Boozy McGuzzles

BOOZE TYPE: Beer
PRICE: $4.99 at the Whole Foods Bowery Beer Room
RATING: B

It finally feels like October! Like a week before the end of October. As I told my roommate, I want my money back. (“For… October?” she asked. “Did you make a down payment?” “Yes,” I said. “Impulse purchase.”) It is chilly, and I am on vacation from work until Tuesday because my mom is coming to visit and I am very excited, as she is the lady responsible for me being such a lush.

So! I filled up a growler, and got something for myself to sip on whilst I wait for her to arrive from the airport. I love pumpkin beer madly, so I picked one of the larger bottles off the cold shelf. The nice guy who has served me there before, Jon, asked me if I’d had it before, and said it was an interesting one–very pumpkiny, and with a high alcoholic punch.

This does have 9% alcohol, and… wow, it is definitely a pumpkin brew like no other. Most pumpkin ales taste more like ale than pumpkin, but this one gets directly in your face with a heavy toasted sweet scent, like Halloween candy. The beer really is remarkably sweet. There’s caramel malt in the mix, and that comes out strongly, making the final taste in your mouth something akin to candy corn. The scent reminds me of the ridiculous pumpkin scents from goth perfume warehouse Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.

So, it’s weird, and it’s sweet, and it’s pumpkiny. Do I like it? …yeah, I’d say so. It’s one of the weirdest beers I’ve tasted, but it’s good to mix things up. Most other pumpkin brews start to taste a little the same after a while, without much variety in the mix. And, unexpectedly, this went quite well with a spicy chipotle lamb chili!

BUY IT AGAIN: Probably not, honestly, unless I want to go “Taste this!!” at someone.

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $9.99 at Astor Center
RATING: A

After two bottles of that big zin I was drinking in my last post (which did indeed drive me to book travel to San Francisco again), it was time for a little dip back into the whites pool. Good for the unseasonably humid October we are having in New York. NUTS TO YOU, WEATHER.

I wanted something already chilled that I could drink as soon as I got home, and this had the right price, and a nice staff pick card on it talking about how it had the scent of ‘wet sand’. Well, I don’t know about that, but there is something nice and moist and earthy in the aroma. There’s also a mineral flintiness there in the scent that I like a lot.

This is exactly the sort of white wine that I can’t get enough of: fresh, tart, and mineral. No fruity flavors or buttery heaviness here, just crisp wine that almost puckers the tongue. It’s got a lot of minerality up front, which I love… that element in wines is such an unusual thing to me that I still can’t quite get enough of it. Like flint or chalk or limestone, but in a good way.

Not too complex of a wine, and not a great pair with the, uh, roast beef sandwich I had for dinner, but just pleasant and drinkable. As it opened up, it took on a little spiciness throughout, just an extra little zing! on the tongue. I think this would go great with some spicier Asian food. Perfect for the price.

BUY IT AGAIN: Sure! To go with some spicier Asian food!

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $19.99 at Astor (on sale for $16.99)
RATING: A+

First off, let me say hello to all the folks who are coming in via the PC Magazine Top 100 Blogs story. I am glad that you either got all the way to the end of the list of blogs to find my contribution, or that you actually had an interest in the blogs of PC Magazine staffers. Hi! I’m a lush.

Anyway, it’s red wine time! Red red wiiiiine. I’ve been vaguely plotting going out to California again sometime soon, so I picked up a Sonoma wine tonight. The Seghesio Zinfandel has such a powerful aroma that I can smell it strongly while the glass is sitting three feet behind me on my dresser. Up directly under the nose, it’s a serious powerhouse of heavy, spicy red scents.

And the taste? This is one of the few wines that has made me immediately say “Wow!” after the first sip. This really knocks my socks off. It gives an immediate strong hit of flavor, sweet and fruity on the tip of the tongue, spicy throughout, and with a bit of smokiness on the finish. Goddamn, this is making me really wish I had a bigass steak to go with this wine right now. This just begs to go with meat.

