How often do you taste a Zinfandel that you'd describe as "silky?" Not often enough, I'll bet. For one thing, common wisdom says they don't age, and, well, young and silky don't usually go together. The 1991 Lytton Springs Winery Lytton Springs Zin (a/k/a "black label") is no longer young, but its texture alone is reason enough to try to hunt one down. There's a touch of old-style about this one, with its age bringing out more raisin and fewer berry flavors, but for me it was a delight, and it's still packed with plenty of fruit. I've always loved this wine, no matter the vintage -- including the '89, which was probably my favorite Zin from that lackluster year. Ridge bought the winery (which used to make a nice Cab, as well) in 1991, but kept the old "black" Lytton Springs label through 1994, after which they renamed the wine Ridge Sonoma Station. I could swear they messed with the formula, as well. It's never been the same since.

One nice Cab. And not enough of it. Lady and/or gentleman, I present to you Girard Reserve Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 1990. Still going places, by the way. I confess I do appreciate a little eucalyptus in my red wines from time to time. I'm not quite sure how it found its way into this one, but it did. I've often been amused to find, on visits to California, a big old eucalyptus tree growing right next to a vineyard I've always associated with that flavor. Whether that's the case here, I couldn't say, but this wine went beautifully with a very nice porterhouse steak and, although it got a bit dense and inky toward the bottom of the bottle, there was an abundance of rich, dark fruit, with that minty, sassy euc thing providing a refreshing zing throughout. If you have two, try one soon. If not . . . oh, well.

Merlot. Isn't is almost a cliché these days? At least the California varietal type, I mean. Well, there still are some superlative examples out there, and one of them has been made for many years by Arrowood. I drank my last bottle of the '90 Saturday, and it was mellow, balanced and beautiful. This isn't a wine I buy every year because, frankly, it isn't a wine I can find every year. But I do look out for it and it does reward.

(Oh, and remember what I was saying about boycotting French wines being bullshit? I changed my mind. Buy California! Or Spain! Or even Italy! But what I already have in my cellar, I'm drinking, dammit. Not pouring down the drain. That stupid, I'm not. So....)

In the 1990 mode, we also opened a bottle of the Pichon Baron. Oooo, la la! Still drowsy and not quite integrated, this was a killer bottle that probably would have been more fun to drink by itself than with a hunk of buffalo tenderloin. I frankly don't know what possessed me to open a bottle of Bordeaux with buffalo to begin with. While the Arrowood was a beautiful match, this one sort of strutted around insisting it was important and refusing to play its part in the ensemble. To its credit, however, it maintained this position throughout the meal and refused to surrender.

Ok, ok, enough of that already. It's true, though. The Pichon shows every indication of greatness and is lovely (even if a bit closed) today, but still has a way to go. Something to look forward to.

A few brief and foggy notes.

We opened a 1987 Silver Oak Alexander Valley Cabernet a few nights ago. Reeking of volatile acidity, with nasty vegetal stuff behind it, we just let it sit and went for a 1991 La Jota Howell Mountain Selection, which was massive, dense and dark and got more so as we got deeper into the bottle. The last pour was like ink. I'll let these sit a while yet and hope the fruit lasts. It's there now but hard to define other than as something like "blackberry thicket."

But the Silver Oak saga wasn't over. The next night, the VA had mostly blown off. The typical SO flavors were more evident. It was OK. Before the prices at SO got tacky, I bought lots of the stuff. I didn't like the '87 Alex much when I tasted it on release and didn't buy any (I bought a double dose of Napa instead, which sold for the same price back then), and this bottle was contributed by my S.O. But there is some question about these '87s generally. Are they going to mature before the fruit dies? And is anyone else getting sick of asking this question?

On another note, I've gone and gotten a serious revived crush on Brunello di Montelcino. Must be the change of seasons. With spring trying to take over from one of the nastiest winters in recent memory, I'm reluctantly releasing my passion for Rhones in favor of lighter reds. But care is required. I don't have nearly the stash of Brunellos that I have of Châteauneufs. We tried a 1990 Nardi with an absolutely delicious game dinner at a restaurant a few weeks ago. Near the top of its game and possibly a touch past. But perfect with just about every dish from quail to venison. And just the other night, a revelation. We've been making a Jacques Pepin recipe for veal scallopine with shallots, amagnac and a touch of cream for years without finding a completely satisfactory wine match. Burgundies were good but never a bullseye. A 1988 Col D'Orcia Brunello hit the mark spot on. Another star just beginning to fade. Maybe. Don't know why I didn't think of this before. Aged Brunellos are amazingly versatile and go with lots of dishes that are too "red" for white but not "big" enough for a hearty red. Unfortunately, they are now also expensive, as well.

