Wine Review

Name: Groth
Date: 2006
Origin: Napa Valley, CA
Alcohol content: 14.5%

This isn't so much a review of the Groth as it is a recap of my Epic Day. The wine is the period and my day was the sentence.

I woke up at 9:51 am, which is supremely late for me. It was gray, humid, and I had been sleeping under an inappropriately heavy blanket. I woke up with the notion of having a Delightfully Mundane Day, and I peeled myself out of bed to do just that. First stop: the lab.

Now that I am in the business of fly farming I have to factor Drosophila melanogaster's breeding cycle into my daily plans. Newly hatched female flies will remain virgins for 16 hours at 18 degrees Celsius, so I got to the lab post haste. I arrived and put the virgin females in vials with male flies from the Bloomington Deficiency Kits-- a collection of flies that have huge genomic mutations.

Then I went to the mall and bought this ridiculous article of clothing.
It is a short-sleeved hooded sweatshirt. And I paid for it. I can only hope that, someday, the perpetuation of my life will be dependent on the ownership of a short-sleeved hooded sweatshirt-- as in, somebody tells me that they won't shoot me if I make the biggest idiot out of myself that I possibly can. I wouldn't be shot because I would simply put on the short-sleeved hooded sweatshirt.

After making my confusing-and-potentially-humiliating-but-ultimately-life-saving purchase, I headed to my local farm stand/grocer to buy a delicious sandwich and, if possible, mulch. It turns out that the place not only has several varieties of mulch to choose from, but it is also crawling with Future Husbands. While waiting at the deli, I noticed an incredibly attractive Italian man wheeling a cart filled with ingredients for what must have ended up to be the World's Most Amazing Meal. Fresh ricotta cheese, LOADS of basil, an amount of crimini mushrooms, and many other groceries I failed to gawk conclusively at. I gawked very conclusively at the man. I basically morphed, momentarily, into a 67 year old man with erectile dysfunction stopped at a red light in my silver convertible while a 23 year old restaurant hostess lopes across the pedestrian stripes. As the man navigated his cart towards the cashiers I noticed he was wearing TeVa sandals and black socks. Then I got my sandwich and paid for 8 items at the 6-item express lane. I ended up buying spruce mulch, and my car was rapidly saturated with the smell of Christmas as sweat beaded on my upper lip. As I drove, the wisps of air-conditioning delivered intense odors of pine forests and bearded men capable of building two-ton rafts.

Last stop: wine store. During the course of the drive I decided that I was going to ask the purveyor to recommend a wine for me to drink. I didn't feel like being disappointed, and I didn't want to read any labels. I wanted someone to set a frosty bottle of white wine in my hand and shoo me towards my car-- or better yet, provide me with a frosty drive-thru window.

Once inside Auburndale liquors, I quickly found an employee and told him exactly what I wanted him to do for me. I said "dry, white, fifteen dollars" and I was given a lesson on Sauvignon blancs, their dominant flavors, and regions. To summarize:

France: apparent citrus

California: "grass" and "lemon" and "cheaper"

Australia: sweet, fruity

So I rolled up to the cashier with the 2006 Groth from Napa Valley. He asked for my I.D. as I pulled it out of my wallet along with my debit card, and after inspecting it told me that "he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to accept this." This was the same pudgy red-headed guy that had allowed me to purchase several other bottles of wine in the past! What was the deal? I balked at his trepidation and reminded him of how many bottles of wine he had authorized my purchase of, and how I was an embarrassingly frequent customer, and etcetera. My lovely day was NOT going to come to a screeching halt with gasoline explosions and limbs flying through the air-- not here!

Then I noticed a tall man in a suit standing near the cashier. The cashier was blushing as I protested, and I realized that the suited man was clearly some kind of supervisor. When my license had been approved after several tense moments, I whispered to the flustered cashier "did I just get you in trouble?" To which he sullenly replied, "I hope not..."

I smiled apologetically and swished out to add my final purchase to the mound of acquisitions in the passenger's seat. **Of note: the two New Age Beverage containers in the cup holders**
Upon arriving home, I hoisted the bags of spruce mulch into The Enclosure.
Here is a detail of the mulch bag, because this bulleted list very nicely outlines the perks of mulch.
What can't mulch do? In addition to mulch, I purchased four small basil plants and one bronze fennel plant.

So where is this wine review? Did I drink the wine? Does it compliment mulch? You bet! Here it is:
The first sip I took generated a volatile puff of tartness that rocketed through my nasal passages and brought tears to my eyes. After the first mouthful hit my stomach, shriveling it like a long bath, I almost savagely began consuming my sandwich.
Soon I was actively sweating and wondering if this wine would be good to drink during a yard sale, and then I wondered if it is legal to be drunk at yard sales. I almost went and put together a yard sale.

What I'm trying to say is that this is an inspirational wine-- a Big Ideas kind of wine. It's the kind of wine that you drink after you buy four cubic feet of mulch.