Graham Beck “The Game Reserve” Chenin Blanc was, in a word, “stinky.” In Disaster’s words, it smelled “kinda like feet.” While I’m sure the odor was masking some decent flavors, the key word there is “masking.” I certainly couldn’t taste them.

Daniel Gehr’s “Oak Free” Chardonnay was quite pleasant with minerals and earth, but it CLEARLY wanted to be drunk with food, not as an afternoon sipping wine.

As for Newton Red Label Chardonnay, well… frankly the less said the better. Okay I guess I have to say SOMETHING, fine. It was like drinking old lady perfume. Flowers everywhere. Oh god.

Luckily, I found everything I wanted in the Saint Roche les Vignes rose. It was clean, simple, and light on the palate. Its orangey color was also quite pleasing, and the red fruit notes were subdued by a lovely dryness throughout. Perfect thing for a summers day and a good book.

I have better notes on the reds for one very good reason: The white wines are served on low tables, and there was a huge line behind us. The reds are served at the bar, which is the perfect level to write on, and by the time we got there the line was pretty much gone! Hooray!

Unfortunately, the reds were really not interesting. The first we tried was the Annabella Special Selection Pinot Noir, which I found to be light and unimpressive with no real aftertaste to speak of. Disaster disagreed with me, stating that he caught a distinct floral aftertaste. I contend that it was just the cheese he was eating.

Babcock “Rita’s Earth” Pinot Noir poured a much paler red than the Annabella, and was equally light bodied. It had some decent flavors, but they were quickly washed away. CartoonSailor demanded to know why this wine wasn’t just from Oregon instead of California. It needed body to maintain some of our interest. As it was, meh.

The Col d’Orcia “Spezieri” was equally unimpressive. There was a sharpness at the beginning that brought our hopes up, but the nose was all alcohol and maybe a touch of cola (maybe). CartoonSailor drank his and immediately realized he had not actually tasted anything. Then he knew despair.

Those were the light reds though, and frankly our snobbishness knows no bounds when it comes to demanding strong flavor from wines. The “Big Red Wines That Should Knock Your Socks Off” was a bit better. The Borsao “Berola” was bloody fantastic, I must say. It was a mild, medium bodied red blend that had just enough complexity to keep us interested without beating us over the head with different spices and fruit. This is an excellent sippin’ red, perfect for an evening on the couch watching “Boston Legal” and eating homemade sushi after driving all over the eastern shore of Delaware. In related news, last Wednesday was a good day.

The Chateau Sainte Barbe Cabernet/Merlot blend was a considerably darker color than the Berola, but lacked interest. It was all alcohol on the nose, and frankly didn’t quite have legs.

The Robert Davis Syrah smelled like a stable, but was delightfully smooth and velvety. It was a low impact red, despite the barnyard on the nose. Nice.

The Durigutti Reserve Malbec was nice. Not great, but nice. Mild notes of black pepper overlaid the currents and alcohol.

I quite liked the Maipe Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, which I found to be meaty and delightful despite a sweetness strange to Cabernet. I wanted more. DesignBroad disagreed vehemently, describing it as one of the worst red wines she has ever tasted. I know this cannot be true because I am pretty sure she was there when we drank that strawberry splendor crap during the Cheap Ass Wine Tasting a long while back. Blech.

The Kiona Cabernet/Merlot blend tasted the way nail polish remover smells. No.

The Bogle “Phantom” Proprietary Red was solidly “meh.” It was better after eating a bit of sharp cheese, but for 26 bucks I kind of want a wine that is going to perform a bit better than that.

The day ended with the Conn Creek “Anthology,” which was really very, VERY good. Unfortunately, it was on sale (SALE!) for 40 dollars, and I am not really ever certain that wine is 40 dollars-worth of good. Maybe when I am out of grad school I will think differently, but seriously.

It was a good experience, but frankly the wines were a bit lacking. Disappointing. Iron Bridge Wine Company is one of my favorite places to eat, so I guess my standards were a bit high. Still, I got several bottles of very good wine out of it, thus ensuring that I will have plenty of distractions from the other disappointments of adult life.

