Rock Bottoms Up! Our Trip to Wally World to Buy Wine

Okay, I admit it. I live a bubble that floats over planet Earth and occasionally touches down only long enough for me to hear the latest ominous forebodings from the Bad News Bears at CNN before I take off once more to find comfort in Grapeland. So that could explain why I never read or heard anything about Wal-Mart's foray into the wonderful world of 'value wine' that had Oprah Winfrey gushing like a school girl at a Jonas Brothers concert. It's name? 'Oak Leaf' – an incredible wine at an even more incredible price…$2.97. Was this the stuff of Urban Legend, I asked myself? Like the legally blind old lady who thought a rat was a chihuahua and put a rhinestone collar around its neck and let it sleep at the foot of her bed? I had to find out. I carefully picked out an outfit I thought would be Wal-Mart appropriate. I chose a t-shirt with a horribly garish sports logo splashed across it and some extra long cargo shorts with too many pockets that were really designed for a much younger someone in a Hip Hop Clearasil commercial. I futilely searched for something with camouflage, but alas, no luck. Surveying myself in the mirror, I thought, something's missing. I know! A bright red baseball cap with an orange neon Nascar insignia on it! Ah… the perfect disguise. I suddenly felt like a secret agent on his latest assignment. Sort of a James Bond of the wine world. OO7 with a license to swill. My exotic foreign destination? Wally World! And oh, what a world it is. All colors, all shapes, all sizes of folks. Many of them Supersized. I suddenly felt like Alice in Wonderland as I headed back to the wine department. Had someone slipped me a tab of LSD? As I dodged screaming crying children and grotesquely overstuffed carts, I couldn't help but wonder… had Oprah Winfrey, herself, the richest woman in the world, gotten out of her stretch limo and personally waded into this sea of humanity just to purchase a bottle of bargain basement booze? Nah. She probably sent Gayle in – "Hey, who's the billionaire in this car, Gayle?" Suddenly I saw it. A display of hundreds of bottles of Oak Leaf, and, yes the price was still two dollars and ninety-seven cents. I reverently picked one up. Nice classy label. It said Napa, California on it. Very impressive. I started throwing bottle after bottle into my cart like a maniac. I believe I paused at 10 and then thought to myself, “ahh, live a little”… and threw in 10 more. That made 20 assorted bottles of wine for $59.40! I was absolutely giddy. And to anyone watching I must have looked like someone who just escaped from a rehab stint gone terribly wrong. Who cares? Who knows me here? I pulled my baseball cap way down over my face and lurched towards the check-out, my bottle filled cart shamelessly clinking and clanking all the way there. Once home, I chilled the white and uncorked the reds and set up my informal wine tasting. First the Chardonnay--(which won the Gold medal at the San Francisco Wine Competition!): Not at all oakey or cloying with a nice crisp finish. Indeed a winner! Next, the Chenin Blanc/Pinot Grigio blend – notes of pear and apples. Delicious, light, bright, & refreshing. I liked it! No… for $2.97, I adored it!! Then, on to the reds. First the cab. Uh oh. A little thin. More like a Pinot. Still good, but not enough structure for a cab. When I stopped thinking of it as a Cabernet, I enjoyed it. Add it to Sangria and shut up! It's only three bucks for God's sake. I saved the Merlot for last. It was delicious! (Awarded top honors at the Hilton Head Wine Fest.) I could see why. It tasted like a much more expensive Merlot. You could actually take this to someone's house! Someone you even liked. Surveying my grapeful bounty, I called a bunch of friends for an impromptu party. It was wonderful not to resent them as they threw back glass after glass after glass. Before I knew it, I was back at Wal-Mart buying case loads more. But still I kept asking myself one question: How can they sell it this cheap? Don't they have to grow the grapes, pick the grapes, crush the grapes, pay for the bottling, labeling, corks, and shipping? Huh?! Oh well, I don't know and I don't care. This former locavore has gone loco. Thank you, Oprah… thank you Wal-Mart… and thank you mysterious, secretive Wine Conglomerate that doesn't even have a web address for giving us Oak Leaf. Wait till you try it, you'll thank them too. Whoever they are. Cheers!

