Once a year Russian River releases a beer that is now so famous that El Guapo himself may elevate this to the category of in-famous. Beer heathens from all over the U.S. and abroad travel great lengths for the chance to taste and fill growlers of Pliny the Younger, a triple IPA that packs a serious wallop at 10% plus and “gobs” of IBU’s. What took a week last year to finish off was gone in less than 8 hours. Insanity. This is one man’s point of view of the experience. All photos courtesy of Chad, aka cpferris on BeerAdvocate.

The day started as I arrived at the Travelodge Downtown Santa Rosa around 10:30 after flying into Oakland and renting a pretty spiffy little car for the drive up. The Travelodge is a good place to puke and pass out, but certainly the holes in the walls, piss-stained carpet and the fact that they were doing construction throughout the day trying to keep this hotel from falling down told me that I was certainly not in Kansas anymore. I wouldn’t be spending much time there anyway with all the good beer soon to come.

Walked to Russian River at 10:45 and met Jeff, ColonelForbin and Chad in the back parking lot. The line was already crazy to get in the front door, but when you meet up with the locals, there is no time for busy lines or shenanigans. We went in the back door with the employees to the side room that Vinnie had reserved for us. Took a look at the beer offerings for the day. Good stuff. Of course, we toted in a giant cooler of beer that Jeff had slowly been compiling over the course of the past couple of weeks; beer generously donated by other BeerAdvocate attendees. You may ask what kind of sick assholes bring rare, high abv brew to the Younger release? Well we certainly did. Here is a picture of the cooler.

Soon after, people came piling in through the doors and the bar filled up until people were sardines in a can, immovable objects lost amid a sea of drooling cretins waiting for a chance to savor the flavor of a pint or to fill up a maximum of 4 growlers. At 11:00 some people waited at the bar for over an hour to get a pint, and that was once they were inside. Those left outside, sadly looking in, waited up to three hours just to get in as the line wrapped up the block. Of course, for the sake of entertainment, I pressed my ball sack against the window and waved pint after pint of Younger at them to provoke their ire. Schadenfreude. Our room had bartenders rushing in and out bringing us tray after tray of Younger. After a while, they got so sick of us plowing through beer, that they started bringing pitchers of Younger. This is where things start to get a little hazy.

After my third pint of Younger, I thought it would be a good idea to dive into the cooler as most of the BA attendees had arrived and were on the verge of being unable to distinguish some of the more subtle nuances of the bottles that were in store. All of the members in the room were experienced drunks and it was great to finally put some names to faces and online pseudonyms. First up, Kuhnhenn Bourbon Barrel Barleywine vintage 2005. This was a bottle that was re-released after a keg was discovered at the brewery and it’s contents were then put into bottles and reconditioned. Amazing. The label got destroyed from the ice in the cooler. The labels looked like they were printed off someone’s home computer, so no big loss there.

Next we sampled more Younger, then it was on to a growler of Bells Bourbon Barrel Aged Double Cream Stout. Eyebrews (pictured with Jeff aka ipa247) on BA was turning 50 today and he graciously shipped out a ton of rare beer to celebrate the moment with friends. This particular beer was amazing and really well balanced for a big BA Stout. I had a few of the sample glasses and a couple good laughs with berkey and mjl21.

After this, I felt the need to pace myself, so I had a glass of water and a couple pieces of pizza. After not eating anything all day, the pizza was excellent. Something with vegetables on it if I vaguely remember correctly. To wash down the pizza, we thought it wise to open not one but two bottles of Barrel Aged Old Dipsea Barleywine. One was barreled in Heaven Hill barrels while the other in Old Fitzgerald Barrels. I preferred the Old Fitz, but both were tributes to the excellence that sometimes occurs when brewers stick a decent barleywine in a bourbon barrel. Good stuff. Next up was Canadian Breakfast Stout, another growler sent out from the bar “HopCat” by the BA eyebrews. Currently ranked in the top ten on BeerAdvocate, this Founders creation is a tough brew to get out here on the West Coast. Delicious stuff and really reminiscent of Founders Breakfast Stout with a little maple added to it. MMMMM.