Pesto and White Wine

The one lovely thing about living away from ones parents is the sudden ability to cook exactly what you are craving at any given moment. The one problem about living away from my parents in particular is that my father is such a stunning cook that everything I make by comparison is bland and unfortunate.

Of course, he has a lifetime of experience more than I have, and he probably has the sense not to use homemade pesto on rotini of all things. What was I thinking?

For those of you who don't know (and those of you who should but are just ignorant doofuses, and I'm looking at you here, BeerSnob), there is actually a very good reason for the wealth of different shapes for pasta. Each shape is designed to be a very specific sauce-delivery mechanism. Rotini is good for creamy sauces that would fall off of spaghetti, but terrible for thicker sauces like this particular pesto I made. The Pasta to sauce ratio is sadly lacking. Also? It needs more garlic.

Though, I will say, the sardine toasts I made taste AWESOME with a spread of this pesto. I know what I'm having for lunch tomorrow!

With this pesto and sardine-toast monstrosity, I am drinking Picpoul de Pinet Couteaux de Languedoc. If you're looking for a cheap, dry white that won't scare the neighbors, this is it. When you open the bottle (a screw cap, which honestly I'm starting to like more and more) you are instantly hit with the aroma of apple cider. The apple sweetness on the nose is not indicative of sweetness in the bottle: it is quite tart, blood oranges up front with a touch of that yeasty flavor you get from a particularly good bottle of champagne on the finish, which is not particularly long or complex, but smooth and pleasant. It has a very prickley mouthfeel. It makes the finish cleaner, the flavors crisp where they could have gotten stodgy. It handily brings out the garlic in the pesto I'm eating, which is really useful, since it lacks flavor.

Oh well, nothing for it but to try again. Luckily, basil is cheap at this time of year, and the Boyfriend's basil plant is freaking HUGE. No, that's not a euphemism. The basil and pineapple sage in his garden are merging into one massive plant of deliciousness. I am so jealous, since my basil plant died a spindley death.

I will try this recipe again, probably with better nuts (oh yeah, did I mention that I used walnuts too? yeah pine nuts are expensive and I'm a graduate student). The wine, on the other hand, will remain the same. This is a fabulous house white, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Not dead, still drinking

well, shit, this Blogging thing looks like it crapped out on me a bit. Oops. The issue is that every time I start writing Rising Mind like a good little author I stop updating the blog. Also I now work a 9 to 6 job and rarely want to compute when I get home.

These are bad excuses.

I would like to apologize by telling you all to go to 13.5% wine bar. It is wicked awesome, the waiters will snark at you, and the wine is FABULOUS. I had a glass of rose cava that tasted like raspberry-lemon bars, except without any sweetness with a nicoise salad and it was heavenly. BeerSnob got a beer that involved evolution somehow. Survival of the drunkest? I don't know. Also some slow cooked short ribs that tasted like jesus, except he stripped the fat off of them. Dude won't eat fat. Crazy.

Anyway. I'm going to try to get back into the swing of this blag nonsense, provided that my brain doesn't strangle me in the meantime with story arc ideas.

Nerd Weekend!

Hooray for nerd weekend!

Last night I met up with BeerSnob, Kaiser TNT and MetalChef to run a tabletop roleplaying game. It was based on the Fate system, which is really great for pick-up games, one-shots, and intense roleplaying. It is super flexible, and because a large portion of character creation is based around putting together shared backstories, it makes jumping into the game really easy. It's wonderful.

My homebrew setting (featuring the Matu'Ashak) was complemented by a tray of brownies and a bottle of Westport River Chardonnay that MetalChef gave me for my birthday/christmas/thing. It was an estate grown wine from Southeastern New England, and it was really, REALLY tasty. Very balanced acids and sugars, citrusy without tasting like juice. It was easy to drink and highly enjoyable, even out of Red Cups while pretending to be monsters. I highly recommend this wine if you get the chance to try it, it's the style of white wine that got me interested in whites in the first place.

