Category Archives: Wine

Cream of Mushroom Soup & Grilled Cheese with Sauteed Onions and Peppers

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Oh, oh my God. First I started with Pressure Luck’s Cream of Mushroom Soup and then put the spurs to a small pile of onions and green peppers, then slipped them into grilled cheese with Meunster cheese, which is my favorite.

Some adjustments I made to the soup was double the Sherry, double the Garlic, ramped up the Thyme to 1 tbsp, and used Chicken Stock instead of the BTB Mushroom Base. I think the BTB would have rocked it, but I think 5 cups is too much, so next time I’ll go with 4 cups, instead.

Such a delightful dinner! The instant pot only took five minutes to bring it all together. Bravo!

Whither Water

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I read this article about restaurants and their corkage fees. Mostly out of dull curiosity I found myself satisfied that I don't agree and there are delightful ways to avoid this entire argument.

But to the vex, paying a corkage fee is a custom where diners who supply their own wine pay the establishment money for the privilege. You have a choice, either pay the insane markup (feels a lot like a mugging) on restaurant wine or pay to bring your own. Either way you'll pay. The linked article even goes so far to comment that bringing your own wine is shaming the sommelier, because you don't like his offerings. So, you quibble with the quality of truncheon that you are mugged with. Ah. I suppose I've never found a use for a sommelier, and that's likely because it's a class warfare thing, sommeliers are great if you're a 17th century royal, otherwise be your own sommelier. Anyhow, the word indicates the servant who ran ahead and prepared a meal. In the United States, nobody runs ahead, unless it's a mugger waiting for you in an alley. So, sommelier, great. The article states that if you really want to be nice you should offer the sommelier a taste. This is amazing. The guy who marks up his swill 1000% gets honor? How about chased out with torches and pitchforks?

Yeah yeah yeah. Be nice. Don't be so grumpy. But why should a meal out spiral out of control and cost you way more than the “food” you are purchasing? The experience is usually the answer. You pay for the experience. So when it comes to wine, you are paying to “enjoy the services of a fine sommelier” or, really, paying for the opportunity to be screwed on price for a bottle of swill and think it's honorable – and defensible.

Partially this comes down to palate. You are paying a sommelier, and his palate to guide you. Because each palate is unique, like a fingerprint, what if you've paid 300 dollars for wine you detest? Instead you've brought a 3 dollar bottle of wine that you love. The sommelier is angry. They charge you a 85 dollar corkage fee as a matter of revenge for not being able to tear the alimentary canal out of the sommelier and staple it to your central nervous system. I mean really, this screams palate bigotry.

So the way out? Water. Fuck you and your worthless overpriced swilly “wines”. No corkage fee, no mugging, no obnoxious useless mugger behaving like a chimpy King Louis XIV court fop being all pretentious and galling over reprehensible palate bigotry. I never asked anyone to run ahead. So, screw off.

But then there is the setting too. “Fine Dining” is a euphemism for “Food Poisoning”, so in many ways that too is just so much of a waste of time and valuable resources. These self-puffed joints get grumpy and bent if you bring your own wine and so either pay their mugger to sulk in the corner or get your food to go and enjoy it at home with your own wine. Alas, you'll need a roll of TP too, so it's not like there is a win condition here anyways.

At least the water is chlorinated, so you at least have that basic thing to go on… Always remember to tip the angry sulking mugger too. He really wanted to bash your brains out and rifle through your pockets for loose change.

I'm honestly surprised they don't have a $50 charge for a glass of water. Seems like they've followed a theme and left out a gloriously glaring exception. After all, this is Fine Dining! LOL.

Wine Tasting Notes for 2013 Traverse City Tour

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Chateau Chantal

Bob Flight –

* Chardonnay – watery and acidic 70
* PR Chardonnay – wee butter, weakly Oaked 78
* Pinot Noir – fertilizer – basic taste uh 60 color is brown
* PR Pinot Noir – burnt sugar n slightly better 76 color is brown
* PR Trio – nasty n bacon wrapped in rotten leather. Taste is okay. 78
* PR Cab Franc – toffee coffee n early tannic pack, lame on follow through 78

Laurentide

* 11 Chardonnay – lemon and lime with light pear notes 84
* 11 Sauvignon Blanc – funky and sour nose, urinal ammonia taste, weak lemonade notes 70
* 11 Emergence white – very light burnt wood scent with a strong lime note low acid 84
* 10 Pinot noir – plaster and drywall dust nose dry with a sandy talc grip 85