By then it was time to get a little wild. Popped Ithaca’s new blueberry wild ale aptly named LeBleu. And it sure did! Gusher! This beer was way too carbonated, but still pretty tasty. Nothing like the vinegary funk of Cantillon’s Blabaer, but still fun. After that, Arbitrator cracked his bottle of “Dave,” followed by the Bruery’s Oude Tart and Cantillon’s 50 degrees North 40 degrees East. All were excellent, except Dave, which was just a bad joke gone really bad. More Younger, more Younger, more Younger. Then someone cracked a 1.5L Anchor Our Barrel Ale. A fucking fantastic old ale that is pretty hard to come by. At this point I was getting more than a little fired up for beer! As were others who had been there since 11:00 am.

By this time RR was a madhouse. Hundreds of beer junkies stoned out of their brains on Younger were breaking glasses, spilling on strangers, vomiting in the general vicinity of the toilet. Night of the living drunks. Scary beer zombies with a penchant for buggery and, of course, more Younger.

And I was proudly one of them. A few hours later the announcement. RR had run out of growlers. Chaos ensued. Pandemonium. Three hours later, Younger was gone. People still waiting in line cried. People that showed up Saturday cried harder. Vinnie escaped to the confines to a bunker at his home built specially for this occasion to keep from being strung up by the angry lynch mob that demanded more Younger! We were still in the room at this point opening bottles of Odonata’s Rorie’s Ale, Bourbon and Rye Papier, Midnight Sun’s Sloth, 07 BA Decadence, an infected Short’s Brew and others I can’t even remember, but must have been delicious.

What I do remember vaguely is trying to walk home. I can’t tell you what time it was, how I found my way back to the hotel in the dark while being unable to read street signs, or how I woke up the next morning with little to no hangover even after not eating anything all day but two pieces of pizza. I was ready for more. And yes, the Travelodge was still a dump. I headed over to Flavor where I had three Moonlight beers on tap: Reality Czeck, Toast, and Lunatic Lager. What a treat! These rival anything that Russian River does, albeit these are much lower, more sessionable abv beers. Just what the doctor ordered. I had a burger and fries to go with it. Good food and great beer! Met up with some other BA’s that told me about the other happenings from the night before. Tales of broken bottles, stolen growlers, missing money, and man on man love. Shortly after, I drove up a couple exits on the 101 to Bottle Barn and perused their selection. Eh. So-so. Nothing really notable that I can’t get back home. From there, went back to the hotel and boxed up some brews to ship out to people that I’ve been trading with for a couple years. Then on to UPS to ship. Back to Flavor for Dinner and another three Moonlight beers: Death and Taxes Amber Lager, Bombay by Boat IPA and Twist of Fate, an English bitter. I missed out on Young Pale Ale from Moonlight, a beer that I was hoping I’d find, but no luck there. I’ll live.

After dinner, back to Russian River for a nightcap of Benediction, Rejection, and more Supplication. Good shit. Talked with an Orange County Beechwood regular and a table of guys from Washington D.C. Stumbled back to the hotel again, woke up, checked out, and off to the airport for the hour plus drive to Oakland. Good thing I got the GPS for 10 extra bucks a day. Those freeways near the city are confusing. Managed to not get lost once with it.

Overall, I’m going to call this trip silly-stupid-fabulous. And only my liver would disagree.

Hopefully the crew can make this an annual event!

I don’t care if the financial sector is crumbling or if the extreme religious fucks of the world are manufacturing their apocalyptic prophecy, in fact with a glass of the Bruery’s Black Tuesday in hand, I couldn’t care less. A bourbon barrel aged imperial stout with an astounding 19.5% abv., Black Tuesday is currently the most hyped beer in the beer geek realm.

