Fuck. Technically I did not post on November 13. But since it has been November 14 for exactly eleven minutes and since I have already demonstrated the blogosphere's (ugh... actually the worst word I will ever use on this site) bias against service professionals, I consider myself forgiven. And while I was considering making this post about excuses for not posting earlier, instead I am going to write about wine which I never do even though it's a pretty big part of my life between my job and all the time that I am not working. But briefly:
I didn't post on November 13 (technically) because...
-I had to make a super great impression at my internship today because everyone was out of the office and I was in charge of the phones and handling emergencies. I mean, no emergencies happened, but I talked to an art history professor at Penn State about how he could access information on a book that was never even published in 1943.
-My computer is hopelessly ill. I was going to have Mac geniuses suckle her to health today but I had to be at the work that pays me annoyingly early and the work that doesn't pay me annoyingly late (see below and above respectively).
-I worked tonight. And even though I was only there for six hours, I contend that those six hours 4:30 to 11:30 are really prime blogging time.
And by way of transition... While I was at work tonight I tried a few new wines. This is actually a pretty frequent occurrence since I work at a wine bar and we have a terrifically lax drinking policy for staff. But tonight we were doing this ridiculous tasting for a party (I mean, thirty people who were drunk before they started have six different wines while STANDING??? Fuck that), and they were having some pretty good wines. Of course when we do tastings we are pouring smaller glasses and they are priced according to the number of people not the number of bottles. So basically there was some really good stuff left over.
Anyhow, one of the bottles was a wine called Sulleria (which normally has an accent over the I but I don't know how to make my computer say that), which is a 2003 sangiovese/nero d'avola blend from Sicily. Actually I am not certain of the year which is bad. But this is like the Polaner All Fruit (the kind you can't call jelly) of wine. It's rich and deep with fruit, chocolate, some hazelnut elements. The shit is off the chain. And they were having it with these shortbread cookies topped with a hazelnut and chocolate panna cotta. Wow. It's packed with so much fruit but with these other elements, it balances. It's ridiculously rich, but it's so good.
So after the shift I was sitting at the bar having a snack or dinner, depending on your perspective, and I tried this cabernet that we are doing by the glass. It was also pretty fruit driven. But while in the Sicilian wine the fruit tasted like it was super ripe and still warm from the sun (Sicily is, like, hotter than most places in Italy), this cabernet from Alto Adige (which sort of snuggles up against Austria) has a bright cherry thing happening. And that probably has a lot to do with the climate. It finished almost spicy too, which somehow seemed off balance. That's pretty strange for me since I am into spicy wines and am maybe going through a particular phase with them (see the bottles of garancha in my recycling). But the thing that really made this wine just lose in my book was the damn new oak. Yuck. It is so bad.
Basically I haven't mentioned that the Sicilian wine is on our list for $80 a bottle and we sell the cabernet for $10 a glass ($36 a bottle). So that should be considered in the comparison. But I have never really tried to write about wine before and it's good. It makes me think about it more clearly and see where my biases are. And I'm sorry to subject you to my snobbery. But really, no one is making you read this.
*I don't know this guy. But he looks like an old professor of mine.
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