Verterra

* Pinot noir 11 – curt with a nose of urinal puck 85
* Reserve red 11 – excellent development 89 great long finish

2lads

* 11 sparkling Pinot Grigio – bubbles and heat 78
* 11 Pinot noir – alcohol raspberries and strawberries n great lasting power on the palate 89
* 11 Pinot noir cuvée Beatrice – vinyl and leather n quite late on the palate 90
* 11 cab franc merlot – blackberry and raspberries 88

CGT

* Laika gruner veltliner – dry 84
* 11 barrel fermented Chardonnay – floral hibiscus. Spicy warm post palate 88
* 11 gamay noir – bubblegum nose tart cherry velvety mouthfeel 89
* 11 silhouette red wine – punchy tannins 88 nice acid
* 11 edelzwicker – melon canteloupe n funky 72
* 12 late harvest Chardonnay – pear n champagne bite and nicely sweet 85

Bowers Harbor

* Rose – simple 82
* Pinot Grigio – nice nose 84
* Wooded Chardonnay – 86
* Pinot Noir wind whistle – burnt sugar caramel n delightful finish and very tight and high tannic package 90
* Claret – raspberry and blackberry on the nose – super tight tannins. 88

Black Star Farms

* 2012 arcturos Pinot noir rose – acid 87
* 2011 arcturos barrel aged Chardonnay – caramel on the nose butter and oak with notes of caramel and apples and pears. 89
* 2011 arcturos Pinot noir – maple syrup on the nose , buttery and spicy, 90
* 2010 vintners select – spicy 89
* 2011 arcturos Cabernet franc – harsh and tannic 85

Brys Estates

* 12 Pinot Blanc pear with lime chasing it 88
* 12 naked Chardonnay – coconut and pear 87
* 11 Pinot noir – lingering spice, velvety smoothness 90
* 11 cab/merlot – half sour pickles pepperoni salami n – smooth and chewy 91
* 11 merlot – sour cherries 87
* 12 Riesling/Gris – strawberries and cherries 87
* 12 Pinot noir/Riesling – sweet with a shine of sour chasing it around 84

Hawthorne

* Pinot Grigio – light n pear and bright spicy flash 86
* 10 barrel res Chardonnay – light nose light butter and apricots 88
* 12 rose – too clenchy 80
* 12 gamay noir – delicious nose quite good with spice and peppers 87
* 10 cab franc/merlot – 88

Decameron

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Influenza is a wildfire that is blazing through this state and my office. Many of my coworkers are out sick and at first what I thought was just the standard Influenza might be a few other things. WMU, through the health center and ultimately through the CDC pushed the 2012 Influenza vaccine shot which we later popularly discovered didn’t apparently take into account the strain that is blazing through Michigan and our office. I have talked to a few people who characterized this new flu as “Flu Type A”and I don’t know where they got that moniker from. I also heard that another virus, the Norovirus was blazing across the US, sourced from Sydney Australia. Are these tag-team illnesses or are we mistaking the Norovirus for the Influenza? For me it’s just idle speculation as the practical upshot is, I’m slowly being surrounded by sick people and eventually my resistance will falter, something will happen – either a surface I thoughtlessly touch or some aerosolized agent that I somehow come into contact with.

This has got me thinking about all the popular culture illnesses. Nothing as awe-inspiring as Captain Trips from Stephen King’s stories, but even movies like Hot Zone all lend themselves certain weight to the idea of control, quarantine, and the eventual lapse in vigilance. I haven’t gotten sick (knock on wood) and for that I’m very thankful, but something is knocking on the door and I don’t know if I’m doing enough to protect myself. Much of what I do is probably just a placebo, taking extra doses of Vitamin C, a dose of Vitamin D-3 (which I need anyways, and it probably doesn’t do anything else) drinking lots of hot tea (hot water can’t hurt) and regular drinks at night. Nothing comically appropriate like getting piss drunk every night, but a wee something regularly, wine, liquor, cider, beer. Does it help? It’s not hurting, so why not?