I used to actually be a fan of brett (brettanomyces). I kind of like that animal, leathery component in red wine. But it's finally starting to occur to me that it tends to overshadow the wine's own unique character to the point where all really bretty wines start to taste alike. That's a bad thing.

I'm sorry, but this is just plain stupid.

The no politics rule is about to be broken, because I need to make it clear that I sympathize COMPLETELY with the sentiments expressed here, but come on, already! Just who exactly do these guys think they're hurting by pouring out the '86 Margaux and the '95 Dom Perignon?

"In all, Tim Wright and Tommy Cortopassi, co-owners of the restaurant, unceremoniously dumped 12 bottles of vintage French wine worth about $1,000 into a white plastic bucket.

"Wright and Cortopassi poured with gusto on the sidewalk outside their front door on South Virginia Street to protest the continued opposition of France in the United Nations to the U.S. campaign against Iraq."

I've tried to make this point before, elsewhere, and I'll try again here, so listen up, all 3 of you. Boycotts are stupid and usually end up hurting the wrong people. The people who make their living from growing grapes in France, many of whom can't afford to drink their own wines (although that certainly isn't true of, say, Corinne Mentzelopoulos) aren't the ones making foreign policy. But if you feel you need to punish them anyway, or to deprive the French government of the tax revenue from the wine you buy, don't buy it! "The French" have already been paid for the bottles that went down the drain in Reno last week. They couldn't care less if that wine passed through a human digestive system on its way to the sewer. And I'd bet some poor American shmuck is going to end up getting the cost of those wines added to his dinner tab. Let's get real here, folks!

Okay. Well. We now return you to our regularly scheduled blog.

The problem with allowing so much time to go by between posts here is that I get intimidated by the sheer volume of stuff I want to write about which, naturally, leads me to procrastinate further. So I'll just jump in here in no particular order and ramble a bit.

Well, speaking of Aussie Shiraz, our wine group had a blind tasting of 'em a few nights after I posted on the Charles Cimicky (immediately below, in case you didn't follow that link). You'd have thought I would have recognized them instantly, but I didn't. Which is to say, I guess I did but publicly rejected that intuition as being wrong because, well, the wines had no bacon fat, big, ripe cherries or spice. Which is to say that they all tasted a whole lot like the Shiraz I'd just noted had the same deficits a few days earlier. This is discouraging, because I've always liked the stuff and I'm now despairing of ever being able to find one I like again. This is especially disconcerting because I'd much rather be buying wine from Australia right now than wine from France. (Ooops, that's politics, let's move on.)

1996 Sanford Pinot Noir Barrel Select (Sanford & Benedict Vineyard). I had a few bad bottles of this a few months ago. Or perhaps they were asleep. This was was neither bad nor sleepy. It was quite nice, though I thought it got a little rough around the edges toward the bottom of the bottle. I'm noticing that California Pinots seem to go through a lot of ups and downs -- at least the ones I've been drinking. I thought the '96s were all goners. Not so.

Ah, here's a beaut. 1993 Arrowood Malbec. What a fabulous bottle of wine. And, frankly, nowhere near ready to drink. The first glass was heavenly but still more in-your-face than I usually like with food. It turned out to have a love affair with my nicely dry-aged NY Strip, though. The concentration and depth in this wine and the lushness of the fruit as it wends its way through its 10th year of life are very impressive. The rest of the bottle was still somewhat closed, though. Delicious anyway, but definitely asking for more time. I hope I live long enough to see these come into their full maturity, 'cause I only have one left but then it's time to start on the '94s. I'm likely to try one of them first, actually, because it's entirely possible they're not quite as massive.

A few briefs (it's been a while on these): 1990 Viader. Developing just beautifully, so tasty it's hard to stop drinking. The bottle was gone before we knew it. 1994 Flora Springs Trilogy. Following the Viader, there actually seemed to be more stuff here, but it was a touch on the premature side. Totally enjoyable now but obviously still holding something back. If you only have a few, try one now anyway to gauge your own schedule for the rest.

I'd just let this sit here while I go do some prep for dinner, but this is Blogger, and you never know. So I'll put it up, just in case someone comes along looking for something to read. More soon. Really.

I rarely post on my other blog when I've had wine. For some reason I feel I have to be (relatively) sober when discussing politics, religion and, well, the other stuff I dwell upon there. Here, though, I find a glass by my side helps the flow of ideas.

