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There’s a Maori saying, He iti he iti kahikatoa: Do not despise a man of small stature—he may be as strong as the kahikatoa (a small tree, but strong and tough).

This is a $13 Pinot that knocked my socks off. Literally, I’m barefoot (and bare-assed) right now. (Great visual).

Gotta tell ya about my night. I just dug up me old Weber, resurrected it after 5 years of apartment-living torment in which I could only cook with a gas grill. So tonight, I got meeself a nice, thick New York steak, and I branded the motherfucker with my initials. Really. A buddy of mine got me my own brand. Got the fire nice and hot, coated the steak with rock salt and course-ground black pepper and threw her on a hot bed of coals in the Weber. Meanwhile, I unscrewed the top on this bottle of Pinot, poured me a glass, and cooked up some shittake mushrooms in garlic, butter and piss-poor merlot. 10 minutes on the grill and I poured the mushies on top of my ready-to-eat slab of corn fed cow.

Man, nothin’ beats a Weber.

I know. Steak should equal zin, syrah or cab. I say fuck that. I’ll drink Pinot while I eat turds and like it, if it’s a good one (Pinot, not turd. The turd can taste like turd if the Pinot’s good).

So now, an hour later, the steak is a thing of the past and the wondrous thing known as “steak farts” hasn’t yet poked it’s gopher’s head out my hole; but this Pinot’s just warming up, and I’m just about done with the bottle. Holy shit, this is a $40 Pinot in disguise. The winery is called “The Red Square (For the People)” and the label states “For the People is our pledge to you, the wine consumer, our artisan product at every day prices.” Bad grammar aside, the rest is right on the money. This stuff kicks the shit out of a couple of the $50 Russian River allocation-only Pinots I got this spring. I’ll take this over a Benovia anytime. It’s nice and crisp, not flabby, with a nice shot of tart cherry up front and just a hint of black fruit on the ass-end. It smells like a Pinot in that there’s lots going on in the nose– I get gravel, cola, cherry and a nuance of cardamom. Maybe there’s a little stripper perfume in there: sweat, tobacco and vanilla mixed together into that one-of-a-kind balance that only a stripper can bear with dignity. Well, maybe not vanilla in this case. More like strawberry shortcake.

At a straight-up 14% ABV it’s no lightweight, though it’s not a fruit bomb like a lot of Cali Pinots are starting to be. It’s got some class, some balance. It’s wine, not cherry pie. Not too light in the glass, and not inky either; though it’s aged enough now that it’s got better-than-average color. In fact, being an ‘04 of relatively low tannin — meaning the tannin is perfectly balanced now — I can’t see it lasting much longer than it has already.

I got this stuff, of all places, at Cost Plus. So it’s got to be a pretty large production wine. It’s clearly a blend of fruit from Martinborough and Hawkes Bay vineyards– which just means I’m now off to find other wines made from fruit in that region. If this is the low-end large-production wine from that area, then I wanna find the rest. There goes my home equity.

Oh well.

Booze reviews score: 95 points for the wine, +20 more for the price of the wine, minus 5 for bad grammar on the label and minus 2 more for the really off bouquet of the first steak fart of the night. Smelled like someone else’s fart, not one of mine. Can’t have that.

(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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