Bin There, Drank That

Have my recycling bins become buckets of shame? The other morning I was stunned by the sound of a tremendous crash outside my door. Since I live on a busy corner, I immediately imagined that four cars had collided at the intersection – all of their windshields shattering simultaneously. Like the rest of my neighbors, I threw open my door, ready to perhaps save some poor soul. But instead of twisted steel and broken glass, to my shock and dismay, I beheld my very own blue recycling bin suspended upside down over a city recycling truck with a huge mountain of my empty broken wine bottles beneath it. Accusing eyes darted quickly in my direction. I smiled sheepishly and quickly made up a not very convincing "I had a party this weekend…bunch of big drinkers". 'Yeah, right' their eyes said back to me as unconvinced doors slammed and windows shut. Damn these under-three-dollars-a-bottle 'value wines'!! They've got me drinking wine like it's water! No, I take that back, I'm drinking wine instead of water (it's cheaper!). Soon I'll be brushing my teeth with it, washing the car with it… and the dog! (I'll bet that'll put an end to her trying to jump outta the sink!) And it got worse; the following week my big strapping macho garbage lady, who I bet wrestles alligators on her day off, had to ask a passing man to grab the other end of my jam-packed bin to help her lift it onto her truck. I don't think she's ever in her life asked a man for anything, not even Santa. Desperate measures were called for. I started coming up with alternate plans to mask my out-of-control value wine usage. What if I put my garbage in my recycling bins and all my empty wine bottles in my giant blue garbage can? Maybe I could also pack the wine bottles with white styrofoam peanuts, so they could cascade out elegantly and quietly into the back of the sanitation truck. I could pretend they were part of an artsy display for the Beaufort Tri-Centennial, you know – perhaps 'Celebrating 300 years of Binge Drinking in Beaufort'! Nah… the Tricentennial Commission would never go for it, no matter how historically accurate it was. Back to the drawing board. I decided a deliciously diabolical plan might be to drive my recycling bins to someone else's house, then once empty, pick them up the next day. But whose house? Who did I know who was on vacation? Or better yet, off at rehab? As I drove past a local church that strictly forbids the drinking of alcoholic beverages, I was sorely tempted to place my bin curbside. But no… I couldn’t pin this guilt-laden mound of grape juice bottles on innocent people. Or could I? No!! Wait a minute. Is that an empty house I spy with a 'For Rent' sign in front of it? I screech to a halt. Lugging my clanky bin out of my car with all my might, then lowering it to the ground, I am forced to chase a runaway bottle as it rolls down the street. I grab it and read the label – "Oh, Tisdale Chardonnay! I remember you… Three bottles for $10 at Bi-Lo! Buy six and get 10% off which makes one bottle free!" You're one of the darn reasons I got into this mess!! Moving right along I quickly do the old 'baby in the hospital' switcheroo and load their innocent empty blue bin into my car. I drive off chuckling to myself while looking back in the rear view mirror at their now booze-stuffed bin: "Wow, what a bunch of drunks live in this neighborhood! If I were you, I'd lower the rent!" Once home, I place a lone, empty plastic Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice bottle in my humble and virtuous booze-free bin and place it prominently next to the curb – four days ahead of time. 'This is the real me, people!' But how long can it last? Did I just hear that Publix has a liter and 1/2 of of Foxhorn Chardonnay on sale for $6.47? Oh well… I tried, Lord! Looks like the best place for my bin is gonna be in the back of my car for now. Wait a minute, I think I remember seeing a 'House for Sale' sign go up on Old Point and the owners drive off in a U-Haul. Hmmm…. Read More Happy Winos Bookmark Email this