Tonight we opened one of the first of our fabled '98 Aussie Shirazes. Shiraz's? Whatever. 1998 Charles Cimicky Shiraz Signature, RP some large score, as I recall, highly recommended or "awesome" by the proprietor of the establishment from which it was purchased. Right. Okay, well, it has an "awesome" amount of oak, that's for sure, but the only other awesome thing about it was how awesomely (is that a word?) it tasted and smelled like an overripe Zinfandel blend (e.g., healthy doses of Petite Sirah, Carignane, Alicante Bouschet, Mourvedre, a touch of Grenache, whatever). This kind of wine can be lots of fun, occasionally, but when I open a Shiraz or a Syrah, I expect at least a modicum of bacon fat, some big, ripe cherries and absolutely, positively some substantial element of spice. Not here.

On the other hand, before I start sounding too high and mighty, I believe I may have been a bit too hasty in my judgment of 1990 Burgundies (yes, from the mundane to the sublime we go.) That judgment was largely fueled by the fact that the LOML purchased a number of 1990 Amiot-Servelle Chambolle-Musigny Les Charmes several years ago, with which we've been steadily disappointed over the past year or two. Sunday night, the one we opened was so sour, so acidic, so fruit-less, so, well, bad that we decided to apply the pump and move on to a '95 Girardin Volnay Clos des Chênes (quite delicious and robust, though not particularly complex). But upon re-examinining it (the Amiot-Servelle) tonight, we discovered quite a soft, round, layered bottle of Pinot, a bit tired but whispering of greater things. The flavors in this wine at uncorking suggested that it's well over the hill, but if that were the case, there's no way it could have been as enjoyable as it was tonight after two days in vacuum. I believe we'll hold the last few bottles for a year or three more. They can't get any worse than the initial impression the other night and I'm beginning to suspect that they're just now beginning to wake up.

Happy New Year, one and all. It's not as if I haven't been drinking over the past few weeks, but nothing memorable enough to mention. Well, that's not entirely true. We opened a '95 Ridge Geyserville last night. They just keep getting better and better. Last year, we opened the '93 and the '95 together. My neighbor, who isn't a big wine drinker but knows what she likes, preferred the '93. She found it much more, well, user friendly. So we did a reprise last night. She still loves the '93 but she's now beginning to "get" the '95. It's always nice to hear a fresh perspective on good wine (and bad wine, too) from someone who has no pretensions or agendas and just speaks from the 'buds. My guess is that by next year, the '95 will be better still.

Our last '90 René Engel Clos Vougeot was consumed a few weeks ago with immense enjoyment, long sighs and smacking of lips. It was, indeed, a treasure. Some say the '90s are still in their infancy, but that's not what I'm finding. My cellar conditions were, admittedly, not so good for several years, but I like fruit in my Burgundy and I'm not so sure I want to trade it all in for those secondary flavors that sometimes come around later and sometimes don't. Anyway, we had no regrets about this bottle, except perhaps for the overbearing waiter who decided that our presenting it to him to open was an invitation to engage us in wine conversation. One reason I prefer to enjoy such bottles in the privacy of my own home rather than take them to BYOB restaurants.

I did discover an inexpensive but very nice little non-vintage champagne recently. Since traffic on this blog is so light, I'll happily share it without fear of cutting off my own supply. Hah! Raymond Henriot Brut. There ya go. I'm afraid I can't remember enough specifics to describe it, but it really grabbed attention in the midst of a group of both similarly and somewhat higher priced bottles (it goes for around $20, I believe). Good stuff.

After this week, though, I'm going to cut back on the bubbly for a bit. It happens every year. Bubble burn-out. Time for some concentration on those big, heavy reds that always seem to taste their best in the dead of winter with rich, comforting food and a roaring fire. Looking forward to it.

OK, mini-vert: There are a few California cabernets that over the years have been sufficiently accessible, very reasonably priced and still special enough that I made a point of buying a case or half-case every year since the early '90s. In the last few years, I've been forced to drop most of them, usually because the price is no longer quite so "reasonable" (Montelena, Viader, Silver Oak) or because they'll no longer ship to Pennsylvania and so I've been knocked off the mailing list (Togni).

Anderson's Conn Valley Vineyard is the last holdout, probably because the reviews have been little tepid over the past few years, although I'm not sure why. Todd Anderson's wines, at least to me, often aren't so attractive young, which seems to be the sine qua non of "quality" these days (i.e., will a restaurant be able to sell a lot of it at $150 a bottle within a year of its release?) In this case, perhaps not. At a tasting we did in the spring of 2001, the 1997 was already closing down.