Beyond the things I eat and drink, vigilance visits me in what I do at work and at home. I often times worry that I’m starting to develop a germ-phobia laced with a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder. I know at least somewhat clinically that this activity of washing my hands before I eat (and sometimes afterwards) is only really a mental illness if I am paralyzed because I cannot proceed without cleaning my hands or it somehow impacts my quality of life. There is a small part of me that is concerned that all this handwashing, in hot water, for twenty seconds using rather aggressive soaps is just hastening my seasonal skin issues on my hands. The colder the weather, the drier the climate the more dry and cracked and bloody my hands get. My hands and my legs bear the worst of it, but my legs get a respite as I have them covered up almost all the time, where my hands don’t and pay the price. All this handwashing is just pushing them even harder. At what point will I have that breakpoint of diminishing returns? When will washing my hands mean nothing if I’m bleeding from the cracks from the angry skin on the back of my hands? What to do to cope? I’ve decided that Dove Soap’s line that caters to men, with their moisturizer as part of the soap may be my best effort. I’ve also got a pump bottle of moisturizing sanitizer however as I discovered tonight, sanitizer doesn’t touch Norovirus. Not that I’m really convinced that Norovirus is chewing through the office, but if it isn’t, then it’s on the heels of Influenza Type A.

This very story has played out before. It plays out whenever there are communicable outbreaks and the natural question pops up – at what point does it make more sense to just not go to work and expose yourself? At what point do you stop leaving the house? I laughingly call it the Decameron moment as the people in that book, in order to pass the time recount stories to each other and remain away from the city to avoid the plague. I can’t deny the pleasure of reading the Decameron back when I was in college and if it weren’t for the two other books that I’m currently hip-deep in reading, I would take it right up as it’s applicability in this particular situation is undeniable.

So tomorrow I’m going to have to come up with ways to protect myself at work. Bringing my own soap maybe to start would be okay, paper towels are still the best way to dry my hands as we don’t have any hot-air blowers at work. As for surfaces, it’s going to have to be Lysol and Isopropyl Alcohol as I can’t risk using Clorox on the surfaces at work. I know that Lysol and Alcohol will not likely damage the things at work, but I’m pretty sure that Clorox, even diluted would likely have unintended consequences. I will have to have faith that what I have, plus my nearly OCD handwashing and keeping my distance from people is enough. I have been dallying with the notion of pushing SupportPress down my clients figurative throats and only rendering help over Apple Remote Desktop in order to zero out the touching-of-surfaces vector of possible sickness. I haven’t gotten there yet, but it is something I am considering. I sometimes wonder if anyone has done a pathology survey in regards to electronic forms of communication and that impact on disease spread? What happens if we all switch to video links, phones, and email and shun contact with each other even more than we already have? In a lot of ways, each office could be it’s own Decameron, with people holed up, trying to avoid getting sick and passing the time.

I feel excellent. There is nothing wrong now, but it’s coming. The worst part is not knowing, or rather suspecting that something you can’t see is lying in wait for you and at the very best could make you miserable and at the very worst, kill you outright. Another bit of consideration is what the break-off point is for workplaces all around when a majority of staff is actually sick. At what point is going to work and accomplishing nothing cost more than just staying at home, claiming that you are sick when really, you’re just holed up waiting for the illness to burn past you?

Gravity Winery 1/19/2013

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– Pinot Gris • cheddar and pear on the nose. Vanilla and spice with a surprising weight in the midpalate. Paired with cheese accentuates the notes on the nose and integrates well with the waiting heaviness.
– Shiraz • chlorine on the nose with very weak lingonberries. Quite acidic with a lean neediness in the aft-palate. The Colby jack is a good pair as it buoys the neediness letting the hidden spice shine with just a touch of raspberry/boysenberry.
– Irresistible Red • bubble gum on the nose with a ghost of strawberries. The taste is quite surprising, a definite soft licorice note paired with plums, cloves, and cinnamon. Paired with milk chocolate toffee pushes the sweetness forward and mutes the complex flavors that develop in the midpalate.
– Lemberger • chalkboard, slate, tomato paste in the nose. The taste is sharp and acidic with a conservative tannic structure that yields to plums and the bite of pepperoni. The pairing of dark chocolate cranberry pecan blasts out the finer flavors of the wine, accentuating the bitterness of the dark chocolate.

All in all, the Irresistible Red was the winner, the Shiraz was second, the Pinot Gris next and the Lemberger at the end.