After a rough pour, a beautiful chocolate brown head forms over a jet black body with a slightly brown twinge at the edge of the glass. I’d tell you about the lacing, but it’s so fucking pungent that I couldn’t stop swirling and smelling. Black Tuesday reeks of bourbon, charred oak, molasses, and dried dark fruits. Even with the glass 2 feet below, a bourbon soaked chocolate cake aroma can still be detected. Tuesday tastes like a vanilla bourbon truffle with a sprinkle of espresso. The coffee flavor comes out in the finish in what is otherwise dominated by bourbon, molasses and vanilla. The taste lingers for over a minute after each sip is gone; taste buds are saturated and nearly overwhelmed by the depth of flavor. Mouthfeel is thick and rich, but lightened by adequate carbonation. Considering the 19.5% abv, the drinkability is silly.

Black Tuesday is an amazing beer: the best imperial stout on the planet, bar none.

It’s no wonder that hundreds of people, including me, lined up hours before the release of this beer at the Bruery. The release price of $30 now looks like a bargain with bottles already selling for $100 on ebay. If you can get your hands on it, try it. But don’t be surprised if you’re asked to give up your youngest child in exchange.

That crash you heard wasn’t the stock market, it was me trying to drink a whole 750 ml of Black Tuesday by myself.

Official Boozereviews score: 100 points

Odonata Rorie's Ale

Goddamn, I drank far too much last weekend.  I mean, I had one of those weekends where, looking back now, I’m embarrassed.  I was a complete lazy drunken ass all fucking weekend long.

See, we went up to wine country.  Healdsburg, to be exact, and we stayed in a really nice house overlooking a lake.  ‘We’ being almost all the reviewers here on this obnoxious blog, we split the time evenly and divided our trip up into two kinds of days: beer days and wine days.  We had a lot of work to do there, so tasting typically began before breakfast.  Seeing that all of us see spitting wine (or beer) as alcohol abuse, I don’t think a single one of us made it past 9:00 on any given night.

Whenever I find myself in Healdsburg, the term Pig in Shit comes to the forefront of the minds of those around me (there’s probably not much other than beer and wine on the forefront of my mind when I’m there).  This is not only pinot noir and chardonnay Mecca, it’s also the epicenter of some of the best microbrewed  beers in the world: Russian River Brewing and Bear Republic.  But what’s ironic here is that a little-known beer I brought from home sort of shined for me on this trip, but it was the setup that made it shine.

See, I’m one of those fuckin’ guys who travels with booze.  I keep a bottle of tequila and a snifter in the storage compartments of my truck’s carpet kit (you never know when you’re gonna have to camp out someplace or have some other sort of emergency– tequila has lots of uses).  And when I’m going for a couple of days, I usually bring some beer and wine.  So, for this trip, I grabbed a few bottles of my homegrown… er… I mean homebrewed hooch, some of my homemade wine and a bottle of Odonata Ale that a friend gave me.

The Odonata is a Belgian Quad made with sour cherries and barrel aged for 1 year in oak.  It’s a true quad that weighs in at a significant 10.2 ABV.  It’s made by the brother of an upstart Santa Cruz winemaker, and is released under the same brand name, as sort of a bonus to their oenophile fans.  This is the first release of a very small-production outlet.  In fact, I’m not even sure how to buy this stuff yet.

It pours a deep brown color, and peels off aromas of malt and cherry or apple pie, with burnt sugar & toasty oak aroma undertones.  It’s lightly hopped, with little carbonation, which lets the flavors of caramel and oak show prominently through the almost nonexistent alcohol bite.  There’s not a lot of cherry showing through the malt wall this thing sets up — this is not a flavored beer — so the cherries, if anything, show up underneath as a slightly sour back-of-the-tongue accent.  Though sour cherries are used, this is not a brettanomyces-laden sour beer like Russian River’s Supplication.  In fact, it drinks more like a fine late harvest zin than it does a typical 10% beer.  Smooth and easy, a great complement to triple-cream brie.