I thought it would be interesting to check out those "lesser" vintages of the last decade (plus), so we opened an '89, a '93, a '96 and a '98. With the exception of the '98, which I suspect will also come around, they were surprisingly good. Most unexpectedly, the '89 was still vibrant, with a sassy red fruit zing that reminded me of a Sweet Tart. '89 was generally just a lousy, diluted year in Napa, but I recall Todd saying when we visited the winery a few years later that he was pretty proud of his '89s, which is why we made a point of digging some up.

Anyway, the hit of the night was the '96, which had a definite cedar/cigar box thing happening wrapped in really sweet dark red fruit. I also liked the '93 quite a lot, but it had a little too much of an earthy, roasted nut nuance for some people. All in all, I'd say these wines were delicious but a bit on the simple side. They all lacked the complexity to qualify as first class, but I'm glad to them in my cellar.

The Ruffinos were an entirely different story. The Ducale Oro is Ruffino's top of the line Chianti Classico Riserva. It's another wine that's fallen out of favor in recent years and I wanted to see why. I've had the opportunity to try quite a few of the '85s, '86s and '88s over the years and have always been impressed. At this tasting, we opened the '88, '90, '95 and '97, without question the top vintages of that decade, but none of them showed very well.

Right off the bat, I made a mistake. I had fully intended to taste the Chiantis before the Cabs, but I numbered the bottles wrong (it was a blind tasting) and by the time I realized it, the first flight had been poured. After the rich, lush Cabernets, these wines tasted thin and dull, and it just goes to show how important such choices can be. But, that said, the wines were disappointing. As I said, I've tried the '88 several times before with meals and have always found it too young but promising, with none of the sour, tired flavors it had here.

Which brings up another point. Chiantis, for me, anyway, are food wines. They aren't fun to sip by themselves unless they've been manipulated with lots of new oak and/or excessive ripening for that purpose. So I'm going to reserve my judgment for now and hope that these wines will surprise and delight under better circumstances.

I'm accumulating quite a pile of things to post on here, and the problem is I've already forgotten what half of them tasted like. I have written notes to refresh my memory on the mini-vertical tasting I mentioned earlier, so I'm going to put that off just a bit longer.

From the Central California Coast. 1997 Hiching Post Syrah, Rodney's Vineyard. Wow. I've had the luxury of getting to taste these at regular intervals over the past few years and they're really starting to open up. The last one, about a year ago, was too explosively fruity to go well with food. This one was much calmer, still very fruity and really nice with grilled ostrich, which I usually pair with a Pinot from the same area. 1996 Foxen Vineyard Bien Nacido Pinot Noir, also with grilled ostrich, was at its peak. Gorgeous, almost a shame to drink with food but more of a shame not to. From top to bottom, one delightful mouthful after another of soft, pliable red fruit, long, exotic finish, round and mellow and just delicious. Most of the '96s I've opened lately have been thin and weedy and this was a wonderful surprise. And, alas, my last bottle.

From the Rhône Valley. Well, this is the time of the year that I usually start lightening up on the California Pinot and getting back to the Rhône. I was pretty disappointed in the 1989 Jaboulet Aîné Côte Rôtie Les Jumelles, though. It was a pale shadow of what I expected, so much so that I can't say much more than that about it. The 1994 Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape, on the other hand, was a blockbuster. Not nearly "ready," but loads of fun to drink, especially by comparison to the Les Jumelles, with which we had started the same evening. This one's still not knit together, but its parts are enjoyable as they are. The 1995 La Vieux Donjon was also tight, much less approachable than the '94 we had a few weeks ago, but showing promise. Like I said, my specific memories of these Rhônes are already fuzzy. Impressions for future reference.

Oh. The '86 Montelena. Well, that'll have to wait, too. It's way past my bedtime.

Well, this is a first. Two posts in one night. But I just noticed my previous post on the 91 Chave Hermitage. Tried another a few nights ago with a few not-so-great lamb chops. But the wine was a vast improvement over the previous bottle. Much better balance, just a touch of VA, still earthy with a little of the animal fur thing but much more nuanced and very enjoyable.

I have a few more bottles of this stuff and I'll never know what to expect when I open one. Ah, the mysteries of wine. Frankly, this is one of the mysteries I could live without.