Round Barn Tasting 1/19/2013

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– Vineyard Red • quite warm and loose. Flabby and generous. High 80’s
– Cabernet Sauvignon • nose of pickles and pool water under strawberries and plums with a hint of pepperoni. Nice acid and tannic bite with a complex mouthfeel. High 90’s
– Merlot Reserve • warm vanilla and chocolate notes in the nose with strawberries. Softer tannins waddle through with an exceptional creaminess. High 80’s.
– Noir Nouveau • more standup, notes of grenadine in the nose. Cherries and well-rounded currant notes. High 80’s
– Weekend Red • hot pavement on the nose, taste of sugared dark chocolate and raspberries with the slightest touch of freshly cut grass.

TIL In Action

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This evening we sat down and were about to enjoy New Years Dinner and a nice bottle of Chenin Blanc. The wine-puller accidentally ruined the cork halfway and so half of the wine cork was in fragmented bits and the other half was in the neck of the bottle. I looked for ways we could enjoy the wine and without any tools handy I decided to use a skill I picked up years ago. How to uncork wine when you don’t have any cork-pulling tools.

You can eject a cork by placing the bottom of the wine bottle in your shoe and then smashing your shoe against a sturdy vertical surface. I took the bottle and one of my shoes and went to the garage. The exposed concrete footer was perfect. A good few solid whacks and the cork was ejected smoothly with only a few drops of lost wine. No cork in the bottle, no straining out cork, and no need for tools we didn’t have.

The next time you have a bottle of wine and no tools, look no further than your shoes and some sturdy vertical surface that can take some abuse. Wham! Wine!

Answering War

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Many things occur to me out of the blue when I least expect them to strike. It’s as if a part of me has been working on a problem, chewing on it, and when it reached a solution it gathers up all its paperwork and knocks on the front of my brain and says “Here, we’ve done all we can do, frontal lobe, here’s this for your consideration.” And I stand there in the middle of something really mundane and I’m stuck. I stop moving and much like when you open your door and find a brightly colored box with a bow on top, you spend all that time forgetting about what you were doing and stand in shock at the box. So it was with me earlier this evening.

Apparently a part of me was working on military strategy. Turns out part of the paperwork also included a method to cause a cease of conflict and effectively short-circuit a war, going from conflict, skipping over death, and moving to resolution. How you ask? I  was myself shocked at the answer and it comes from mother nature herself.

If you grow a very large amount of Cannabis Sativa, dry it out thoroughly and then set it on fire, then blow the resultant smoke out onto the battlefield, saturating every square inch with a thick white fog in about 15 minutes time all combatants will spontaneously stop giving a damn about whatever it is that they were fighting about and put down their weapons and sit down on the ground, some may lay down, others will likely lean back on their elbows. The key here is that every combatant will stop caring about killing and just want to “hang out” and “take in the majesty of this place, maaaaan” some may fall asleep and the rest will be overcome with feelings of euphoria, laziness, and extreme hunger.

Then, once you’ve smoked both sides until they have stopped fighting, you roll in hot dog carts, pizza carts, falafel carts, whatever. They go ding-ding-ing onto the battlefield and since everything is free (it’s war, this is what you pay for…) everyone is calm, feeling just fine thank-you-very-much, and the idea of getting a gun and killing someone else is about as far from anyones mind as humanly possible. You’ve just eaten five pounds of whatever and really all you want to do is take a nap.

Those that might be wearing gas masks will see the beatific joy and happiness on their fellow combatants faces and perhaps they’ll be encouraged to take off their masks. If not, then you still have to contend with an angry army, however if you continuously smoke them eventually any gas mask will saturate and stop working and people have to breathe. Over time, those that hold out with masks will just stop caring and get hungry like all the others.

This method would work perfectly for a peacekeeping force between two belligerent sides, so, for example, Americans versus Iranians – the United Nations peacekeepers cultivate millions of tons of dried cannabis sativa and start working on a smoker-gun and then we drop them into the middle of the battlefield and they just sit back with a beer in their hands, on a folding chair, making sure the machine chuffs out smoke nice and evenly. It doesn’t matter what your religion is, what you are fighting about, or anything. Once exposed to this smoke, nature will take its course. The course is not war, killing, or death – but rather just relaxing, taking in the sights, and wondering where the nearest falafel cart is.

I dare anyone to challenge this idea.

Wine Tasting

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I took this weekend, and extended it to include Friday and Monday and we’re spending it up in Traverse City, MI exploring the wine trail in the northern region of the lower peninsula again. We’ve explored this region before and have gotten to know many of the wineries and vintners in this area.