The Mean Glass

Ah…the joy of wine! In its warm fuzzy afterglow, how different the world looks and sounds. Is that my neighbor’s ear-shattering leaf blower I hear?! Not after several glasses of Louis Latour 2006 Vire Clesse. More like the gentle buzz of a thousand honey bees. What’s that I see in my yard?! Did some trashy passerby toss his empty crushed Budweiser can into my azaleas? Another glass of my delicious Louis Latour and suddenly I see it more as a chic aluminum ‘object-de-garden-art’ by renowned German sculptor Anhauser Busch. And as for myself, all my flaws and imperfections seem to melt away (especially after several more snootfuls). It must be obvious to anyone with eyes, Monsieur Latour tells me, that I am at the ‘top of my game’, the ‘peak of my intellectual powers’ and the very embodiment of ‘worldly wisdom’. Obvious to anyone but Lanier, who has the nerve to say to me: “You’re slurring, I think you oughta slow down on the vino.”
“WHAT?! What did you just shay?!” I ask, fuming with the kind of righteous overreaction that only a drunk can muster.
“I’m just saying I think you might wanna give it a rest,” says Lanier, quietly.
Well, that timid suggestion is all it takes for The Mean Glass to come banging on my door, demanding satisfaction. “YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS?” I hiss. “YOU’RE A CONTROL FREAK!” This to someone who, only minutes before, I saw as near to perfect as a human can be.
Ask any married couple, and they’ll tell you. When the Mean Glass hits, RUN!! Sometimes it’s you, sometimes it’s them, and no one ever knows just what might set it off. Our friend Kathy reported to us one of her recent Mean Glass moments. She and her British husband were having a lovely evening, when he sweetly suggested that she “Ease up on the Pinot Grigio.” Her response? “YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS? YOU’RE ENGLISH! F---- YOU AND F---- YOUR COUNTRY!”
“Not exactly the high point of our marriage,” says Kathy, sheepishly.
“YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS?!” remains the universal battle cry of the Mean Glass and is almost always followed by the nonsensical insult. Once when Lanier politely implied, after a boozy night out on the town, that I didn’t really need to open a new bottle of wine at midnight, I aristocratically tossed out at him “YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS? YOU ARE SOOOO MIDDLE CLASS!” Totally overlooking the fact that I’m the son of a Long Island butcher and his Sicilian fishwife and Lanier’s the direct descendant of Sir Nicholas Lanier, ‘Master of the King’s Music’ to King Charles II.
The Mean Glass doesn’t care whom it says what to. Basically its evil plan is to drive your loved one as far away as possible so the road is clear for a return trip to Wineville… without them sticking their big fat nose in your wine glass. But are you really mad at them? Nah. Deep down you know you love them and you feel safe enough to let off a little steam, saying to them what you couldn’t say to your boss, your mother in law, that pain-in-the-butt client, or any number of petty tyrants who walk all over your world all day long. So next time when you gently ask your mate: “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” and they answer out of the blue: “LET’S GET A DIVORCE, SELL EVERYTHING AND SPLIT IT DOWN THE MIDDLE!”… know it’s really just their way of saying: “I want another glass of wine (no matter how many I’ve already had!)”.
The Mean Glass is, of course, not to be confused with The Horny Glass which one usually hits late in a raucous cocktail party or late night at a restaurant that's turned into a bar. Our friend Liza says she always knows when it hits because "I'm suddenly attracted to every man in the room EXCEPT my husband." Usually that leads to some guilty confession the next morning. "Honey, last night when I was out with the girls I ended up kissing some guy at the bar and I just wanted you to hear about it from me first. It meant absolutely nothing." And it didn't, because it wasn't really you. It was The Horny Glass that had momentarily taken possession of your lips. Blessedly, you often don’t remember who or what the Horny Glass told you to do. Which means it doesn’t count!
Not to be forgotten is The Weepy Glass, which can occur about 2 1/2 hours into a joy-filled wine party. When this strikes, it's best to just sneak away from the hapless 'Weepy Glass' victim as there is no amount of logic or common sense that will make this person stop crying. They just need to get that emotional lump out of their throat and will awake happy and refreshed in the morning without any help from you. Some people use the Weepy Glass as a way to deal with problems without paying a shrink. We all have that special tearjerker of a tune that we play over and over again once we’ve had the Weepy Glass (mine’s ‘Moon River’). My cousin Carol says she once woke up at dawn on the floor in front of her CD player with her arm outstretched and her finger still touching the button; she had obviously replayed Edith Piaf’s ‘La Vie En Rose’ till she (ahem) 'fell asleep' next to her empty, overturned wine bottle. "It was humiliating, to say the least, but I’d finally cried my divorce out and felt better than I had in months!" confesses Carol. “And I don’t even understand a word of French!”.
So whether it’s the bad boy Mean Glass, the oversexed Horny Glass, or the old self pitying ‘swallow and wallow’ Weepy Glass that decides to spend the night; just remember…they’ll be gone and forgotten in the morning. Hopefully, most of all, by the person you may or may not still be married to!

