Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Wine Review: Lena does Riesling

In the close quarters that the Lab Dudes and I share in my current lab rotation, it is no secret that Lena is a Wino. Usually people put it a little more gently, stating instead "Wow, you sure like wine!" And I can't lie-- I sure do like wine.

But NOT Riesling.

I have no idea how this wine comes from Germany, because it is the biggest pushover, cavity-inducing, melted popsicle of a wine I have ever choked down. I have had two Riesling experiences, and after the second one I put "Don't EVER drink Riesling" in my Google calender and every day, for all of my days, at 4pm it reminds me.

One of the Lab Dudes, Kene Piasta, and I started talking about the wines we like and I told him: dry, acidic, tart, dry... And he said something along the lines of "then you might like this Riesling..."

I said hold it right there. Rieslings are bad, Rieslings throw like girls, my Dad's Riesling is worse than your Dad's Riesling which is also extremely terrible, etc, etc. Kene, being a certified Lab Dude, would not hear any of this. He proposed a wine swap in which he would receive a nice red wine I think he'd like, and I would get this Riesling and that I had to review it.

Tough crowd.

So this morning we met at dawn's first light near a construction site for the handoff. The brown paper bags crinkled and a flock of starlings raucously departed from a nearby tree, and I almost dropped mine. I can't say I wouldn't have been just a little bit happy if I had...

When I got home I put the "wine" in the freezer for maximum chillage and assembled my safety net: the Riesling Emergency Response Kit.
The sugar, maple syrup, and Coke are for counteracting the almost assured 50 times more intense and insipid sweetness of any given Riesling X, the grapes are to remind me that what I'm actually doing is drinking wine and not making out with a hummingbird feeder, and the shooter holds an Argentinian Chardonnay chaser.

Oh, and the actual wine is called Saint M, 2005. Product of Germany. 11% alcohol content.


And with obvious and almost crippling trepidation, clutching my chaser, I had some Riesling.

Oh and there it was! Both my hard and soft palate broke out with subcutaneous acne and the osmotic gradient of my mouth was so violently shifted that I was sure all 70% of my bodily water content would drown me in its haste to balance the sugar pucker I was currently experiencing-- but...
But all that took place in about 0.005 seconds. Then there was a tartness more pleasant and snappy than any experienced alongside your typical dry white. It's like having been starved and beaten for weeks and then given a single water cracker with a thin slice of extra sharp cheddar cheese on top. And so I drained the glass like that bruised, hunger-crazed nomad.
Then, after all that, I was faced with the hardest task of all-- admitting to Kene that this was actually a decent wine. And because this is a sentence that I am physically incapable of uttering, here it is on printer paper in Sharpie.

3 comments:

Blah said...

awww Lena I know how hard that was for you...and I just want you to know that this is not hard for me at all...I WIN!

MertMengelmier said...

"The grapes are to remind me that what I'm actually doing is drinking wine and not making out with a hummingbird feeder..." oh that's gold. I once saw a Reisling Truck going down I-87, fyi, it had no wheels, two babies were driving it and they were blasting the edited version of that stupid SNL cupcake rap.

jvs said...

At least now I know that if I ever have to say something I find distasteful, it is acceptable to do so with Sharpie and over the Internet.