Yeegads! Time flies, doesn't it? My other blog's a time hog. Lame excuse, but it's really the truth.

OK, I need to post on the double mini-vertical tasting I hosted last night (well, Thursday night . . . it's still Friday somewhere). But my writing skills are hampered right now by the lateness of the hour and, yeah, a touch too much alcohol. We cracked a 94 San Vincente Rioja tonight, among other things. Last time I tried it, it was all overblown American oak and no fruit. Well, the fruit woke up and the oak toned down and it's quite a nice drink at the moment. Especially with a nicely grilled rabbit marinated in dijon mustard and fresh rosemary. It went well with the eggplant (also grilled), too.

Mini-vert: four "off" vintages of Anderson's Conn Valley Cab (dyn-o-mite!) and four "on" vintages of Ruffino Chianti Classico Gold Label (I'll post notes -- soon).

We've been breaking into our stash of '94 Chateauneufs this week. Last year, I thought they were starting to fade, but it seems they were actually just coming back from a nice, long nap. A few nights ago, the Vieux Telegraphe seemed almost like a pimpley adolescent, young and aluring and just a shade premature. But a very enjoyable bottle nonetheless. I think we'll wait a while before we pop the next one. The Vieux Donjon tonight seemed a shade more approachable. Unlike the VT, this one had loads of sediment at the bottom. But the fruit was equally pure, the finish almost as long and the tannins more resolved. These may last for years, but I've had far too many disappointing experiences lately with wines held too long.

A probable case of over-aging (though it could have been a bad bottle) was our last '95 Au Bon Climat Les Bauges Pinot Noir earlier this week. We bought two of these and included the first one in a tasting a few years ago. It was scrumptious but immature. This one was nothing short of putrid. It was full of sour, vegetal smells and flavors and they just compounded on the finish until I had to go wash out the taste with something strong. What a huge disappointment, as I was expecting big things from this wine. I'm back to suspecting that California Pinots don't age well. Drink them for their young, effusive fruit and enjoy. Especially those from the Central Coast.

But, as always, there's an exception. When the ABC proved undrinkable, we tried our last bottle (alas) of the '93 Lane Tanner Sanford & Benedict. We found a bunch of these on close-out and every one of them has been a true pleasure. Yes, the fruit was a little more profound a year or two ago, but this was still a great bottle of wine. Beautiful, balanced fruit, sublety and nuance. These (LT) wines do age, and very gracefully, at that.

1985 Ruffino Riserva Ducale Oro Chianti Classico - Tenimenti Ruffino gets no respect no more. Really. I maybe should have given up on this producer a while back, but the '85s and '86s were so great that I've kept buying them in quantity up through '97. We'll see. The Speculator has lost faith, clearly. The wine is rarely even mentioned in lavish spreads on Tuscany these days. And you don't see as many ads in those glossy pages any more, either. That doesn't exactly weigh heavily with me.

The '85 is still an earth-mover. It lacks some of the power it had a few years ago, but it fills the gap with finesse. You need to pay attention to it. But if you do, you'll be rewarded. It's got body, it's got ripe cherries and it's got a hint of nostalgia. Betraying my years, I have to say they don't make 'em like this any more. Time to drink up, but it's still got the wow.

1982 Leoville Poyferre St. Julien - I know I can get that accent over the last "e" if I play around, but I'm feeling too lazy right now. I don't have much of this (only one more left) and this bottle wasn't all that exciting. It was perplexing, more than anything else. An absolutely fabulous nose, redolent of berries and vanilla and cocoa and sin, but in the mouth there was something that smacked of cork taint and it numbed the palate. And after sitting around for a few days it did become more approachable, never more corky (which pretty much exonerates the cork) but never great. It should have been great, based on my previous experience with this wine. So I'm going to call this a tainted bottle -- from what, I don't know.

I'm not convinced there's a rush to open the last one, but now I have no idea what to expect. It's somehow unfair for a wine this old and this venerable to be defective. That's why I'm rapidly becoming a screw-top convert. Even though I don't believe the cork was the culprit here, it all too often is. Romance is nice, but it doesn't last. Getting what you paid for is better.

Serious neglect is going on here. I don't know where the time's gone.

Some quickies. A 1986 Prunotto Bussia Barolo we opened last week at first appeared totally shot -- tannic and tough with no fruit showing. Vacu-vin'd for a few days, it started to open up some. It's certainly no fun to drink right now, so I plan to hold the remaining bottles for at least another year.