It's like the damn alps out there

Holy science, this snow is going to be here until May. It snowed again yesterday, but luckily there was no accumulation in our area. Still, driving is kind of terrifying. Most two lane roads are reduced to one-and-a-half lanes, and I live in a suburb overly fond of SUVs. The snow banks on the sides of the road are around 5 to 6 feet high and about as hard as concrete, and cause a constant disturbance in the peripheral vision.

Basically what I'm saying is to hell with this.

The B's only recently got their street plowed after our SECOND blizzard of the week, so we grabbed them and dragged them over here for choucroute night. For those of you that don't know, choucroute is French peasant food, basically what you have when you've got 1) a dead pig and 2) an old cabbage. It's sauerkraut and pig parts. It is also so freaking huge that it was a two-night deal. The first night I ended up skipping out on due to an invite to Max's Tap House from BeerSnob.

Naturally, Max's Tap House was preparing for their BelgianFest and the vast majority of their taps were being kept empty. LAME. I ended up with a Noble Pils. BeerSnob (shown below) ordered his usual range of stouts, and the rest of us sort of fiddled around. DesignBroad (shown below, looking highly displeased) got the Three Philosophers, the one that involves more yeast than a whore at a french bakery.

 

Don't be fooled by that wine glass. That's beer she's drinking. Max's often serves its higher-end beers in wine glasses, I suppose as a combination of better surface area and lower cost to the bar. Still, it makes one feel particularly silly, as Wellington TNT gladly shows.

PINKY OUT, DAMMIT.

It was quite fun, though the beers were disappointing, so there will be no beer report. Later in the week The Boyfriend showed up for some snowboarding! I love mountains and skiing and pretty much everything about it, and this time I did notice some actual improvement in my technique. I'm not exaggerating my movements enough. You'll notice that the downhill pro's look like they're leaning impossibly far over when they turn, that's because it's the most efficient way to do it. Long story short, The Boyfriend managed to get down a slightly more advanced green run without injuring himself! Hooray!

 ...And then he became the Snow Ninja. That's what happens when you are forced to sneak schnapps into dry counties. Snow Ninjas appear to avenge their beer.

That night was Choucroute II: Choupocalypse, also known as MOAR PORK. Before dinner, we had a sort of bastardized kir royal, made with the really delicious Rondel Pura Raza Cava and my raspberry liqueur. They blended really nicely, the dry Cava and the bubbles neutralizing the super sweetness of the liqueur. It was also pink, which was fitting because Valentines was the next day. I highly recommend that Cava to anyone looking for a nice sparkling wine on the cheap, which probably goes to prove my intense love for Spanish wines.

With dinner we had WILLM Pinot Gris. I may be in love with this wine. It is nice and pleasantly fruity up front, but the aftertaste is... well... fishy. In a good way, mind. It's like the aftertaste you get after eating a really, really nice piece of sashimi. I need to get a bottle of it next time I make Spicy Death Salmon.

Cheap Ass Wine Tasting!

So last night I gathered together some of my closest friends and had a Cheap Ass Wine Tasting!

It was a blind tasting, which means we got to feel especially classy drinking out of paper bags and solo cups that BeerSnob stole from his roomie. The goal of the event was to have everyone bring an under 15-dollar bottle of wine, blind taste them, and when they are revealed we could be all "oh shit! this was delicious and now I know what to buy!" I described it at the time as "when you want to get crunk... classily."

The real class was provided by DesignBroad (no I couldn't think of a better nickname hon it is eight AM and I am hungover), who knows a crapton more about tasting wine than I do. The crunkness was brought most handily by Mr. The Bhomb, who brought his own infusions. His strawberry chocolate smelled amazing and tasted really good, though the cinnamon vanilla SEARED MY MOUTH LIKE THE FIERY WRATH OF GOD.

The apartment was provided by BeerSnob, who also provided a snobby beer for us to try. Rounding off our cast of characters was The Irish, Wellington TNT, and The Crazy. The Crazy's boyfriend, Nerdling 5000, was unable to join us because he was doing something unspeakably nerdy at the time.