Thing is, I set myself up to love this beer:  I’d been drinking IIPAs and sour beers all day long at Russian River.  See, we’d bunkered in at RR Brewing in Santa Rosa for a good 2 hours earlier in the day.  After quaffing… nay… gurgling down 4 or so pints of Blind Pig, Pliny the Elder, Damnation, and Temptation, we then rolled back to la casa with a growler of ‘Pig in tow and proceeded to tear into that.  About 3 hours later an in-flight hangover was taking hold, and it was still only mid-afternoon.  My lupulin threshold had shifted far beyond the point of no return, and I was hopped-out but needed to imbibe more alcohol in order to delay the inevitable mind-bending green-beer hangover and subsequent falling-apart until sleepy-time.

At this stage of a bender, it is a terrible idea to change horses in the middle of the pee stream.  I really wanted to switch to wine (bad idea), so I desperately needed a beer that would cradle my failing liver and about-to-be-throbbing upper head (as opposed to my usually-throbbing lower head) and gently lead me to that ever-so-fleeting state of perfect intoxication… without mangling my already ass-fucked tastebuds.

The Odonata did the trick.  It cradled my tastebuds like a soothing mother cooing to her 9-year-old-still-breastfeeding baby.  The absence of hops and the abundance of alcohol pulled me gently into a warm, sleepy place where I lolled around drooling in utter bliss until I woke up enough to start acting like an asshole again.  All in all, in this particular setting, a perfect combo.

So, given the way I led my horse to water, I’m giving the Odonata a cool hundred points.  I think, however, the setup may be vital:  my recommendation is to drink a shitload of over-hopped IPAs and ‘Tions and then hit this one like you hit dessert after a 5 course meal cooked by an Italian granny:  with gusto and care mixed with a back-of-the-mind knowing that you’re most definitely crossing a line in the sand, beyond which there is little-to-no return.

Another outlandishly good Pinot from Davis Family… I got 3 bottles 3 days ago and they’re already all gone.  Not gonna be too creative with this one because I’m already more than half-drunk…

…but, to put things in perspective, let’s use the following anecdote:  I uncorked and then immediately re-corked a bottle of an otherwise good Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot tonight– only because I’d had this Davis Pinot two nights running and the other (much more expensive) wine didn’t hold a candle to the Davis.  So I corked the SCM wine back up and opened a new (and my last) Davis Family bottle.

The mouth feel on this wine is… well… crap… this is going to sound kind of queer for a straight guy to say… the mouth feel is velvety.  In an effort to redeem myself I’ll get juvenile and say it’s velvety like a willing vagina.  Happy now?

The notes say it’s “food friendly”, but I’m going to counter that by saying it’s far too good to waste on food.  This one is a sipper– last night I held it on my tongue for a solid 30 seconds and it just kept on letting loose with damn near obscene goodness.  At 5 seconds it said “how ’bout some ripe cherries?”.  At 10 seconds it said “How ’bout some strawberries and cream?”.  At 20 seconds it said “Did I mention there was a pound of butter in the strawberries and cream?”.  At 30 seconds I was thinking about aged Guatemalan rum and a moist cuban cigar.  Not once did I taste astringency, harsh tannins or get a pucker in my sphincter (or palate).

I can’t believe that something this good is supposedly good for your heart.  God bless resveratrol and the winemakers that allow us to enjoy it in such a magnificent form.  While I’m at it, I think I’ll praise some other shit I love that’s good for you:  God bless blow jobs and surfing.

I’m giving this wine 120 points on my 100 point scale.  I’ve been drinking far too much Pinot lately, and this is the best of the recent lot.

Root |root|:
1.
verb, Australian origin; recreational procreation, with all the “pro”s and no “creation” (if things go as planned).
See Also: horizontal mambo, shag, beast with two backs.
Uses: “Rootin’ in the Back of the Ute” (Kevin Bloody Wilson.  Translated: “Fucking in the Back of the Truck”), or “Oy, youse wanna go ‘ave a root before the old lady gets home?”