Meanwhile, a check on a 1995 Produttori del Barbaresco Ovello was pretty much the same story, not surprisingly, except that the fruit that's hiding is brighter and more explosively cherry (as opposed to the darker, brooding fruit in the Prunotto Barolo). Despite the disfavor that the '95s now suffer in light of the succeeding superlative vintages, this has promise.

Surprisingly(?), the '89 Ovello was also tight, tannic and still somewhat closed. I bought this one just recently from the cellar of a former restaurant that I used to frequent, and I had always found their wines to be fresh and well-maintained, so I'm hopeful that it just needs more time, but I don't know. The fruit doesn't really seem to be there.

And speaking of disappointments, a '91 Chave (J.L.) Hermitage the other night was screaming with volatile acidity, with very little fruit to be found. A bad bottle, perhaps? Unfortunately, storage very well may be the culprit here. This was purchased from a now-defunct retailer that wasn't exactly known for attention to its temperature controls. We'll see.

Finally, a tasting last night of upper level Vincent Girardin red Bugundies from the '98 and '99 vintages. Given that these wines are doubtless withholding much of their attraction at this point, it was still a disappointing showing for most of the participants. I actually enjoyed many of the wines quite a bit, but they were strange, sometimes extreme, and most of them bore very little resemblance to Burgundies.

There's a tired old argument about whether a wine needs to accurately reflect its varietal and territorial origins in order to be "good." I still have no firm opinion on this question. I understand those who say that if it tastes good and is well put together, it doesn't matter if it matches the profile assigned to wines from that grape and place. Good is good, and I wouldn't refuse a glass of Rioja that tasted good just because it tasted like a good Bordeaux. Certainly not. But when I go to pair wines with food and I'm looking for a delicate, ethereal cherry-flavored Burgundy and instead find a monster sized chocolate-covered raspberry cordial in my glass, I'm likely to be annoyed. Wine is still a beverage to be drunk with food, and while some wines make for great tasting or even great drinking by themselves, this isn't usually the purpose for which I buy them.

That said, I thought the two most fascinating wines of the night were the two Cotes-de-Beaune wines. The '99 Corton Perrieres was, to me, a spicy, chocolate/cocoa bomb with just enough of a hint of cherry/raspberry fruit at the center to make it palatable. I liked it, but the group of 8 people tasting scored it dead last. I also enjoyed the '99 Pommard Les Grand Epenots, another anomaly. This was a monster, exuding mushroomy, earthy smells and tasting of leather, black fruit and raw beef. The group didn't care for this one, either.

But my favorite of the night was also the group's favorite. The '98 Chambolle Musigny Les Amoureuses was full of rich, ripe cherry flavor and was long, layered and complex. Best of all, it tasted like Burgundy.

Welcome to my blog. Hello? Is there anyone there? Well, probably not, but that's ok. I'm having fun. Still fixing up the place and stuff.

The previous post is an attempt at humor. I try that once in a while. And it's kind of a carryover from a different blog. But mostly I'll just be posting about wine here. Sort of haphazardly, I guess. I don't expect that this blog will be too serious.

No time for notes tonight. But for all you Zin fans out there (I know, I'm writing as if I had an audience -- practice) who still think they don't age, I just tried a '93 Ravenswood Old Hill last night and, well, it did. So did the '92 Belloni I had the night before. Pretty well, too.

Later.

I have this friend. Let's call her May. She's great, she's really great. But she says she doesn't like red wine. She says it gives her headaches. Well, we all know that what's really giving her headaches is all that tannin in the lousy young red plonk she's probably drinking. I'd like to help her see the error of her ways. She says she finds Cabernet too dry. And of course that's the fault of those pesky tannins, too. You have to watch out for them. They'll lead you astray every time. May just doesn't realize how important it is to drink red wine. It's healthy. Everyone knows that. Good for your heart, good for your brain, good for everything. In moderation, of course. It's healthier than white wine, a lot healthier than beer and much much healthier than cocktails. It's probably healthier than health food. So-called health food. And it's good for the soul, too. Not in the religious sense (we don't discuss religion on this blog -- not ever), but in the satisfying, warm-haze-that-comes-with-the-good-life sense. I really need to find a way to share an excellent old mellow bottle of Bordeaux with May. That'll bring her around. She'll love it. Her life will be changed for the better forever.

I have another friend. Let's call him Pete. He says he won't eat meat. Is that sad, or what? I have to show Pete the error of his ways. Next week, I'm going to invite him over and serve him a nice, juicy steak. Disguised as tofu. He'll love it. Red meat's great. Share the love.