Yesterday we dove in and visited four wineries:

  • Blackstar Farms
  • Bowers Harbor Vineyard
  • Chateau Grand Traverse
  • Chateau Chantal

My experience in the first two was exemplary, the last two were abysmal. Now as to the why behind my experiences it comes down to how the tasting rooms were organized and run. Blackstar Farms conducted a very congenial tasting room and I quite enjoyed my visit. The pace was self-led and it provided me sufficient time to write in my wine journal.  The tastings here were free because we had retained the wine glasses we purchased the last time we visited. As for Bowers Harbor, this was a new experience for me, being happily surprised because the last time I was there I was so put out that I vowed I would never return to that winery again. The last time I was at Bowers, the tasting room manager didn’t listen to anything I said and just poured whatever they felt like pouring. Uh, no good. But this time? So much better! The new tasting room employee was wonderful. She was engaging and didn’t put pressure on us and listened to the wine order that I wanted and the wines I wanted to taste.

So, what about the last two?

Chateau Grand Traverse was very beautiful. It had a lot of curb appeal and a very impressive name. Big bold lettering, the stuff that marketing directors purr over. Once we got inside I noticed several things that were troubling from the get go. The wine tasting area was spooned up against their gift shop, which was top-to-bottom stacked with everything from snacks and dip-powders to books on wine. Very elaborate however rather distracting. Then as we approached the wine tasting bar a fellow greeted us (we won’t share names to protect the guilty) and immediately set the pace. The pace was best described as ‘breakneck clockwork’ as once we were settled and given a guide and a pencil we were under pressure to select six wines. The fellow behind the bar was one of a team and it became very clear that they had a script and a schtick to work from and they were playing it back to us. They might as well have been robots. The same jokes, the same affable smalltalk, over and over and over. There wasn’t even any attempt to mix it up even once, the script was that one-dimensional. The pace at Chateau Grand Traverse was a mad dash to the end. Just as you had swallowed the taste you had, Mr. Helpful was in your face making comments and analysis which trampled over the thoughts you were trying to form of the wine you just tasted. Wine is supposed to be savored and enjoyed, not chugged like cheap college beer. Our progression along the six free tastings was so rushed and harried that I gave up writing in my wine journal. What’s worse? They saw that I was writing yet cared not a jot that I may have preferred a slower approach. It was this that set me on edge, and so I decided that four tastes in that I was done. I was going to stop writing and stop thinking about Chateau Grand Traverse and after being told several times that “Number 14 is our BEST SELLING WINE!!!” I concluded that Chateau Grand Traverse was not, and never will again, get any of my money. Yes, their sweet Riesling was sweet, but it was also flat and dull. I could have mixed a simple syrup with grape juice and made something similar. So, whatever! After that I endured even more protestations from the staff that “Number 14 is our BEST SELLING WINE!!!” — Yeah! We got it! We aren’t buying it! And then our guide for the wine tasting just disappeared. He was replaced by another person, a woman who started us off on the same script and schtick all over again. If Chateau Grand Traverse was in the Twilight Zone, that would have done a lot to explain their dysfunction! Alas, I left Chateau Grand Traverse with the express desire to escape. Also I was filled with the urge to punish that winery for its rank obnoxiousness and rude behaviors, but instead of raising a stink I just left. I don’t want to go back. Yes, I was going to buy a bottle of their Chardonnay, but their staff made damn sure that wasn’t going to happen and thinking back upon it, it will never happen. In fact, if we do TC again, they will join the few other damned wineries we have abandoned. If we go, I won’t enter that establishment again. And yes, it was that bad.

As for Chateau Chantal, the wine tasting was okay, it didn’t suffer the same problems that Chateau Grand Traverse had, however their system for tasting wines wasn’t very conducive to a good tasting and this is because they categorize their wines by small black rhombus symbols, one symbol is for wines that you can taste for free and two are wines you have to pay to taste. You get three rhombus symbols, so three free tastes. You can’t taste-for-free their more expensive wines and those are all marketed as “Reserve” or “Select”. What can you taste? Basic wines that would have been good to drink out of boredom. The scores never broke 75 out of 100. So I tried three wines, all not very good, and at the end I didn’t taste anything that made me think that the “Reserve” or “Select” bottles were worth even looking at. If you are going to set a tasting fee, fine, but it’s far better, in a marketing sense to give your customers a sense of liberty by charging them some basic fee and letting them taste a handful of wines. If you want to make your customers really happy, set the fee to be the wine glass, then brand it and sell it that way, that way your customers are getting some small bit from you that they remember at home and they are more apt to try different wines. Paying discretely to taste “special” wines isn’t the way to go.