So I numbered the bags of wine pretty much at random, but this is what we ended up with, more or less in the order that we drank it. I'm gonna start with

THREE PHILOSOPHERS

 

Apparently it's a "Belgian Quad flavored with cherries." Only BeerSnob was able to detect any cherry in this, everyone else was distracted by the literal pockets of yeast that were floating in it. I don't know about you, but I find it rather distressing when I feel like I should have baleen to help drink a beer.

Our first wine of the night was the intensely disappointing and actually kind of creepy STRAWBERRY SPLENDOR

 

This poured BROWN. Not red. BROWN. Like we're talking dried blood brown. It smelled like jam, it tasted like jam. DesignBroad claimed that it tasted like her dad's homemade strawberry jam, which is far more complimentary than this crap deserved. It tasted fake and overly sweet and seriously gross. We thought that it *might* be an okay gluhwein or mulled wine, but it was so sickly no one but Wellington TNT would finish their tiny pour. After revealing the bottle, we realized that it had "natural flavors added." That's EXACTLY what I want in a wine, eeeeyup!

Moving on from the grossness was wine number two!

MARQUES DE CACERES WHITE RIOJA

 

 Pretty much everyone liked this, which surprised a few of the people who normally only like reds. It's very citric and very mild. It's dry but not tannic, which The Crazy described as "watery." It's a very easy drinking wine, but not in a bad way. Design Broad thought that it was a very young Chardonnay, "like, Dumbo rides at DisneyWorld young." Turns out that it was some Spanish estate grape that I, in my inebriation, failed to write down. GO ME!

337 Cabernet Sauvignon

The Irish bought this wine entirely based on it looking cool, and it's hard to deny that it looks cool. It smelled extremely sweet with an overlay of alcohol fumes that I've come to associate with Cabernet Sauvignon. There was a distinct fruit flavor, like tart blackberries or black raspberries, and a hint of vanilla that was throwing me off completely. It was one of those wines that smells nothing like the way it tastes. It smelled harsh, but it was pretty mellow. I'm not overly fond of Cabernets, I don't like that alcohol smell, but this was pretty alright.

REDTREE PINOT NOIR

This smelled a little peppery and a lot sweet. It was a very clear red and had a very mild taste. It was extremely easy drinking, probably too easy. There was almost no aftertaste, which The Irish liked, but it made it very hard to determine what flavors besides "red fruit" were going on in there. It was Pinot Noir with training wheels on, and would serve as a passable introduction to red wine, or something to serve to people who don't normally drink wine but want to be seen drinking it for some reason.

MARQUES DE CACERES ROSE RIOJA

I've reviewed this one before! It was my contribution, along with the white from the same winery, and I loves it. DesignBroad had the typical reaction of someone who has never had a good European dry rose. When people see rose they think "white zinfandel from california fruit bomb sugar 'splosion." This stuff, as I've said before, is buttery, smooth, and dry with a nicely balanced fruit flavor. I have bought it before for 15 bucks a bottle, but found it at a more different liquor store (Jason's on Rt 40 for y'all in the EC) for 9.95. I CAN DIG IT!

Last, and probably least, is the BOHEMIAN HIGHWAY  CALIFORNIA CHARDONNAY

 

 It's got a great label, I've got to say. Sadly the wine tastes as green as the bottle, and by that I mean it is sauerkraut wine. It seriously tasted like sprouts with sugar on top. It was sickly. My fondness for sauerkraut notwithstanding, this wine needed to go down the drain.

So there you have it! We liked the Marques de Caceres and the 337, and I'd recommend the RedTree if you have a friend who refuses to drink wine. Avoid Goose Watch and Bohemian Highway at all costs, which should not be hard, because all of the wines above were less than ten dollars. Save your wallet: drink cheap wine!

Burn Notice!

Burn Notice marathon! Hooray!

