Category: Libations

Would you choose a wine because it was named after a sainted St. Louis Cardinals manager?

Baron Herzog Merlot 2001

Whitey Herzog

You’re darn right you would if you were a real Cardinals fan. I’d like to point out it’s red wine at that.

Go Cards!

More discriminating taste can be found here and here.

Newcastle beers will will soon carry this warning label:

Responsible drinkers don’t exceed three to four units a day for men and two to three for women.

The key word is and, which indicates addition, so responsible drinkers won’t drink more than three to four and two to three which is five to seven teetotal.

Cripes, I wish someone had read this story to me aloud, because I’d prefer the misconception of Responsible drinkers don’t exceed 324 units a day for men….

Sam Adams Light: The taste of NA beer, but with alcohol in it!

Note to the fellows at Tap City: Last two of a sample twelve pack, I swear.

Just like sex and a Sunday afternoon in late November, where the temperature hovers around twenty degrees in the sun, at Lambeau Field watching the Green Bay Packers and God’s Gift to Wisconsin Brett Favre throw for a couple of touchdowns with two or fewer interceptions, some things that are good individually don’t combine to make something better.

Just like caffeinated ginseng beer.

In a word: Ew.

Hey, if there’s a thoroughly modern drunkard on your Christmas list, you have plenty of time to order a flask camouflaged as a cellular phone.

And everyone wondered why I started to carry a cell phone…. it’s to get people used to seeing one on my belt….

For Franzio’s boxed wine:

It’s as close as you’re going to get to having a beer tap, Chester.

Why am I drinking boxed wine? Because I bought it as a joke for Atari Party 5 and the joke’s on me–nobody else touched it.

Michele at A Small Victory has the scoop:

Guinness Ice Cream.

The very thought makes me lusty.

Would you choose a wine because it was named after a sainted philosopher?

Aquinas Cabernet Sauvignon 2002

St. Thomas Aquinas

My beautiful wife points out that I don’t even like Cabernet Sauvignon. But honey, I went to Marquette University, a known Thomist redoubt until well into the second half of the twentieth century.

(More Discriminating Taste here.)

BeerAdvocate rates the fifty worst beers. Surprisingly, Anheuser-Busch products are represented better than those of that great South African Milwaukee product, Miller!

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with South Africa. They’ve let go of apartheid, they gave up their nuclear program before ending apartheid, and they let Kim du Toit escape. What’s not to like about South Africa?

Would you choose a wine because it was named after a hockey player?

Michel Picard, former St. Louis Blue

Michel Picard Syrah

Man, it’s going to be a long year without a hockey season.

The drink of the day at the Lonestar Steakhouse where I and some of my coworkers dined today featured as its drink of the day:

The Oil Baron Rita

Perhaps I look back too romantically to that time of laissez-faire, but I really don’t picture J. Paul sucking or any of the Texas wildcatters who made it big sitting around the pool, sucking down margaritas that were an unholy and unnatural neon or DayGlo color. Not unless the main ingredient was whiskey, and it got its color from more whiskey.

No, sir, I think a real Oil Baron Rita would be a spicy Mexicana who the baron kept on the side, and if you had her, the oil baron would have his boys convince you of the error of your ways.

From Neil Steinberg’s Wednesday column:

“Fourteen days without alcohol,” said my racquetball buddy proudly as we toweled off in the gym.

“Wow,” I said, genuinely impressed, trying to imagine a fortnight unlubricated, “that’s impressive.”

“Well,” he said, a little abashed, “not consecutively.”

The only salvageable part of the column, but one must seek the whiskey in the Amaretto sour sometimes.

As it’s the beginning of the first weekend of a vacation, and a warm, clear summer day, a young man’s thoughts and stirrings within his heart naturally awaken his yearning to embrace his most sacred love: beer.

Cripes, I am sleeping on the couch tonight for that intro, I know.

So think upon these things, friends:

• While discussing free trade or something important in the New York Times, Virginia Postrel points out:
  

  “The U.S. used to import coffee from around 25 countries,” says David E. Weinstein, an economist at Columbia University. “Now we import it from 52 countries. Beer we import from three times more countries than we used to.”

  Viva laissez-faire, if you can still pronounce it this late in the day.

• Via Fark, we see this little story: Ain’t the beer classy:
  

  At Detroit’s four-star Opus One last month, eager diners paid $55 apiece for an evening of fine food with fine libations. Six bulbous wineglasses stood by their plates. Waiters waltzed by and poured from . . . pitchers of beer? Indeed, dinner began with a cold shrimp and crab crostini, served with an English mild ale, and ended with caramel cappuccino cheesecake, accompanied by a British favorite, dry stout.

  Beer wants to be the next wine. Not the boys at Budweiser but local brewers. These beer artisans will never be able to compete with Bud at football games. But they might stand a chance as an alternative to wine with dinner.

Call me a traditionalist, but beer really only truly augments three meals: wings, pizza, and chicken. Granted, it goes well with anything, or nothing, but if you were to ask me, “Brian, what beer goes best with brined chicken with cilantro garnish?” I would answer, “Lots.”

Over at A Small Victory, Michele has posted another photograph that’s certain to drive all the boys wild.

Some of us like the tall, dark, sexy ones.

Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times offers some hair care tips:

I’ve never stolen any hotel shampoo because of course I always wash my hair with Guinness and condition it with Harp. It’s been a family tradition since 1917.

Take it from the guy. he’s got the metrosexual thing going on. Although it does seem like a waste of Guinness to me. Perhaps he means Extra Stout, not Draught, which is more appealing.

Fark led me to the story of this tragedy:

GUINNESS will no longer be brewed in Britain from next summer.

The plant which has made the stout for nearly 70 years is to close. Bosses blame over-capacity.

Overcapacity leading to lost jobs. We must support our British friends and try harder. Bathe in Guinness if you must!

Say what you will about the man’s politics, but Ravenwood is no moderate:

I usually preach moderation, but not when moderate is 2 drinks a day? (Only a pint and a half of beer.) My definition of moderation is enjoying something not into excess. As long as I’m not getting drunk every night, missing work, or delinquent on my bills, I don’t see the problem. I can stop at any time, and usually about once per year, go an entire month without drinking. (Just to prove I still can.) Besides, I’d rather live fast and die young than lead a long, boring, long, dull, long life.

I’m with you, man: Aristotle was such a sell-out.