So, here’s a guide in a nutshell for what I think, from a customer’s point of view a wine tasting room should have:

  • The Wine Bar should be a centralized island or clustered along one side of the presentation space.
  • The staff should be friendly, scriptless, and be sensitive to the various approaches some people may wish to follow. The best way to assess how much interaction is important is to start with basic questions and ask the customers what wines they like the most. If the customer doesn’t know then you can ramp up your involvement and be more of a guide. If the customer does know, then proceed slower. If you notice the customer has paper, a book, or a journal, then slow the hell down. If a customer is writing about your wine, then that customer knows their palate and input from you should be limited to statistics of winemaking such as chapthalization, brix ratios, methods, and just one or two key points that are special to notice about what they are about to taste.
  • Tastings should ideally be with a small fee, between one to five dollars and if that’s the design then some token should be sold, a coaster, a wine glass, a wine charm, something. The best fee would be charged and then waived if the customer purchases a bottle of wine. That fact should only be revealed to the customer if they actually buy a bottle. Do not lead with “If you want to taste there is a fee, if you buy, we waive the fee.” Make the waiving of the fee a surprise to your customers. That will ensure repeat business, which is what you should really be after. One purchase does not a true customer make, repeat visits and repeat customers are the key. In a way, you should want to turn a customer into a fan. That’s where your value is!
  • Let your wine speak for itself. Do not let the tasting guide be a chatterbox. If the people coming to taste want a chatterbox, let them lead the guide forward, don’t start there!

I’m sure I’ll come up with more of these rules, so I may come back to this post and add to it, but these are some of the core things that wineries really should take seriously. It’s not enough to simply push bottles out the door, you have to engage with your customers and turn them into fanatics. The best way is with good wine, convivial and conservative wine tasting guidance and cultivate an air of happy engagement. If a customer feels welcome, feels like they are getting some basic respect and the wine is worth it, then they will no longer be simply customers, they will be fanatics.

Here’s a little example for you all, there is a winery in this region called Bel Lago. We walked in as new customers the first time we visited the region and now we are Bel Lago fanatics. We walk in and we pluck bottles off the shelf even before we arrive at the tasting bar because we know what we like and Bel Lago followed the basic rules and converted us from simple customers to fanatics. If you want to see how to run your wine tastings, visit Bel Lago. Feel the atmosphere and the environment there and learn from it. That is, if you want to sell wine and be successful. If not, then go to Chateau Grand Traverse and wind up their staff before their thinking parts run down.

Throw It Back

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I used to fret and worry about my relationship with alcohol. What did it mean? Is the drinking itself bad or is it the reason behind the drinking the really bad part? Maybe it was a combination of both. Next month I’ll turn 37 years old and quickly plowing myself into my 40’s. So what preciousness is to save that I’m holding onto?

Americans have a really funny way of dealing with alcohol. We used to love it, then we hated it, then we prohibited it completely and all the while our relationship and use of the substance has not changed. I notice this a lot when I go to purchase alcohol from shops, especially here in Michigan. People are so, I suppose the emotion they must feel is embarrassment, because the shops all reflexively wrap bottles of alcohol in brown paper wrappers. Like it’s shameful or embarrassing to be seen in polite society with a bottle of Jack Daniels, Jamesons, or Captain Morgan. Wine never really got the sharp end of the stick, and neither really did beer. Both of those spirits are too weak to be of mention. You’ll go to the bathroom a lot before you’ll feel much in the way of an effect from those particular drinks. It’s the harder liquors that surprise me. First off, Michigan rigidly controls the price of spirits right down to what retailers are allowed to sell the spirits for. It doesn’t matter who sells what, they all get their prices out of this dog-eared pale-blue booklet that the state hands them. I sometimes wonder why the state of Michigan thinks it’s the sole arbiter of the price and availability of spirits in their state borders? As if they could control their citizenry with laws. Hah. But there it is, artificial price fixing for no good reason. A 750ml bottle of Jameson’s Whiskey is $25 in Michigan and $17 in Illinois. The only reason I’d buy liquor in Michigan is out of laziness.