I love that show, despite the terrible acting and the complete absurdity. It's not as bad as NCIS, but it's still amazing.

I got to taste some Mouton-Cadet a while back. All three were really good, though I liked the rose best. It was all raspberries, and I do love me some raspberries.

I've also recently found a few recipes for brewing my own deliciousness. BeerSnob sent me a link to a site all about making your own hard cider. I'm really not all that attached to beer, but I adore hard cider. In Ireland, I got to drink Magners on a regular basis, and I have yet to taste any hard cider that stands up to it. Woodchuck makes a variety called 802 which is closer to the mark than anything else I've tried. Still, hard cider is hard to make gross. Even when it's not good it's still sweet and drinkable. This makes me think that I can get away with making it myself!

I have also found a recipe, provided by ICSA, for chicha, which is apparently rainforest potato beer. I asked the Boyfriend, who has spent some time in Ecuador, but apparently it's a Brazillian thing. According to the ICSA entry, it tastes like sweet potato pie, only it's mildly alcoholic and kinda beer-y. So apparently I need to do some serious SCIENCE up in here!

Oh god why am I not updating anymore

...Blame NaNoWriMo. I'm nearly 35 thousand words in and holy balls I just can't stop writing. Any time I sit at my computer I'm probably typing Rising Mind, and not these blog posts. I'll definitely return to this in December, when I have the chance to think about something other than crazy people and graduate school.

But here is a catch-up post. Let's talk about my last excursion to Max's Tap House with BeerSnob and The Irish.

BeerSnob is snobbish about beer, and has a hard on for stouts of all varieties. I like pilsners, because they are refreshing and pleasant and do all the things a beer should do, i.e., get you drunk but not make you sick. Irish will drink anything you put in front of him because he is poor.

I started out with the Reider Maerzen. Nobody pronounces the umlaut correctly, you linguistically uncultured bastards. Either way, I'd ordered the pilsner, but the bartender misunderstood me. Still, this was everything I want in a beer. It was light enough that I could drink it without feeling overfull, and it had a clean, malty flavor that consistently made me want more.

Irish got the house beer that night, which was a kind of gross Belgian blonde. It had the kind of fruity sweetness that I enjoy in wine, but is totally out of place in a beer. I don't know what was going on there. Very sad.

BeerSnob bought snobby beer: the Brewdog Zeitgeist dark lager, to be specific. It was DELICIOUS. It was sort of tart up front, the way a just-underripe cherry is, and had a very light cafe-au-lait flavor and texture at the back. It was smooth and delicious. /he also got a taste of the Thirsty Dog Stud Service Stoud, probably because it had the silliest name on the menu. It was lightly bodied, tasted of burnt coffee with a clean finish. Smooth, but not what I wanted. I blame it on the fact of it being a stout.

For our second round, TheIrish acquired a beer called the MAXIMATOR. Because when there is a beer with a name like MAXIMATOR someone has to try it. Here is what my notes say about that:
"Holy fuck spices. Holy crap let me wash out my mouth now jesus why did I drink that there can be no loving god in a universe where there is this beer." It was not very good.

I got the Reider Pilsner this time, which was the strangest thing I ever tasted. It was clean and bubbly the way I like it, but it had this strange vegetable aftertaste... like peas and asparagus. The boys didn't believe me, but when Irish drank some he immediately sputtered: "IT'S HEALTH BEER!" It was, too.

BeerSnob's second round was a glass of Hitachino Redrice, a rice beer, and he wished it hadn't been. This was all about fruit. It was apricots and cinnamon and ginger all over the place. We all agreed that this would be a FABULOUS beer to cook with, but it was not a pleasant pint.

Much later in the week I had a couple glasses of unexceptional pinot grigio. They were both clean and tart, though one had a bitter hint of lemon rind that I didn't like all that much. Pinot Grigio is wine for people who don't like wine very much, or so says the guy who orders the wine for our restaurant. But it's a fabulous wine to sip while writing, because the gentle flavor doesn't distract you!

