With no apologies at all to Denny at Grouchy Old Cripple (Atlanta), I present the first in a series of fine food and drink reports. I cannot tell a lie, Denny is a wine snob. Few of us can even dream about guzzling vino of the quality that he does, or discuss it so glibly (wine doth loosen the tongue, methinks). Add to that the fact that he is a high officer in a prestigious Wine Conny-sewers Geld Guild, and he has no equal in the blogosphere.
Before now, that is.
I present, for your enjoyment as well as education, the first meeting of the Greater Gresham Guild of vino Guzzlers, or GGGvG for short.
Our new motto is: "Why the hell should we mess around with sipping the nectar of the grape, wine was meant to be guzzled."
Since I am the first Chief Some-Heller, I presented the Inaugural Guzzling:
On the morning of the Guzzling:
Whilst perusing the shopping news for a good vino deal, I consumed a 2005 HRD (Hood River Distillery, Oregon's own) Vodka with Spicy V-8 (aka a Bloody Mary) $11.75 per half-gallon (that's the booze, dummy, the V-8 juice is more than that).
I selected that fine local purveyor of fruits of the vine, Safeway. On sale there were various young bottles of Columbia Valley's finest offerings at $5.50, $5.00 per bottle by the case. On the drive there, I had some stale Ritz crackers I found under the seat, and on the way back, I cleansed my taste buds with an Oktoberfest Spicy Sausage, eaten while thrashing my fuel-injected 2.5 liter Mazda Sports Truck through the gears (it does all the thrashing, with that tiny engine, I am forced to cool my jets). No Bimmer Z-4 loafing at 95 in the third of six gears for this Conny-sewer!
Arriving at Schloss Schneider (the Castle of Tailors for you cretins who don't sprechen Deutsch), I unloaded the haul of food and wine from the now-gasping Mazda (that last hill is a killer) and proceeded to the kitchen to stow the food and wine.
Time to plan the menu. I had purchased an interesting cut of meat, something I had never seen before. It was called "Country Beef Ribs (boneless). What to do with this meat? It was on sale for $2.29/lb, and looked quite lean, but it also had a tough look to it. Searched the pantry for marinades. Found a Thai Lemon-Grass marinade that looked promising. Any Thai marinade must be powerful stuff, because they don't eat their beef (actually Water Buffalo) until they can't pull the plow any more (can you say REALLY tough cuts?). I cut the ribs into chunks and marinated them in a glass bowl whilst preparing a spinach salad.
Oh, I almost forgot the Chef's Flight: Teacher's Scotch with a splash of soda (to cleanse the palate for the later Wine Guzzle). Gotta watch the Teacher's. Too much of that and the Chef is flying too low, and tripping over his own feet. Time to light off the BBQ grill. The gas-lighter on the Weber has been acting up lately, and fifteen clicks later, it finally lights with a blast of flame, taking most of the hair off my right hand and arm with it. Bleeeeech! I hate the smell of burning hair in the evening! Gotta cleanse the palate again, where's that Teacher's?
OK, still upright, and managed to get the dinner on the table without further incident. The bread was yesterday's Garlic Bread from the local Kroger outlet, Fred Meyer. Crisped up nicely and kicked up a notch with some fresh Parmesan cheese grated over it, 8 minutes in the turbo-oven.
Open the Dinner Flight wine, a 2002 Columbia Crest Shiraz, young but promising (so are high school cheerleaders, but I digress). Allow it to breathe for 30 seconds while I set the bottle down and then wipe up the wasted drops off the tiled table.
First Guzzle: The wine presents itself to my tender esophagus like Red Fuming Nitric Acid rocket propellant, but I'll get over that. I get a burst of spicy flavors similar to walking into an East End spice shop in London. Excellent! This Shiraz, new to Columbia Crest's estate list, will get better with age (I fool myself by thinking that such is my fate also). I offer some to the Good Wife, who is always suspicious when I get off my butt and fix an entire meal and serve wine to boot. She sips, ever so daintily. I wait. I continue waiting. Finally, I ask her how she found the wine. She replies, "It was hard to miss it when you spilled half the glass on the table and snapped the towel in my face trying to mop it up."
I put her down as "Not a Conny-sewer". She spears a large piece of beef to try out my Lemon Grass Beef BBQ. I give her the usual Cafe Coronary warning, and she reluctantly picks up her steak knife. Her brows knit into a furrow as she saws back and forth on the morsel. Finally, after about 50 cutting strokes of a sharp steak knife, she has a safe piece cut off, and it goes into her mouth, and she starts to chew, and chew, and chew. I watch, in amazement. Nothing can be that hard to chew. She finally swallows, reaches for the Shiraz and has a guzzle. She gravely intones, "Honey, this is very tough meat, you should have sliced it thinner." I reach for the awards rack (every GGGvG meeting gives out awards) and I select the Master of the Obvious ribbon and ceremoniously hang it around her neck. After the learning curve sets in, and we figure out that an appropriate size piece of the BBQ that won't overload the old choppers is about .75 gram (about as much as can be covered by a dime), we actually enjoy the meal. The salad is dressed with a fine Raspberry Vinaigrette dressing, and the garlic bread is perfect.
After dinner, I start the dishes and she finishes them. As I am clearing the table, I help myself to some more Shirazzzzzz, which gets better as it ages (by the second). I rummage in my Wine Master's drawer, and get out the Vacu-Vin pump and one of it's joker-valve stoppers, but upon perusing the remainder of the bottle, I decide to put it out of it's misery rather than saving it for tomorrow. Guzzle, Ho!
The dinner detritus cleaned up, I repair to the Blog Station to report on the evening's discoveries, but before mounting the stairs to my office, I secure the Final Flight, a shot of Clan Macallan 17 year old.
Careful readers will note that while the GGGvG wine cellars are not very pretentious, the Chief Some-heller's liquor locker is very deep.
Some conclusions, and the obvious comparison to GOC's events across the Amber Waves of Grain: they have to have a huge team to come up with enough interesting vino to SIP for an evening. Here at GGGvG, we intersperse the vino guzzling with liquor sipping, and I'll set my experience against his any day, it's just as delightful.
Bone ape-tights, and Great Guzzling!
Brilliant.
Fucking brilliant.
But obviously, you got a couple of refills of the 17 yr. old before you sat down to type this. You should blog juiced more often.
I have seen those "Country Cut" things too. In fact, I just bought some while shopping tonight, but pork, and just called 'strips'. And therein lies my query:
Who was the sauced-up, blithering idiot who decided to call them "Beef Ribs" if the frekin' things are boneless!!??? 'Cause a rib is... wait for it... a BONE!
Pinheads.
Posted by: Light & Dark | April 30, 2005 at 22:52
R-Dog---
You sound like MY kind of conno(nope) connou(nope! dmamit!) guy who enjoys food and drink! I'm adding you to my blogroll forthwith... or sometimes today when I get around to it...
Posted by: mostly cajun | May 01, 2005 at 07:33
Isn't it about time for the Senior chief head sommy-leer wine guzzler to get off his butt and start planning the next banquet?
Posted by: MrCompletely | May 17, 2005 at 12:16