Over the years, my taste in wine has evolved but these last three years-- living in the wine zone of the world--I've become much more educated on wine than I ever thought I would be. I could even tell the difference between... say a Syrah and a Zinfandel if I were blindfolded. Zinfandel happens to be one of my favorites. I find that I'm partial to blends that have a strong zin base.
Once upon a time I loved white wine but over the last few years, I'm definitely a red wine drinker although when it's insanely hot outside, I crave something cold... like white wine, sparkling wine or a nice cold beer. I try to stay away from beer as a beer gut is not very becoming but occasionally I indulge. When it comes to beer, the Brits have it down. New Castle and Boddingtons are the only brands I will drink these days.
But red wine is my beverage of choice. In fact, I find that lately, instead of meditating (which was the sole purpose behind this blog), I've been indulging in red wine and Netflix marathons on my evenings. (I made a deal with myself that I am pausing my Playstation games because I became a little too addicted to the Buffy game, Chaos Bleeds, where I wanted to do nothing else but kick vamps and zombie asses).
Perhaps playing the bag lady/wino all those months had something to do with it. My character was stationed at a few different spots throughout the duration of this venture.
First, there was that high-end snob hotel where I was the full-fledged crazy bag lady. Then I was moved to the park where I was a much more subtle wino. I drank wine out of a boot and sang songs about wine. But, when it cooled down, my character was moved to a local tasting room in the center of town. I spent hours and hours in this tasting room as the wino and as myself watching how it's done and witnessing all the wine snobs. I became friendly with the women who ran the place and they were quite generous with their wine.
One of my favorite touches w/ the "wino" character was the red wine mustache. Yes, if you drink an abundance of red wine and do not regularly wipe your mouth, you can develop these little wine stains above your lips. I discovered this purely by accident but decided that it totally worked for the character so gave myself these stains before every show.
I joined the tasting room's wine club which included free tastings. When I got laid off last month, I had to quit my wine club membership because I could no longer afford that luxury. What I liked about this winery was that they specialized in red wines. The wine shipments were quarterly and some bottles cost $15, others were as high as $65. Loved the place and the people who worked there. It was sort of my "wine country" Cheers but I had to trim the fat when I lost my job....
Fortunately, for me, just because I quit my wine club doesn't mean I have to quit wine. If you know where to look, you can find the best deals on wine here in this little wine region of the world and I'm feeling rather generous tonight in my slightly mind altered state so here we go...
One of my favorites is only available at Trader Joe's. It's called Tribunal and Trader Joe's gets a shipment in maybe once a year...
I discovered it a couple of years ago when I asked the wine buyer at TJ's if he had any good deals. He passionately guided me over to a display of wine on sale for $9.99. He told me how it was THE best deal on wine in wine country. This guy was serious. I mean, I saw veins popping out of his temples when he told me. It's a blend w/ a zin base. Blend w/ a zin base? I'm sold! (but the clerk couldn't stop telling me just how much he loved it and what a great deal this was). After my Tribunal cherry was popped, I concur with the clerk.
Last summer when I still had a job, I bought a couple of cases when the annual shipment came in. As fate would have it, a few weeks ago shortly after I got laid off, TJ's got this year's annual shipment in. Because of my bare bones budget, I'd buy a couple of bottles at a time and then call and ask them to put some aside for me. I've made some friends at TJ's and they do well by me....
My second guilty pleasure was a recommendation by this woman at Whole Foods. I told her what I liked and she said, "I have just the right wine for you.". Marietta's Old Vine Red Lot 52. Another blend w/ a zin base. Fruity and peppery and damn, fucking good. I would even say it's better than Tribunal. It's just under $13 at Whole Foods but if you buy 10, you get 10% off. Needless to say, I took full advantage of that.... They're now on Lot 57 but it's still excellent wine.
My BFF (who I'm currently pissed at... won't go there) came to visit me last summer for my birthday. At that time, I was baking special bread. That all started shortly after I invested in a Champion Juicer. So, in order to purify my body, I juiced daily... we're talking everything from peppers to beets to carrots to cantaloupe... I was a juicing machine and I felt like pure fucking energy when I juiced daily. The problem was I had a ton of pulp leftover and I felt guilty for throwing it out. So I froze it.... Only after a few days, my freezer was packed w/ tupperware stuffed w/ frozen mixed vegetable/fruit pulp.
I made everything from pulp gumbo to casseroles to soup to vegetarian chili to bread. On one particular occasion I put a little THC extract in my bread batter and... WOW. A star was born. When BFF got here, we were like total Christians---it was wine and bread every day. I can barely remember the week he was here. It was the lone vacation I took from my job and it's mostly a blur.
Right before he left we went to this place called The Rivers End. It's in Jenner where the Russian River meets the Pacific Ocean. Rivers End is an upscale restaurant with a few log cabins for rent. The ocean front views are beautiful and the night sky is spectacular.
We checked in, had a nice dinner at the restaurant w/ cocktails and wine... went back to our room and drank a bottle of wine that I got as a birthday gift from my neighbor... and we ate bread. Lots of it.
We watched the sun set, listened to music from my ipod and talked about how romantic it would be if we were actually fucking each other. And then we laughed. We laughed a lot. For about an hour, in fact---nonstop.
We kept trying to make it back up the hill to the restaurant. We're talking maybe a 100 feet? But we couldn't stop laughing. The hill was steep and we'd go a few steps, but the momentum of our laughter kept pulling us back. We finally made it to the restaurant at the top of the hill but couldn't stop laughing and we were afraid that we'd laugh like lunatics in this high-class restaurant and get kicked out. In our state of paranoia, we came up with this scenario where we would get kicked out of our cabin and neither of us would be able to drive because we were so fucked up. If you knew Jenner, you would understand our fear. It's on the coast and it's the middle of fucking nowhere! So we actually decided not to go in and went back to our room where... in about a half hour, decided we wanted to go back to the restaurant for some wine and... it started all over again.
We finally made it! When I was talking to the waitress, I could not look at him. I felt a laugh stirring in my throat. Oh god oh god, I can't look at him. ... We ordered our wine and dashed outside to the restaurant balcony.... and sighed. The waitress knew we were wasted but she didn't care... I'm sure she's seen it all. Then my friend and I looked at the sky and talked about doing a documentary on his family (which I still maintain because they are proof that homosexuality and gender disorders are definitely genetic. I don't want to violate my friend's privacy so I will stop there).
Well, I could go on about that night and it truly was a night to remember but I will move onto the next morning which was pure fucking hell. We checked out, insanely hungover craving eggs, protein, coffee, water.... if you've ever been hungover like I have, you feel me....
We drove through Bodega Bay (yes, The Birds) which reeked of dead fish and I kept having my friend (who was driving my car) pull over because I thought I was going to puke. We ended up eating brunch at some place where Tippi Hedren has resurged her career performing on weekends. There were sea lions on the other side of the glass which was cool but, for whatever reason, watching them gave me motion sickness which made me actually go to the restroom and puke up brunch.
When we left the restaurant, my friend proceeded to puke in the parking lot.
See where I'm going with this?
After a night like that, you pretty much want to go on the wagon for a while which is exactly what i did. I had looked forward to BFF coming to visit for months so when he left, I no longer had anything to look forward to. I started becoming depressed and decided that drinking and eating special bread would only increase that so, instead, I started doing yoga and hiking and biking and juicing and saying, "fuck the pulp!"
But here I am full circle and damn, I sure love my red wine... I could drink it every night and never grow tired...
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