2.
noun, Santa Cruz origin; Gabe Potkowski’s nickname.

I was first introduced to the slang form of the word “Root” in high school, when we slapped an astonishingly stupid Pollock friend of ours with that same nickname.  This because he was convinced to purchase some shaggy-looking pubic hair mixed with sawdust from a local rastafarian, with the promise that it was “Ganja root, mon– it get you mighty irie.”  Needless to say, it didn’t.  But the name stuck.

Years later, I was reintroduced to the verb form of the word by a diminutive Aussie girl with a missing front tooth inside “The Party” club in Surfer’s Paradise, when she shouted at me over the roar of a Pearl Jam tune “Oy Seppo, youse wanna go down the beach and ‘ave a root?”  The subsequent reflection about my dumb Pollock friend caused me to miss a beat or two before busting a gut laughing, which she didn’t take so well.  Needless to say, we didn’t.  But two of my less-discriminating Aussie buddies were happy to oblige.

Then, after a good 15 years of forgetting about the alternate forms of the word, I got an email from someone at Art in the Age, asking me if I would like to try a bottle of ROOT, a brand new 100% organic American cane liqueur.  I have to admit, I was skeptical; though I instantly admired their sense of humor:  the unspoken subtext of the name meaning to me that you drink some ROOT with your date and then drop trou and root your way to kingdom cum.  In my mind, with the marketing muscle they’ve thrown at this product, there’s no way in hell no one had thought of this lovely double entendre.  So I immediately liked them, as a company.

In the last couple of years, we’ve received some pretty weird shit in the mail.  Some of it has been reviewed here, and some not (it’s the “can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything” approach).  It has been a long time since someone sent us something really good.  I’m happy to report that the long dry spell has now officially ended.  ROOT is awesome.

ROOT is a natural spirit made from the same stuff you use to make root beer, which started out as “root tea”, a native American fermented beverage made from spices and cane.  Years later, some puritanical dumbass found a way to strip the alcohol out of it, which resulted in what we now know as Sasparilla, Birch Beer or Root Beer.  Funny… when it was called “tea” it got you loaded, but when it was called “beer” it got you fat.

Then along came Art in the Age, an artist’s collective out of Philadelphia, PA.  They revived the old recipe and distilled it into a truly unique sipping spirit.

This stuff is made of sugar cane, cloves, cinnamon, orange peel, cardamom, lemon, nutmeg, birch bark, spearmint, wintergreen, allspice and smoked black tea.  Basically, it’s 80 proof Indian Chai with a kick.  I like it in a Riedel tequila glass with a single ice cube, where it smells almost exactly like root beer.  The taste is akin to an aged spiced rum, without the cloying sweetness.  It finishes amazingly clean, leaving a super pleasant spicy tingle that reminds me of the last time I sat butt naked on a pile of goose down while sipping mocha chai.

I’ll save the goose down story for another review.

You might think that this is just another gimmicky mixer that’ll make a splash for awhile with the 18-year-olds in Ensenada for spring break.  Wrong.  This is a sipping spirit of the highest caliber that happens to also make a really fucking good root beer float.

Let me reiterate:  it makes a really fucking good root beer float.  Talk about a party in a glass– one 16oz ROOT float on a hot day and you’re almost required to be bare-assed on the slip-and-slide.

I like this stuff a lot.  In fact, it’s going to be my new drink of choice for awhile.  I’m actually quite pissed off that I asked them to send the larger sample down to the San Diego contingent, who have yet to weigh in on this review.  Hopefully we’ll hear from them soon.  Chances are, they’re too busy with the slip-and-slide.

So this reviewer is giving ROOT a solid 100 point score, with another 10 added on for being totally organic, and 5 more to be added if I actually get to root my wife tonight.