I have also set up a bunch of infusions in a series of one and a half liter bell-jars that I bought for the purpose. The reason there are no pictures up or descriptions is that they are all to become Christmas presents and I don't want to ruin the surprise, so there.

And now I'm going to go back to writing my terrible urban fantasy. Rock on y'all.

Big Post! Many pictures!

I have been procrastinating updating this blog because I have been pretending to study for the GREs. There is something really peculiar about a single exam that may determine the next three to six years of my future. I do not like it one bit.

So lets start with the oldest news! It is MetalChef's birthday party this coming Friday, so I made him a present! 

Yes, that is the apple-botulism infusion. It does not actually have any botulism in it.

Check out those tasty, vodka-filled apples! They look tasty to me! But I nibbled one and wanted to die, and that was my lesson in "looks are deceivingly full of vodka."

Next I put the apples in some cheesecloth and squeezed them like they owed me money, or perhaps were dating my younger sister.

Now for some cinnamon simple syrup! which is made exactly like the regular type of simple syrup, except you throw a stick of cinnamon in there.

All together now! I'm still trying to find a good way to bottle it for gift-giving purposes, so it looks less like moonshine and more like the tasty apple pie schnapps that it is. we shall see, we shall see.

I also checked out my other infusions and decided that the pomegranite one wasn't looking too good after about a week, so obviously it needed to have the berries swapped.

                                     

See how the berries are all white and pale? The liquid looks a lot darker in that picture than it was. It was a very pale pink, not anywhere near the deep red I wanted for my Pama knockoff. So obviously it was time for a new pomegranite.

This pomegranite was about twice the size of the first one and had twice the berries. Cutting open pomegranites is always kind of fun because you can pretend to be sacraficing hearts on an alter. Or maybe that's just me, I don't know.

That is MUCH nicer, isn't it? Now, this was some time last week. I can't quite recall. I *believe* it was before Texas showed up. hopefully these things will be all nice and tasty for my Halloween Party.

Now I could start talking about Pub Dog, but that's BeerSnob's schtick and I'll let him have it. Suffice it to say that I got a Blonde Dog beer and it was tasty, refreshing, and four dollars.

The more interesting news is that I went over to the B's house last night. I've known these people for pretty much my entire conscious lifetime. They are good people and dangerously fun to drink with. By the time I came over they and my parents had already finished off the better part of two bottles of wine, though I got the last glass of a pretty unspectacular muscadet. The one we have at work is honey sweet and kind of super gross. This one tasted like lemons. It was tart and kind of nice for that, but it had a completely different flavor profile than I was expecting. It was okay with the foie gras (they left me a piece, thank god. I was both starving and REALLY looking forward to eating that stuff), but not as good as the vouvray they had before I showed up. I love vouvray even though I normally avoid sweet whites.

With dinner, which was some sort of delicious Indian-inspired roll-up, there was a tasty cotes du rhone. Cotes du Rhone always makes me want lamb or rib eye or some other super flavorful red-meat.

I brought with me a bottle of that Marques de Caceres rose, because Mrs. B introduced me to the joys of dry rose wine and she loves it probably more than I do. Everyone loved it. I'm going to have to go to Corridor and find out how much it is a case. It is extremely flavorful for a pink wine and is liked by pretty much everyone I've given it to.

So tomorrow I've got these GREs, so I'm going to pop off and study for those. Tomorrow expect to hear a complete rant about how much I loathe them and why I think I should have gotten a higher score.

A very "meh" weekend.

 First, let's get on-topic. I have a bottle of Kendall-Jackson chardonnay here, and it is quite tasty. Not sweet, sort of off-dry. It has a cranberry sort of tartness and a lightly floral aroma and is heavier and spicier than a lot of whites I've been drinking. I also threw together a caramel-apple and a ginger snap infusion, but since I don't have pictures of them I won't bother talking about them much.

Other than the wine, this weekend was not a successful alcohol weekend. I had a tasty tequila sno-cone on friday at DuClaw, where Boyfriend drank an extremely disappointing beer. BeerSnob may disagree, but both Boyfriend and I found the Hellraiser IPA to be a one-note failure as a beer.