Cheers!

Take Me To Your Liter! (and a half)

Long before the walls of Wall Street came tumbling down, my bank went bankrupt, and General Motors asked if it could borrow a couple 'o billion (sorry guys, I'm a little short myself this week); Lanier and I enjoyed perusing the aisles of our favorite wine boutiques. "Oh look!" Lanier would cry out. "This Russian River Valley Syrah from Dutton Estate got 95 points from Robert Parker. And it's only $34 dollars." Melodramatically I would rush over and read aloud from the card below it Parker's poetic description as though I were on stage at the Kennedy Center. "....Delivering dense concentrated blackberry, wild berry, anise, fresh earth, cedar, and pleasing mineral notes. The finish sails on and on." It was at that point that Lanier and I would exchange a look that said 'when that ship sails, we're gonna be on it'. "Ahoy there matey, we're comin' aboard. Heist the Happy Wino flag!" I'd gleefully scream. Today I'd just scream period. Thirty four dollars?! Not a chance in hell!! Our naive Doris Day days of singing 'Que Syrah, Syrah' are over! We Winos have changed our tune. Our empty wallets have helped us see the error of our ways. That which we once scorned and ridiculed; we now humbly bow down before and ask its forgiveness. We’re talking of course about the 1.5 liter ‘double’ bottle. That's right, we’ve gone from 95 points to nine dollars and fifty cents. The only points we're looking at now during this Grape Recession are decimal points! It seems like only yesterday when I would shake my head and smile indulgently at the little old lady in Publix pushing her supermarket cart filled with small neat stacks of Lean Cuisines and a jumbo 1.5 bottle of Chardonnay. 'Bless her heart' I'd say to myself... Nowadays, instead of a smug inner monologue, I'm stoppin' the old grey fox and asking her right out loud. "Hey lady, that wine any good?" She pauses politely to reply. "It's got some very subtle notes of lemon grass, honey, and vanilla." then elbowing me in the ribs, she brags out of the side of her mouth "you won't find a better buzz for your buck in this clip joint, buddy!" Well... no, she didn't exactly say that. It was more like... "It's my favorite dear, but everybody's different". Being new to the 1.5 cult ourselves we needed more guidance than that. So Lanier and I decided to ask some of the more experienced devotees among our friends what their favorite ‘El Cheapos’ were. Lanier's good friend Kathy in D.C. said "Okay....don't laugh. My favorite supermarket wine is Pinot Grigio from Cavit ($9.99). For some reason it goes down well...all 1.5 liters of it!!" Our friend Gary who's a Beverly Hills bartender talked up the 1.5 La Terre Chardonnay ($9.99) "a lot of the restaurants here secretly use it as their house wine". Here's a few more that got high praise including some of our favorites. ( Yes, we actually went out and drank a whole bunch of 1.5's for you. Don't thank us, it's our job.) Faves were: Brownstone Chardonnay ($11.19) Folonari Montepulciano d' Abruzzo ($12.19) Peter Mertes Reisling ($11.19) Frontera Carmenere ($8.09) Frontera Cabernet Merlot blend ($8.09) (which also turns out to be the best selling wine in South Carolina) And if you've had a good night at the poker table or the bingo hall, you can always splurge on these two 1.5's: Red Cliffe New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc ($16.19) Ardeche Louis Latour Chardonnay ($20.29) Hint: Look for all the above on the bottom shelf of wine stores and supermarkets as they stock more pricey stuff at eye level in hopes you will be tempted. A mischievous vintner friend of ours in Napa recently poured his favorite 1.5 Cab into an empty Chateau Margaux bottle he had saved, slipped a paper sleeve over it, and snuck it into a blind taste test some local wine snobs were holding. Turns out 4 outta 5 of them picked it as their favorite. Needless to say they weren't too happy when he showed them the 1.5 liter bottle of ten buck bargain juice from Wal-mart their pretentious palates had plotzed over.
Oh by the way, in terms of wine etiquette, it is now acceptable to openly display your 1.5's. Yes, at long last, 1.5's, (everybody’s dirty little secret) has finally come out of the (liquor) closet. At a very fancy dinner party we recently attended, held at a beautiful 3000 acre plantation, our charming and sophisticated hostess rang a tiny antique sterling silver bell and servants rushed in to fill our crystal wine goblets with (are you sitting down?) 1.5 bottles of YELLOWTAIL!!!! After which they proudly placed the bottles out in the open on her 18th century $100,000 dollar sideboard. One word of warning though...when someone invites you to dinner and says 'you could bring a bottle of wine’ …they don't mean a 1.5. Keep 'em for yourself. We should also say, once you go '1.5' that doesn't mean you aren't tempted to go back to one of those skinny 750 ml high priced floozies. The other day a shiny new bottle of Pascal Jolivet Sancerre ($42) seemed to be knocking on our door asking us to come out and play. But we suddenly remembered a different leader, President Obama, and his Inaugural warning that "it was time to put away childish things". (Gee, you think he was talking about all those fancy bottles of high class swill we all downed these past eight years?). Guess we’ll put that $42 Sancerre on hold for now. In the meantime, we have faith America will be number 1 again. Or even better...1.5!

