AMERICAN WINE SOCIETY
A non-profit corporation

John Marshall Chapter


JANUARY MEETING:  Looking for Wine in All the Wrong Places – Arizona, presented by Rick Stafford

In January, Rick Stafford introduced us to the wines of Arizona. We’re still picking needles out of our lips. Just kidding, folks. None of these wines were made out of cactus; they were produced from honest to gosh grapes. And, serious contenders they were! One wine earned a rating of "very very good" and 85 points from Wine Spectator. Our group agreed, choosing the Dos Cabezas Toscano blend of Sangiovese and Merlot as our favorite of the evening.

The evening’s lineup consisted of five selections from Callaghan Vineyards: 2001 Chardonnay, 2001 Cab Sauvignon, 2001 Zinfandel, 2001 Syrah, and 2001 Syrah Select (weighing in at 18% alcohol). Other selections were a Dos Cabezas Chardonnay from D&C and a Claret from Flamingo Bay. The latter was named for the national bird of Arizona: you see pink ones in people’s front lawns, by their pools, dangling from rear-view mirrors, and attached to rooftops like those Santas we forget to take down.

This was an interesting diversion from Rick, who normally presents untold wine treasures he finds in such likely places as Spain and South Africa. We thank him for sticking a new needle in the wine map.  Arizona – who’da thunk it?

FEBRUARY MEETING:  Syrah or Shiraz, Say it with Conviction,  presented by Mike O'Donnell ~ Grace Cathedral, The Plains, Virginia; Social – 6:30 p.m.; Meeting – 7:00 p.m.

Sunday evening, Michael intends to dispel the conundrum that has plagued us for centuries concerning a favorite red wine: Is it Syrah or is it Shiraz? Some people, in utter confusion and despair, have simply quit drinking it and thrown their remaining bottles into the landfill.

That is an extreme reaction, of course. Mike is prepared to counsel those who have been so moved and to offer evidence that whatever it is called, it’s worthy to be kept and drunk. He will bring specimens from Australia, California, France and Virginia. Along the way, he will tell us how the Aussies befuddled our vocabulary but produced a winning vino.

The fun starts at 6:30 p.m. with a social half-hour, followed by the scheduled serious inquiry into this pressing issue of our time, beginning at 7:00 p.m. And, do not be deterred by the weather. As they say, neither sleet, nor snow, nor drear of night will stay us from our appointed rounds. That’s right — even the mailman’s gonna be there!

Directions:

MARCH MEETING:  California de-Napafied, presented by Bruce Schaefer and Rene Beck ~ Grace Cathedral, The Plains, Virginia; Social – 6:30 p.m.; Meeting – 7:00 p.m.

Have you ever suffered a major disappointment? You buy a dozen long-stemmed roses, and they die the next day. You order a nice pizza, and they serve you the box. Your beautiful new car sits in the driveway spewing oil and dark clouds.  Or, you  go out to California’s vaunted Napa Valley expecting to visit all the legendary wineries, shmooze with the Mondavis, and languorously sip the grapes most glorious, but you are disappointed.

Yes, California’s vaunted Napa Valley could live to your expectations, but you would need to bring a carload of cash — every little winery on Route 29 is charging at least $5 person to taste, and that’s just the bottom rung; ask for the better bottlings and the fee goes up to $10 and $15. The few Napa wineries that don’t charge a fee serve up wines that belong in a box — you’d do better with Two-Buck Chuck.

In March, Bruce and Renee will tell of their Napa travail and begin a series on great wine experiences in the Other Californias: places like Paso Robles, the Mendocino Coast, Russian River, the Sonoma Valley, and the Sierra Foothills. Their presentation will focus on the Santa Cruz Mountains and will cover travel and lodging highlites as well as the wines.

[Hopefully, a kind soul will by then have led them to a computer projector for their Powerpoint slide show.]