Of course, we then went on to drink Keystone Lite at the college, where Boyfriend's friend was having his 21st birthday. What an epic shitshow that was. The birthday celebrant was blacked out by 5 pm, but somehow managed to stagger to the bar at midnight for his birthday round. We have received word that he is not, in fact, dead of alcohol poisoning, nor did he have to get his stomach pumped. Good job, dude.

Things like that make me really glad I had my 21st birthday in a foreign country where no one knew me nor cared to know me. My flatmate threw a party and trashed the apartment, and I drank a few beers at an Brog, but that's about it. Not very interesting, but there was no horrifying intoxication. Granted, I experienced horrifying intoxication later during a pub crawl in England, but I feel fortunate that I escaped the stereotypical 21st birthday shitshow.

Also, WOW is alcohol expensive in restaurants. One of my tables tonight easily ordered a hundred and fifty dollars worth of wine, knocking back overpriced by-the-glass selections like it was their job. I love it when people do that, because it means I get paid for watching the bartender work, but seriously. Where are these people working where they make enough money to spend that much on a night of not-immoderate drinking? Can I have their jobs? Please?

I have become a huge fan of ordering one or two drinks and a dessert in restaurants. The bill stays low and I am satisfied.

Weekend Wangst and Renfest Ranting

I am not a romantic person. I used to be, but I am not any longer. I do not believe in true love, painless relationships, or fairytale endings. I do my best not to get soppy about idle things like boyfriends.

I am in a long distance relationship with a guy I met in college. We first met when his roommate drunkenly cartwheeled through my locked and dead-bolted dormroom door. He assured me, looming and loud, that he was not drunk at all, that he was just keeping Roomie from killing himself. Yeah, okay large bearded man. You smell like a distillery. Get out of my doorway.

Our relationship in college was just about perfect. We had our own groups of friends, we could go hang out with others and return to one another in the evening. It's harder now that he's three hours away. He visits me on weekends, or I visit him, when I have weekends off. I work in a restaurant, I don't usually have weekends free. He works in publishing. He only has weekends free. Badass, huh?

"Oh to hell with you, Stark." some would say. "Three hours? Only on weekends? What about the folks with family in the military? What about the people whose loved ones are journalists halfway around the globe?" to these people I say "oh screw off. Just because other people have it worse doesn't mean it suddenly doesn't suck."

These issues now addressed I feel that I have kvetched sufficiently and shall immediately return to my topic.

The Maryland Renaissance Festival may be best treated like a giant outdoor theme pub with a heinous cover charge. That's how I like it, at least. One goes to drink the cheap beer (or hardcore cider in my case. I loves me the cider) and socialize. The Boyfriend always gets sulky at the renfest, because they have not had a new act there in decades and all my friends want to do is see Hack and Slash for the millionth time. I do not exaggerate. They see every show at every time slot every time they go. They recite the lines along with the actors. I know it's ritual and all, but god damn, Fight School is on at the same time, and they actually do good improv! And they have that one cute guy in a kilt!

So instead of sitting through the same four acts, BeerSnob, Boyfriend and I sat in the various pubs, singing along with the meandering minstrels (they don't really travel, the entire park is only a kilometer squared), and discussed with rising horror the travesties of cleavage that surrounded us. Boobs should not look like tiny, flabby shelves! Ladies, if you want to wear psuedo renaissance gear, you are probably already spending a couple hundred dollars! Do not spend those dollars on gear that makes you look thirty years older (boob-squeezer tops) or like a low class whore (horse tails or fox tails).

Also, if pregnant, please do not wear nothing but a bra and booty short leather armor set. While I understand that motherhood is beautiful and all that nonsense, when you're eight and a half months along... you make BeerSnob cry.

It is also a fact that any drink tastes better coming from a proper mug instead of a plastic cup. So I bought a proper, stoneware quaffing mug. Because if I don't spend money on something idiotic at the renfest I feel I have not had the true experience.