Cheers!

PS, apparently this stuff is so new that you may not see it in your local liquor store.  You can get some online here:  http://www.hitimewine.net/istar.asp?a=29

Had a long night last night at a bar that boasts 88 different kinds of tequila, which precipitated the following:

When you ask for the bar tab and it’s so long that the bartender has to roll it around a toilet paper roll, you’ve been drinking too much tequila.

When the bartender looks at the tab, does a double take and says “wow, you drank all that?”, you’ve been drinking too much tequila.

When the idea of fighting the bouncer looks like a fun challenge, you’ve been drinking too much tequila.

When some jackass on coke decides you’re his best friend and spends a half hour telling you how much money he makes, and you don’t knock him off his stool because you can’t tell which double-vision version of him to hit, you’ve been drinking too much tequila.

When you have to close one eye so you can see your wife on the stool next to you, you’ve been drinking to much tequila.

When you don’t notice she’s not your wife, you’ve been drinking too much tequila.

If she ends up being a he, you’ve definitely been drinking too much tequila.

When your wife throws up in your office parking lot and you wash it away with your own piss and call it good, you’ve been drinking too much tequila.

If you pissed on your boss’ tire in the process and washed that off with more piss, you’ve been drinking too much tequila.

When you wake up on your office couch and lock yourself out of the office while puking in the bathroom, forcing you to have to either sleep in the hall or walk 3 miles home, you’ve been drinking too much tequila.

When you don’t notice that the door’s not actually locked– you just can’t turn the knob — and still walk home, you’ve had too much tequila.

When the sidewalk repeatedly slaps you in the forehead on said walk home, you’ve been drinking too much tequila.

When there’s a turd in your undies and you’re not sure whose it is, you’ve been drinking too much tequila.

A friend of mine gave me this bottle of 76% Syrah, 21% Grenache and 3% Carignane a few months back, and I’ve been trying very hard not to drink it.  I figured, with 5 years of bottle age already, I’d give it another 2 or 3 and have myself one nice bottle of aged syrah.

Well, as typically happens when confronted with wine, my willpower gave out and now I’ve got my big sniffer buried balls-deep inside an incredibly rich glass of Santa Cruz grape juice.

I’ve always been a fan of Paul Draper’s wines.  I like his style.  Before native yeast fermentation was cool in California, Paul was doing it.  Ridge has also long adhered to sustainable farming practices, believing that the right thing for the environment is also the best thing for the wine.  Paul figured out, as the French did long ago, that if you care for your fruit in the vineyard, you don’t need to mess with it much in the winery. And, unlike me, Paul is eloquent and thoughtful about his passion, often speaking in terms not often heard in the corporate wine world.  If you haven’t seen it yet, check out From Ground to Glass, in which Paul is set in almost stark contrast to some of the more commercial wineries in the area.

From the label:

Forty inches of winter rain and a warm spring produced a good crop, despite further rain in May during set… Natural yeasts carried the wine to drynes; we pressed at seven days.  An uninoculated malolactic and twelve months in small cooperage followed… The dominant fruit is syrah, which provides structure.  Granache brings an exotic dimension to the fruit, and old vine carignane adds bright acidity and a touch of elegance.  A total of twenty-two months in air-dried American oak has brought the tannins and full body into balance, and five years of bottle age will bring further complexity to this fine wine.

It was that last part, written in July of 2004, that got me tonight:

five years of bottle age will bring further complexity to this fine wine

Some quick math on the world’s oldest calculator (my fingers) and I was ready to pull the trigger.

It pours a nice, deep, inky ruby, with just the slightest hint of amber around the edges.  The nose is of ripe dark fruit with just a breath of cedar and tobacco.  It smells well-aged and integrated, with not a singular component screaming out of the glass at you.

