Neutral Tone Merlot

Just anything you want it to be, not what you want not, most what you want most. Silty, but shallow and transpierced with sunlight to the point of pellucidity. Features of mulberry-wood cigar box where you stash your weed, which you dig into at the low points to find water. Leather jacket over beguiling female shoulder recalling corduroy jacket over unrecoverable damsel recalling failure to act recalling failure to act recalling failed action.

We can pretend it's a movie; it's gritty enough. The sweetspot of coffee cool enough to drink and not gone acid with old age; the one sip that makes the 20oz worth carrying around on the dark and haunted subway. Footnoted with green grace. Overflowing with communication, drowning in words, choking on words, sweltering under words, brokenbacked 'neath words, deafened by words, lost by words, and desperate 'sprate 'prate 'rattling off things that can not be said to be lies but that can not, strictly, be said to be truths neither.

Far beyond the point of jammy richness, forward thinking tannic overload, and slim to no chance of recover; irrelevant is the color the body the nose the afterburn the price point; so mixed up with a bad crowd that even the hooligans don't want to be seen with you no more; lost in a thicket of your own doubts; and with nothing left to go by but the adorable little frog or prairie dog on the label, even ignoring the first thing you ever learned about wine, that warning never ever ever to buy a bottle with an animal on it because that's how they sell the cast off piss-water to the rubes, and look at what you've become since you stopped tasting with your whole self, since you let your better judgement substitute itself for the hun-and-vandal pillaging of just taking whatever you want all the time. You hear what you want to hear except when you hvae no choice. There is something so pure at the heart of the palatte here that miles of muck are worth wading through and don't say it's a mirror because i know it's not a mirror and
don't say it's a dream because i know it's a dream. The louder it gets, the more impossible it is, but eventually the question gets asked, against everyone's better judgement: What if the thing I'm scared of is exactly the opposite of the thing I should be scared of? Maybe there's no way that one, still totally desirable bittersweet note will fade, but keep coming up and up and up, well beyond the point of welcomeness. What if you don't back off? What if you not just hit against the side of the bottle with a liquid-dulled ring, but break right on through and leave the different reds to mix together?

Excess self-control? Take one bottle and call me at three in the morning.

Kashmiree Blanc

People have spent their lives trying to get back to the 1,001 flavor profiles of that first sip. They beat themselves against it, as birds do against windows or against a massive brass bell hanging in an otherwise empty hut in a dark and haunted forest, the birds do, to warn the little girl of danger, and in doing so give their lives so that she can live and that was the only time that bell was sounded and what was it doing there in the first place, who would have built a house for nothing but a bell that no one but altruistic birds would strike.

That first sip is a lake of cool clear water, housed in the basin of a volcanic peak, the highest in crisp, iced over, and disputed valley. The water drains out in rivulets that carry along your raft and down you go, and those first moments was all you ever got to see of the beauty that is growing increasingly indescribable. It is easy to float away from paradise, there are a 1,001 exits. It is not easy to climb back up. It is not easy to accept your lot outside. The road back is confused by wrong turning and deliberate obfuscation.

The wine is excellent, the crowning achievement of the vintners, with a price tag to match, but nowhere on the label does it warn that drinking it may cause inconsolable change in life-direction, vis a vis, drinking more of it, collecting the 1,001 suggested fruits in an inevitably fruitless attempt at recreation, not recreation as in golf and tennis but recreation as in the American civil war.

Hail, hail, the conquering white. Snow us in, we ask for it because we need it. Hail. Hail.

Crimea River Red

Footnoted. Constructed from the inside out. Scaffolding still up like omnidirectional icicling in a climate unused to it. When you were a child you saw water burst through a drainpipe and run off into the thirsty earth, but the water didn't run because it was frozen solid and the earth wasn't thirsty because it was frozen solid.

The most interesting and beautiful woman they'd ever met, no matter how brightly she glowed, wasn't warm enough to thaw them. There was no marked trail to the pinnacle, no winding road, no map, no gate, no illuminated shortcut; only the ironclad law of the ascent. To reach the top, a fall must be risked and the prouder the mountain animal, the stronger gravity and the deadlier the claws.

Blows gales of ice and metal. A metallic aftertaste. A coppery blood-rich finishing move that may as well be artificial, as artificial as the circumstances of the tasting, as artificial as the place we've all agreed to leave it, as artificial as artificial good cheer. Still it tastes like metal, which, while often manmade, is far from artificial. It is absurd to call human-made materials anything other than natural, anymore than birdnests or nuclear warheads are unnatural. The taste of copper; no, tungsten; no, silver, no, aphrodisiac made irrelevent by the presence of itself, squid ink on the wedding invitations and fights among the bride's friends.

The view from the top is heartstopping, in the sense that it stops hearts, in the sense that it kills you immediately, or by degrees, but big ones. The world is laid out around your feet like a broken mirror, like a mosaic, like mother of pearl inlay, like lacquer. Do you know the secret of lacquer? It is very carefully guarded. It is thin layers that add up to something deep and amazing, but each layer must be pure and therefore each heart must be pure and therefore each heart must be honest and purged and not clogged with old blackness.

Snow White Red

So dense with falling clumps of truth you can hardly taste a foot in front of you. Dense, blinding, and clear. Creeps up on the conversation you've been planning for, and then there it is and, of course, is different from what you were expecting. Announces itself as just what you were hoping for, a dark plummy syrup smeared out across the lens of that night and made translucent, still runny, still opaque, but thin now, and everywhere.

Sweet. Torrential. Release.

Dark sweeps of disorientation, sunshine, and a land so buried in its own positive outlook it names its public restrooms after different forms of kindness. The password is happy and so is everything else.