And as it turns out, my favorite liquors are Jamesons, what a shocker, and as funny as it seems, the low-brow rums, Bacardi’s Oakheart and Newfoundland’s Screech. I don’t really care for the specialty long-aged rums and apparently I prefer just the english-speaking rums of the world, as the rest aren’t very much to my liking. But really where it’s at is my relationship to a bottle of Jamesons.

What is my relationship to alcohol? I drink liberally and I become intoxicated and I enjoy myself. I do not make a mess of myself by drinking beyond my personal limit, nor do I operate any machinery while under the influence. That last bit is a lie, of course, as machinery includes my iPhone and my computer, so a few bouts of drunk twittering won’t send me to jail. I’ve never operated a motor vehicle, and almost always I’m the designated driver because, well, lets face it, I have control and money issues. So back to drinking. It’s a joy. It brings warmth and happiness into my life. Not that my life was bereft of warmth and happiness before, but while intoxicated it makes many things feel better. Many things are easier to cope with. I wear my emotions on my sleeve and I share my feelings, some would say, too readily. There was a humorous picture of a boy stating what I often times find myself thinking, especially sober, and that is “We’re all thinking it, I just said it.” So we get down to the reasons why I drink.

I like to drink because it feels good. I like to drink because it tastes good. Wine is principally what I’m getting at, as there is a universe of delicious flavors in wine and more people should go exploring to see what they like. Beer? When I was a kid and very sensitive to bitters, beer was awful. As I age however, beer has become like water. It’s a drink with food, it makes you belch, and makes you have to see a man about a horse quite often. In many ways, beer and wine are somewhat okay ways to replace water, especially if you question the quality of water. I personally have never felt that the water where I live is good for me. Now, before people get really worked up, the gentle reader should be aware that I was raised on the worlds best water. The city supply of Syracuse, New York. That water is drawn from Skaneateles Lake and is some of the best tasting water on the planet. I am sorry that more people don’t understand just how wonderful it is to walk up to the tap in your house, turn it on and be able to drink what comes out without even a single iota of worry, and enjoying the taste, which is the way water should taste. It should not taste like a chlorinated fish bowl. So the water is a big reason for the more simpler spirits. But that doesn’t touch on the stronger ones. Here again I like the taste, or perhaps, in the case of Jamesons, I’m genetically predisposed to enjoy the taste, I do sometimes wonder about that. I also enjoy the feeling it gives me, and then, and what everyone really wants to know, is the social aspects to my alcoholism.

I drink because Hell is other people. This is very general and expansive and it’s not really meant to hurt others feelings, but lets face it, unless I’m in love with you or we are exceptionally close, Sartre’s statement about Hell being other people eventually finds it’s mark. I can endure a lot of things from people, especially when I have no other choice. I can be whatever I need to be to endure the situation. That’s the blessing that comes with a monumentally strong sense of self-monitoring. In work meetings I can be calm and reserved and measured, that sort of thing. Generally however I can’t stand humanity. In all the ways we are unique and special and loving, that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s the baser things that bother me, the odd behaviors, the many varied ways we abuse each other and in many ways, so effortlessly and lets face it, callously. It can range from being a real prat to being incidentally and nebulously a horrible human being. So what comes of all these unpleasant feelings? Being exposed to people who chew too loudly, snort, wheeze, moan, whine, or in one way or another do whatever they can to be as awful to others as they can, where is there to go? Where can anyone go if they are trapped in that situation? I am forever thankful for alcohol. “Please pass the wine” is a far more pleasant thing to say than dragging out (or dragging up) the varied unpleasantnesses that surround some social situations. I find that it’s almost always more preferable to prepend potentially unpleasant social interactions with a precautionary buffer of alcohol in my system. If I am nursing a beer or a glass of wine, of throwing back shots of Jamesons, I can eventually reach a place where the things that upset me no longer really bother me, and in a way, alcohol makes everything better. So yes, I drink, at least as a partial reason, to cope with the people in my life. I am not going to point fingers at who makes me drink, that would just be courting disaster, but in a general sense, Hell is other people.

So to get back to the beginning, is it a problem? Should I be concerned? The answer is, I don’t give a damn. I’m not going to fret over what drinking means to me, I’m just going to enjoy my life and all the things in it and if I spend my time in a beer bottle or a bottle of Jamesons, then that’s where I want to be. For pleasure, for joy, for happiness, and to escape Hell, at least for a short while. Anything can be endured as long as there is a break to it, a stop, a discontinuity to horribleness. In many ways, alcohol is a blessing to endurance.