As a woman once said to me after head, it’s “a damn big mouthful” (sounded more like, “uth uh doom bug mufful”); and it comes with a similar viscosity too, coating the entire palate  with its goodness.  I’m getting plums and a touch of currant after smoking the first 2 pulls off of a moist robusto cigar.  At 13.8% ABV, it’s not a monster of a syrah; instead it’s a balanced, nuanced, perfectly ripe wine that would go well with food, despite the fact that I’m drinking it without.  The acid is there but mellowed, letting the true fruit flavors shine.  This is quite possibly the most complex and rewarding syrah I have ever tasted, and has me wishing I could speed up the clock and age the rest of my cellar to this perfection.

All in all, I’m giving this 02 Syrah a perfect score.  If you can still find any of this anywhere, buy it.  You’ll be glad you did.

Being of Italian ancestry, I have what some women have politely referred to as a Roman Nose.  Also known as a big fucking bump-in-the-middle dog-style power sniffer.  And like my canine counterparts, I’m led to and fro not by my genitals (usually), but by that monolithic – nay , phallic -  “old factory” olfactory factory stuck to my face.

This could be why I like titty bars.  More than the dancing, naked girls,  I think it’s that “stripper smell” that’s so oft referenced on the internet that gets me — baby lotion + cigarettes + something tropical from Bath and Beauty Works.  Maybe a little sweat, maybe not.  It’s a heady smell, for sure, and distinctive, and it usually means you’re in the middle of a fun night out and not at work or cleaning toilets.  I can be standing at the garlic bin in a grocery store and I’ll catch a whiff of that smell and say out loud “stripper”, and sure enough, a quick perusal of my vicinity will reveal a woman who’s just too done up in heels, fake boobs and studs to be anything but.  This has happened dozens of times.

Smell, as reference point to all sorts happy or hilarious memories.

Problem is, usually when strippers talk to you, it ruins everything.  So it’s a very, very delicate balance.

Needless to say, when it comes to my wine, it’s usually all about the smell.  If that first whiff knocks my socks off, all the wine has to do from there forward is not talk too much while it disrobes.

To further stretch this relatively useless build-up to my review of the wine, I need to give another anecdote:

I came in today after a long day of shoveling horse shit in my garden.  I was hot and tired and wanted something crisp and refreshing.  It just so happened that I had a new bottle of this Davis Chardonnay in my fridge, so I cracked it open, poured 4 fingers into my favorite stemless Riedel and immediately jammed my nose into the glass and left it there for several minutes, just bathing in the crisp, ripe Fuji apple, vanilla and touch of cinnamon aromas.  I basically went into an immediate flashback (I have them often, and sometimes at very unfortunate times) of my mom making apple pie from the tree in our yard.  There’s pie crust getting rolled out on the cutting board, some of which is baking in strips coated in sugar and cinnamon so I can have a pre-pie kid-snack, and there’s a big bowl of freshly-sliced Fuji apples coated in cinnamon and sugar in front of me.

The funny thing about my flashbacks is how they segue.  This one was so vivid that I opened my eyes in surprise, at which point one of those sci-fi vortexes ensued where the world blurs and rushes past with a big whhhooooooosh of white noise made of nanosecond memories, only to come to a screeching halt in a titty bar.  Standing in the frame where Mom was only seconds before is a 200 lb stripper with studs through both nipples on DDDD tits hanging down to her belly button.  She looks at me and says “hey baby, wanna see my cookie?” and then farts loudly.

And then “poof”, hallucination gone. So I pull my nose out of my glass, more than somewhat shaken but nevertheless ready and eager for sip #1, and….

…what the fuck is that horrible smell??!

Oh fuck, there’s a skunk on the patio.  That must be why the flashback ended with a stripper who weighed more than me.

My sense of smell has never gone from two such extremes.  From the glorious, crisp, flashback-inducing smell of this glass of Davis Chardonnay to a skunk not 20 feet from my door.  This is not a metaphor.  There was a real, living, breathing, stinking skunk in my garden trying to fuck up my wine time.