Announces itself with so much brass and glory, such pulsing speed, such god damned presence, it can be no more ignored than a heart beat, no more controlled than one, no more predicted than one. There's one chance to catch your breath and one chance only: Take it or not, you will be seized by the moment.

A false finish of satisfaction, though incomplete, then hits you hard hours later at 40,000 feet and 8 hours from anywhere with stroke after stroke of how much more there could have been to it, and that's just the first sip. Unusual in that it gets stronger as it evaporates. When the bottle's gone empty and dusty, still something bangs around the deep of the heart, demanding attention, asking for care, seeking tender understanding, and wanting, and wanting, and wanting.

UnAvailable VineYards - InsIncere Sancerre

A long, long time ago there was a reason to get out of bed in the morning and that reason had blonde hair and that reason had skin like strawberries if strawberries could be what they dream they are and that reason had class and experience and understood you and understood your pain and understood that you couldn't change even though you wanted to more than anything and understood that when you said you wanted to change you meant it in your bones and understood that you would definitely fail and understood that you didn't understand this and had lips like the deep and bloody pools of honest combat, and could stand up to you and could dominate you and could make you feel 100 feet tall and had blonde hair that sang in electric light and was incandescent and rose up off the palate in gentle waves like the distortion of heat off a metal car hood and its one of the things you did miss about the past and she was clear about what she wants, clearer than you, clearer than anyone you've known before her but it didn't make her less complicated and it didn't do anything to shallow out her mystery and despite all that was still characteristic of the region in terms of both forward thinking political views and minerality and had blonde hair which could also be called flaxen or goldenrod or peach or sunshine or egg yolk or pineapple or which gave rise to a frantic search for a place to land as the flavor profile expanded and grew to include room for experiment and deliberate or almost deliberate vagueness which is after all what attracted you to each other in the first place and was it not your fault, insisting as you did that the trial period be called a trial period, that it ended when it did and the way it did, and was it furthermore not your own doing that the notes of cherry fell to the granite wheel of unintentionally oaky pillow, and who could forget the blonde hair that didn't really look anything like a sunrise but which nonetheless, like sunrise, was the first thing on your mind when you woke up and, in that regard, nothing changed from before the split until after the split, in terms of the first thing you thought about upon waking being the same both before and after even though the implications of that early morning wistfulness changed dramatically especially in terms of what follow-up action was available to you, specifically a move away from a climate of productive possibility to one defined by the inappropriateness of any action at all, and isn't that why you started drinking at all and isn't that why you were moved to browse the shelves of the wine shops in the first place knowing full well that whatever purchase you made would end up as your exclusive company that evening and the next and perhaps would make its presence known even the next morning rather than taking whiskey in a bar where it belongs and where the price point was too high, much too high to make it a reasonable proposition considering how many you planned to put away and isn't her blonde hair the reason you choose white instead of red so that you can live out your silent homage to her even though there were things you could have done to prevent this point from arriving and there is still the possibility of a proto-effervescence or an illusory one that is part of what give the pairings such coarse elegance and there is something in the background that recalls your reason to get out of bed in the morning a long, long time ago.

Joe Lieberman Vouvray

Lousy. Childish without being childlike. A vapid whining bully of ignoble rot. An absolute waste of space on the shelf. If one is unfortunate enough to receive a bottle from a 'friend,' under no circumstances should it be opened. Pouring it down the toilet will only stink up the sewers. The only safe way to dispose of it is to encase the unopened bottle in thick concrete and bury it far away from any crops, hospitals, or boneyards (cracked bottles have been known to make the very dead rise up and flee its pestilential stench.)

Say its name three times to summon it and finally fulfill the freudian death wish. Notes of fermented mouse corpse trapped in a cigar box under the bed of a murdered panther. Jets of racism, extremism, and stupidity. A strong jammy finish of gang rape and olive brine. Do not drink it. It is a sin against mankind. It is a sin against yourself. It makes your mother cry. It makes your children run away. It makes your S.O. break up with you. It makes you sick. It makes your sports hero screw a hooker behind a dumpster in an IHOP parking lot and not even think to maintain a second, secret, cell phone. It breaks the windows in your neighborhood. It spreads crack to the ghetto. It spreads opium to China. It spreads AIDS to Stonewall. It is a bad bad wine.

Origin: Benedict Arnold's unwiped asshole
Varietals: Whatever was left after the vineyard was burned down by the Klan
Food Pairing: Impossible to keep any food down while drinking

Dusty Fuck

It's back, bitches. What's back, bitches? Why, the red glowing phosphorescent plumped-out pregger-bun cascading over the basic and understated veldt is back, bitches. That's what's back, bitches. Tortured black hard enamel is back, bitches. Grass and pine is back, bitches. On the back, bitches. In the back, bitches. Out the back, bitches. As the way back, bitches.

Yes, you may notice what we call a proto-contraction. True contraction has not been applied and never will be. Nonetheless, the tongue picks up on subtlety of flavor that release a contractual sort of impetus. An impetus so juicy, so ripe, so melting, so full, so harmonic, so messy, so greasy, so limpid, so languid, so rotting, so cool, so dark, so wet, so pungent, so thick, that it demands an oxford comma.

List me in the book of life for a sweet new year and try not to get any mud on the carpet while you're dicking about in the library, donated by and dedicated to a truly healthy set of tanins. It sags in the middle under its own weight. It spreads itself out like a fucking evil king. A real food wine.

Origin: Christian Malta
Varietal: Ha!
Food Pairing: Red red meat. Red meaty red meat. Red bloody fatty meaty red blood-meat.