Thursday, January 31, 2008

pinot noir.

PINOT EVIL
France
PINOT NOIR
no vintage

x-fact ~ pinot grapes are said to be difficult to make into wine

pinot evil pinot noir
paid 5.99
reg. 7

couldn't find a label to share with you without stealing an image from someone else. which is unfortunate indeed, because the label is perhaps the most fetching thing about this wine.

a detailed sketch of three monkeys. one covering his eyes, one his ears, one his mouth.

see no evil...pinot evil.

clever, no?

not that it's a bad wine. because it's not bad. i've had bad wine. one day i'll tell you about the wine i had that tasted like rotten smoked meat.

boy, and i'll tell you what, it was a challenge to choke that whole bottle down. whew.

so, no, this was not bad.

i've not had this wine before, though i've seen it around. the forever designated driver bought this at the state run liquor store the other day.

now, i must make a case for all of you who live in states wherein hard alcohol is only sold at state run liquor stores. open 10-7, closed sundays, never a sale. and if there is, it's a dollar off if you're lucky.

sucks if you suddenly feel like a cocktail at home on a sunday and the cupboard is bare.

BUT, they often have good wine deals. and not just on mediocre wines either. for instance, a few weeks ago the forever designated driver got an $18 bottle of favorite champagne for 7 bucks.

they don't keep wines around that don't move rapidly. which in a town that has a lot of cheap rum and even cheaper vodka and chilled fruit flavored wines drinkers, i doubt the pinots and champagnes are flying off the shelf. which means more for me!

so back to the wine. you know, wine doesn't need to be a big celebration. sometimes it just needs to be wine.

and that's what this wine was. wine.

i had a clean pile of laundry in the living room that was roughly 6x2x3. and that's in feet.

soooooo, i had my evening cut out for me.

i opened a bottle of the pinot evil and set to work.

at first sip the wine was a bit bracing. perhaps it me? i thought, so i took another sip.

better, a bit. smooth this time, not as bracing. but there was no real, um, ooomph.

i know, oomph? but for lack of a better term, it was pleasant enough but nothing really to attach to in terms of flavor.

as i folded and sipped i listened to the democratic presidential debate. and, it seemed, for at least this evening, the skirt and the upstart were finally making tracks towards their own version of "can't we all just get along?"

sip, fold, sip. even while sparring and lobbing (fairly toothless) barbs, these two were a bit more complimentary than usual. suddenly the lack of oomph didn't matter so much. sip sip.

though i have to say i will miss the hunk. now that he finally got that constant upper lip licking nonsense under control, he was looking pretty darned good. and yes, i appreciated his political positions and ideology, too. but that honeyed southern voice as smooth as a bottle of maker's mark in front of the fire. sigh.

where was i? oh, yeah.

i love wine. i especially love red wine. and when you love something as much as you possibly can, you open up your heart up as big as it will go and inadvertently you also open yourself up to EVERYTHING else that comes your way.

it's not unlike unzipping your skin and allowing your heart front row to the elements. the good bad and the ugly. but, no matter what, you love so you move forward.

you are optimistic, and even if you are detoured or detained, you move forward. because you know love is fickle and unpredictable. and your heart is exposed so you do what you can to keep going because love will help to cover what is raw and gaping.

and you know, because all the songs and movies and books tell you, that even into the greatest love affair rain must fall, but then the sun comes out again. even the most intense connection the power will fail, and you know it will return again.

love is not a guarantee. especially for the wine drinker.

one bad bottle, one bad glass. one well meaning host who pulls the bottle of red from the coldest part of the fridge, or the long opened bottle of white from the cabinet. "i know it's here somewhere. this is where i put it after we had some at easter." it's now autumn. you accept the glass because what else do you do?

it doesn't take much for the tides to change.

i have had wine that i declared right then and there my new favorite! yessir! gulp gulp! totally forgetting and leaving behind whatever came before. without even so much as a passing goodbye.

i've had wines that were nothing to write home about and wines i knew i would never drink again. i've had wines that tasted like swill, even as the person who poured it for me went on and on and on about the price and the greatness of it and blah. blah. blah.

and i've drunk them all with a polite smile and thoughts of better days with better wines. and better hosts.

but, such is life. especially so in the life of a wine drinker.

this bottle of pinot did not get worse with drinking nor did it get particularly better. it did not warm in the glass or on the tongue, it did not give me that spreading flow, it did not make me draw ridiculous cultural parallels as some other wines have.

but, what this wine did do was provide me with a bit of sweet reprieve, sip by sip, during a tedious task. well, two, if you count folding the mount vesuvius of laundry AND listening to yet one more presidential candidate debate.

and that was just enough.

and i daresay, by the end of the glass or two i had i no longer saw the pile of laundry that had been daunting me all week, the debate, however cordial, was over, and the wine in my glass tasted pretty darn okay.

no need for covering my eyes, my ears, or my mouth.

not bad.

a votre sante!

x.

1 comment:

gojirama said...

That sounds like something I'd make Coq au vin with, if I were fwwling fancier than 3 buck Chuck.