Keep ‘Happy Hour’ Happy!

You know winter is our time to get down with some spicy, heart-warming, berry-bustin' reds that make us want to throw another log on the fire and kick back with some sultry French jazz, letting our minds wistfully drift off to Paris. Beaufort, South Carolina ? We're familiar with it. We use to live there once, an hour ago. Before we moved here to the Left Bank. RING! RING! Dammit. We forgot to turn off the cell phone! RING! RING! "How many times is it gonna ring?!" "Don't they know it's 5 o'clock in Beaufort?!" RING! RING! "Oh my god, they're calling back!" "It could be an emergency." Lanier shakes his head 'no' violently and bugs his eyes out with his best 'don't-you-dare-look' -- "You know our rule." Indeed I do...it's 'NEVER answer the phone during Happy Hour'. How many times have we been warm and cozy, happily floating down a soothing river of red, nuzzling a bottle of say Chateauneuf du Pape (Feraud-Brunel makes one of our favorites--French Rhone red 2005--92pts.!) Okay okay...so we only had a bottle of it once and somebody else paid for it. (just using a little artistic license here, friends!) So what if it was a bottle of some much lesser known French red under $12 that the ‘Count de Costco’ was hawking from his supersized superstore wine cellar. The point is, we were in a beautiful boozy bliss. RING! RING! "What gives?". Has my godforsaken cellphone lost it's take-a-message feature? Verizon shall hear of this. RING! RING!
I look down and see it's my friend Rhonda. I love Rhonda. She's one of the funniest women I know. Actress, playwright, comedienne. No doubt she's calling to tell me her latest hilarious New York misadventure! Surely I can talk to her during Happy Hour. I take a nice long mellow sip and pick up the phone. "Finally!!" she barks irately. (Uh oh, not a good beginning!) She’s launches into a bitter take-no-prisoners tirade: "The deaf old lady in the apartment next door falls asleep with the TV blasting and I'm gonna kill her!" "Remember that guy I was dating? Guess what?? Turns out he's married!!". "Why always me?! Why??! Why???" she wails tragically into my poor ear. "I'm getting old and I'm broke! And I live in a dump! God, I hate my life!!" Once again, The Curse of the Happy Hour Haranguer is upon me. One hour later and I hate her life too and myself for being stupid enough to pick up the phone. Upstairs, I can hear Lanier happily tapping his foot to the angelic voices of ABBA. "You can dance! You can dance! Having the time of your life!" Downstairs, my friend's still on the rant from Hell. My empty wine glass glares accusingly back at me... 'How could you?! This was supposed to be our time!’ Now this is not just a fluke. I've had people call me during other Happy Hours to tell me in sad hushed tones things like "Estelle Getty just died." "Who?" I ask. "The oldest golden girl from the TV series." " And you felt the need to call and tell me this morbid little tidbit during my only happy hour of the day?" I ask flatly. Or here's another. "You'll never guess who's got cancer of the prostate." I don't wanna guess. I just want to drink my South Australian Shiraz in peace looking at the beautiful sunset from my porch trying desperately to affirm "Life IS beautiful." Instead, this unwelcome medical messenger of doom and gloom is babbling in my ear.-- "He's only in his 40's and he had absolutely no symptoms--it was a total shock!" I think "Hey, I'm in my 40's and I don't have any symptoms. This very minute I could be riddled with prostate cancer and not know it. Good God!" My Happy Hour comes to a screeching halt as I run to my computer to Google 'latest cures for prostate cancer.’ (Fortunately I find that red wine is listed as a preventative!) I know, I know... death, destruction, depression are a part of life. We know they're out there. But for at least one hour (okay, maybe two) we would like to drink a luscious Argentinian Malbec and revel in the miracle of the 'little red grape that could' that is now doing a delightful tango on our tastebuds. Is that too much to ask? No TV news. No opening bills. And absolutely no calls! Happy Hour is a sacred space in which we must see the glass of life as half full to be served with a side of witty repartee, laughter, and music. Aaahhh...........RING! RING! "Oh no you don't, whoever you are!" "Lanier, turn up the ABBA!"