Okay, that’s it, it’s time to book a flight out to California. And keep drinking this wine, which–no exaggeration here–gives me shivers down my back. And will probably lay me out on my back, due to the 15.2% alcohol content. For a $20 wine? Just outstanding. Words won’t really do it justice… this one, you need to try.

BUY IT AGAIN?: Oh, mama, yes.

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $14.99 (on sale for $12.74) at Astor
RATING: A

I put a cap on the end of a stressful week of working in the mines by swinging in to the liquor store on my way home to get some goddamned booze. And, since Astor Wines is a lovely place that has tastings every Thursday-Sunday, I was there in time for a tasting. I had some weird but pleasant maple vodka, grabbed the bottle of bourbon I’d come in to get, and then got caught by the wine tasting area on the way out.

Now, I know I said recently that I could basically never drink another Chardonnay again as long as I lived and still be happy, but when I came up to the tasting table, the woman doing the pouring said the beautiful words “completely un-oaked”, and I thought it was definitely worth a taste. I tried the 2006 and found it quite delightful. The tasting lady said that the 2005 was “delicious”, and she said it with emphasis, so I went and snagged that off the shelf.

And it’s true! It is delicious! As promised, entirely unoaked. I’m a big fan of this whole stainless steel thing; it tends to lend a nice hint of minerality to a wine. The aroma is sharp and fruity, and the first impression on the tongue is acidity and a taste of apples. This is crisp upfront, but smooth and a little creamy on the finish.

This wine is very pleasant, and might just give me hope for chardonnay again.

BUY IT AGAIN: Could happen!

BOOZE TYPE: Wine
PRICE: $24.99 at Astor Center (Although I got a store card discount for $21.99!)
RATING: A-

I’m just going to be upfront about this: I bought this wine because I’m a sucker for a gimmick. The store had a couple of bottles sitting upright on one of the shelves, and it caught my eye because the cork looked like it was all made of white wax, or something similar. And when I investigated more closely, I was even more interested, because this stuff was shiny.

Because this wine? Has gold flakes in it.

I did a whole two laps and a half around the store (which is what I do when I’m thinking about whether or not I should buy something that’s a little silly and a little out of the range that I wanted to spend) before I came back to get this one. This’ll probably be the last white I buy for a while, since finally, finally temperatures are starting to drop, and I will be able to drink red wine again without wanting to suicide. I decided to whip out the credit card and be stupid to get a stupid-looking, shinyshiny wine.

The wine is a mix of Gewürztraminer, Viognier, and Chardonnay. Two of those three grapes I just love, and I could basically never drink another goddamned Chardonnay in my life and be happy (although I suppose that would be a good goal for me: to find chardonnays that don’t just make me roll my eyes), so I had a feeling the wine might have something beyond its shiny gimmick. My expectations were low, since, well, the bottle was full of gold, but after I let my roommate take a bunch of pictures of the shimmery bottle, I cracked it open and ended up quite pleased.

I initially overchilled this (stuck it in the freezer and then got distracted wrestling my kitchen window open and peeling two heads of garlic), so my first impressions were ‘ah, it’s cold! And it’s white wine!’ But as it returned to a more reasonable temperature, I got some nice scents and flavors. This had a very good aroma; something between pears and peaches, and a little bit of honey. The gold flakes had the benefit of getting me to swirl it a lot to keep them from settling at the bottom, so I kept getting waves of the bouquet. On the tongue, this wine was very acidic–mouth-puckeringly so–but not citrusy at all. Each sip of it just made me want to drink more… despite the acidity, it had a taste of very wet fruits–pear, peach, melon. I really quite enjoyed it. It went well with the massively garlic and chorizo heavy soup I made for dinner tonight.

This wine, while ridiculous, was fun, and almost good enough to justify the price. At the end of the day, though, I’m just wondering if drinking this whole bottle tonight is going to leave me shitting sparkles.

BUY IT AGAIN?: Depends on whether or not I shit sparkles. IS THAT A GOOD THING OR A BAD THING? YOU MAKE THE CALL.