WINO WISDOM:  Men, Pay Attention to CARCASS – Constitutional Amendment to Require Corks in All States

At this point, lady readers, us guys are going to talk about golf scores and all, so you can probably just turn off your PCs and go back to your knitting.

So go ahead and just shut down now.

You won’t miss anything.

I promise.

Is that the click of knitting needles I’m hearing?

Yes?

Okay, guys. Circle around and listen up. I have news for you, and it ain’t good. I’m talking about the turf war, the oldest of them all: that one, between us and "them." We’re about to lose a battle that’s going to send most of us into the dustbin of history. It’s happening right now, and none of us is paying any attention.

Remember when a man was a man? Hunter, gatherer, provider? Forget it! The women out earn all of us today. Remember when a man wore the pants? Drove the car? Rode a Harley? Climbed mountains, fished streams, fought wars, lived in tents — all the manly things? Those days are gone, every last one. All that’s left to us now are little niche markets: opening jars, lifting furniture — stuff that requires upper-body strength — and that’s it. Period.

Remember when the man of the family used to stand at the Thanksgiving table and carve the turkey? What happened? The electric knife, that’s what. Now the women carve the bird in the kitchen, and we never even see it. All we get is a plate of chopped meat.

And that’s what we’re going to be shortly, thanks again to technology. I’m talking about the screwtop wine cap. For centuries, only men have been able to pull corks out of bottles using upper body strength. But just a few weeks ago, I saw on the telly, no less a wimp than Katie Couric opening a bottle of screwtop wine — all by herself. While Al Rokor and Matt Lauer sat on their butts like a pair of muttonheads. And, this wasn’t box wine either. It was serious swill. And, when all the other winemakers do it — and they are gearing up to do it right now — you and I will look just like Rokor and Lauer, standing around woth nothing to say and nothing to do — a bunch of muttonheads.

The screwcaps are coming so we’ve gotta move quick. Here’s what you can do.

Join CARCASS – the Constitutional Amendment to Require Corks in All States. You’ll find it at http://www.carcass.com. Go there, search for, and throw your wallets at it.  Call and write the President, your Senators and Congressmen. Tell them to forget about the moon and Mars because we’re about to lose our manhood. Write laws, build jails, throw away the keys. Man the barricades. Go to the tasting rooms and tell them you don’t appreciate their sissy screwcaps. If you’re an NRA member, wear camo and your uzi. They’ll get the message. If you get any resistance, call CARCASS, and they’ll send a goon squad. Support artificial corks. They’re way harder to pull out than real ones.

And in the meantime, for the woman who may be tempted to pull her own corks, give her the Rabbit. The Rabbit is a new-fangled cork-puller that is sheer diabolical genius. The device is all levers and pulleys and gears. She’ll never figure it out. I myself had to be shown by a guy with a black belt in tattoos. And, if she tries an end run by actually reading the instructions, they’re written in Kanji! There’s even a thingy that, every time you use the device, it breaks one of your fingernails. To us, that’s no biggie because we bite ’em anyway. But to a woman, it’s the kiss of death. You’ll be fishing her Rabbit out of the garbage in no time.

And ,when you see her struggling with it, you can swagger over and say, "Here, little lady, let me do that for you before you kill yourself." And, you won’t be kidding. Why, in just the past month, two members of the Heritage Hunt wine group have died using the Rabbit. One was squeezing the levers when the corkscrew shot out and pierced his windpipe. He died horribly. And, the other guy was plunging the lever when it popped up and hit him in the eye. Blinded, he stumbled into the traffic on Interstate 66 and was run over by an 18-wheeler. That’s right, all 18 wheels ran over him. We can’t mention their names pending notification and all, but, I can tell you this, six of their members have come to our chapter just to learn how to use the Rabbit. Good on you, blokes.

So those are a few things you can do to stem the tide. Next month, I will tell you how you can help mankind actually reverse the tide and regain a piece of lost turf about the size of North America. Stay, as they say, tuned.

Time for bed, see y’all Sunday, mates!

Your humble scribe,

~ Bruce ~

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