Cheers!

Newton Farm's Wine Director Sue Mohle

If you are ever near Kiawah Island South Carolina, then be sure and visit Sue Mohle at Newton Farms. Sue was chosen by Food + Wine Magazine in 2008 as being the best wine buyer in South Carolina. We can agree, Sue has a super palate and is a super person. We love her wine dept! Almost as much as Mariah Carey who recently bought 12 bottles of Cristal there to make mimosas during her stay at the uber fab Sanctuary Resort on Kiawah about a mile away. (So that's how she hits those high notes!)

Celebrity Wine Lover of the Week
Princess Hildur of Iceland pours her favorite house wine:
Hughes Beaulieu Picpoul '07 National retail price $10.99-$12.99
Imported by Frans Kysela Pere Et Fils
Distributed by Henri Gabriel AdVintage Wines Charleston S.C.
Bought at Bill's Liquour Beaufort S.C. Celia Strong Wine buyer

Royalty visits Beaufort and pours her favorite wine!

Icelandic Princess Holmfridur Hildur Kristjansdottir visited Beaufort S. C. this past weekend. Princess Hildur is the only direct descendant of the legendary Viking warrior king Erik the Red who we all remember from our history books discovered and colonized Greenland. (see The Saga of Erik the Red). Erik himself was the grandson of Norway's King Hrolf Nefja. Erik's son, Prince Leif Eriksson pushed on to North America, discovering Newfoundland and built the first Christian church on the North American continent. The tall and formidable Princess Hildur divides her time between her family's 9000 acre royal compound in Iceland and visiting good friends in America. For a reception in her honor Princess Hildur asked to choose the wine that would be served. Her favorite wine of choice?: Hugues Beaulieu Picpoul '07 Coteaux Du Languedoc

More on this wine:
100% Picpoul, aka Folle Blanche. Pale yellow color with green tints. Fresh and fine aromas of grapefruit and exotic fruit. Lime flavors, with typical focusing acidity, are hallmarks of Picpoul. A best value wine, this wine impresses novices and hardened geeks equally.
Known as “the Muscadet of the South” in France, this is to the Mediterranean coast of France what Albariño is to northwest Spain…the default wine for fresh shellfish & seafood.

"The latest installment of a perennial amazing value, the 2007 Coteaux du Languedoc Picpoul de Pinet Hugues Beaulieu from the region’s Cave de Pomerols coop smells of clover, musk melon and sea air. Subtly chalky, it finishes with invigorating salinity, juicy, melon fruit, and a virtual crunch of fresh garden greens. Here is a wine that delivers the lilt, minerality, and refreshment reminiscent of a Muscadet, dry Riesling, or Jacquerre-based Savoie white, but with relatively low acidity and a soft mouth-feel."
- Wine Advocate (#178, Aug. 2008), 88 pts

"Fruity wine that loves a good barbecue"
"An absolutely delicious light-bodied, tank-fermented and -aged white. Crisp grapefruit, lemon, and lime notes jump from the glass. This wine is a perfect match for grilled seafood or chicken." - Robert Parker, Jr - Business Week (July 2, 2007) - 87 pts