I also got a chance to do a quick wine tasting from a Maryland vineyard. Wow those were some sugary wines. The only one that did not taste like a cordial was the sangria. I have not had a whole lot of experience with my local wineries, there seems to be some kind of prejudice against them right now since they are all so new. It is something I'd like to get more into, there must be someone out there making less syrupy wines.

Morning blech.

It is the morning. I am a morning person. This is a blessing and a curse, as it means I am never late to work. It also means that I cannot luxuriate in bed when I don't have work. Dammit. The TV is assuring me that when I am thinking Chevy, I'm thinking Koons.com. I wonder how they know?

moving on.

Wednesday was a great day for the drink. I am a strong proponent of going out on Wednesday nights. You know you have work the next morning so you won't overextend yourself, and the bar is rarely crowded. Anyway, the evening began at my friend TheIrish's house, where we were setting up characters for a Shadowrun game run by one of these guys. I made a Dwarvish trauma surgeon. Rock on. To this session I brought a bottle of Spanish rose I'd purchased from the Wine Bin. I've mentioned my fanatical love of rose wine before, and this particular bottle was why. Marques de Caceres 2008 Rioja wine. It was clear and very pink, we drank it warmer than we should have. It was very dry as advertised, and it tasted like eating an english muffin with cherry jam. It was tart, buttery, and smooth. Holy crap it was good. Even TheIrish, not normally a wine fan, thought it was good.

After the session, TheIrish and I headed up to Baltimore to meet our friend BeerSnob and go to Max's Tap House. We managed to avoid getting mugged in Fayette Square, even though I gave a guy some crack money. Here is the list of beers I tried.

Spaten Pils
I like a German pilsner. This tasted the way you wish your Game Day case tasted. It was clear, light, refreshing, and gently hoppy. I don't like super hoppy beer because I am a pansy. Boyfriend *loves* himself an IPA though.

Brew Dog Paradox Speyside Scottish Imperial Stout
What a name! Christ, with a moniker like that (and the price it had) this had better be nirvana in a glass. I'm not big on imperial stouts, because if you drink too much stout you become so. I stole tastes from BeerSnob. It smelled like candied walnuts, which is apparently pretty normal. It tasted like letting a chocolate espresso bean melt on your tongue: first sweet, then bitter, then fruity sweet. Okay maybe I'm eating a very strange brand of chocolate espresso beans. I *liked* it,  but for 10 dollars? I'll stick with my pilsner. Thanks.

Original Sin cider
I love cider. While I was in Ireland I was introduced to Bulmers hard cider and it was good. In the states I learned that it's called Magners, and it is still amazing. So I try whatever ciders I can every time I can in the hopes that I'll find something even better. Unfortunately, the best part of Original Sin was the price: 4.00 a bottle as opposed to the insane prices of the More Regular Type Beers. It was sweet like apple juice. There was no pleasing, refreshing dryness. It was a juice box for adults. Disappointing but drinkable. I have still never tasted anything better than Magners for cider.

Del ducato verdi
BeerSnob saw that this beer was listed as an Italian chili stout and went a little crazy. He was raving over how bizarre that is and how much he loved chili-chocolate and all sorts of other madness. I was pretty focused on my buffalo wings and didn't pay him much attention. But *damn* was he right. It was a lot less sweet than the previous stout, with only a hint of chili spice. There was a lot of pepper smell, like bell pepper smell, when you had it in your mouth. The aftertaste lasted for a full minute, changing constantly. One minute it was sweet, then peppery, then bitter, then sugared coffee, then chocolate... It was an experience. A nice one. But again, I don't think I could have had an entire pint of this. It was too intense.

I also tend to be taken aback by the texture of stouts. I want them to be fuller bodied, like a big jammy red wine. I want them to have more carbonated texture. I always am left wanting something else from stouts, they are tasty but not refreshing. To each his own, I suppose.

Anyway, it is Pirate Weekend at the Maryland Renaissance festival. Flask of grog, anyone? Oh hell yeah.