I was so pissed off at the skunk for tainting this damn-near perfect glass of wine that I immediately shot the fucker right there in my yard.  I know, bad idea.  Now THAT is a truly awful smell.  Fuckin’ skunk.

I’m going to have to come back around sometime in the future and do a proper review of the flavors peeling off this glass.  Remarkably, I can still smell Mom’s apple pie over the skunk, and I’m whole-heartedly enjoying this bottle despite the skunk’s efforts.  Guy Davis has gone to great lengths with this wine to preserve the character of the fruit– fermenting 30% of it in stainless steel in an effort to keep the fruit notes nice and bright by preventing malolactic fermentation; with the other 70% going into ultra tight-grain French oak (1/3 new, 1/3 1-year old, 1/3 2 years old).  The end result is a Chardonnay that has that vanilla-laced richness Chardonnay-lovers expect along with a bright, refreshing blast of fresh, clear fruit.  This is truly a summery Chardonnay, and is without question one of the best I’ve tasted, despite the now-dead skunk rotting out by my tomatoes.

100 points, plus 10 for helping me through the whole skunk thing.

Good beer from Mexico?  Yes, there really is such a thing.  Now I’m not talking about Tecate, Corona, Dos Equis, Bohemia, Negro Modelo, or any of the great summertime thirst quenchers.  I’m talking big, bold, highly flavored, brew straight out of B.C.. We’ll just call it “grandote” for now and leave it at that.

BJR tried to kill JDavid and me with this bottle by busting it out minutes before starting the long walk home. This certainly turned what would have been a slightly intoxicated walk into a downright stumble.  All I remember is that the sidewalk was playing tricks on me by moving back and forth while I was walking in a perfectly straight line.  Fucking sidewalk…
When we poured the beer, the color was reddish brown with little to no head. A bit undercarbonated, even for the style. When I stuck my big Jew nose in the glass there was caramel, alcohol, malt, and a bit of sweetness. Some leathery notes in the background.
Dark fruit and alcohol are the biggest players in the taste of this beer. Although there is a bit of a hop presence, the candied raisins, toffee, and brown sugar are present in the finish as well.
Mouthfeel is a bit stagnant; the carbonation could be pumped up a little in this bottle, which , coupled with mucho alcohol, make the drinkability almost nonexistent.

Great to see a great style of beer coming from our friends down south.  A good example of the style, and well done at that!  De puta madre!

Official BoozeReviews Score: 85/100

L’Chaim!

“It’s all very exciting. We have wood. Now you do too.” Huh, you might ask? But it’s true: I’ve never been so excited- to the point of getting wood- that another dude got wood! Palo Santo Marron is a brown ale brewed in 10,000 gallon Palo Santo wood vessels. That’s right, the off-centered folks at Dogfish Head went all the way down to Paraguay to get…wood! And I’m pretty god damn happy that they did.

The first time I tried this beer last year I wasn’t a big fan. But don’t fault the beer. You see, drinking a big, malty, high abv (12%) beer in 100 degree heat is a lot like getting head when you feel like having diarrhea. Whether you’re male or female, it’s hard to focus on pleasure when you’re worried about a butt pee eruption exploding in your lover’s face. I’m just not down with fecalphelia; But Palo Santo Marron when it’s cold out, yes I am.

While they call this thing a Marron, or brown, it pours like a big, viscous imperial stout- complete with a big mocha head. In fact, tasting it blind, I’d be hard put to not to call it a stout. The pleasant roasted malt flavors are supported by sweet caramel and subtle vanilla notes. And just like a good barrel aged stout, it has a really smooth and creamy, almost slick mouthfeel. The 12 oz. bottle I consumed had about a year’s worth of bottle age on it, and should be even better with a couple more years on it. With temperatures reaching close to 100 degrees last week, it shouldn’t be hard to give this tasty brew a little more time to mellow out.

‘Official’ booze reviews score: 90 points + 1 for the bottled-on date.
Final score: 91 points