Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Mighty Fine Monkey Wine

True confession time. I feel like Madonna asked me if I want to play truth or dare. Here goes. I hope I'm not the only one who does this, but...

When I buy wine, which isn't frequently, I pick a bottle based on the label. If I like the label, I buy the wine.

Please tell me you do this too.

Seriously -- I know nothing about vintners, vintages, what kind of a sauvignon is which... What's a Shiraz?

But if the label has a monkey on it, and that monkey is kind of groovy and stylized and funky, I buy the bottle of wine. I don't always buy monkey wine. Sometimes I buy something if it's got a groovy bare foot on it with some beach scene. If I'm feeling beachy in the deep summer. I've also bought stuff with bulls and birds on the label. Sometimes I feel my celtic roots and if there is a nice stylized gaelic tribal printy thingie on the label, that comes home with me.

I can honestly say it has been a long time since I bought wine that has only words on the label. Doug bought some a few months back and I looked at the label and was dismayed to see that it only had letters. And they weren't even fancy print letters in a wicked unique font. Seriously, what's he thinkin? I didn't even want to drink it. It made me sad.

I've done pretty well in my picking of wine. Monkey Bay wine came home with me a few weeks ago. It was awesome. And now I have a bottle in the fridge with a trumpet playing monkey on it called Papio or something like that, and I'm looking forward to drinking that at some point. I hope this monkey wine is as good as the last monkey wine.

If you're at all cultured, you are aghast right now and cannot believe I've made this confession. If you know my husband, who is quite the foodie and knows his stuff when it comes to the restaurant and wine worlds, you'd shake your head and ponder why he is still with me now that I've made this public.

I would never make a good sommelier. I can't even spell it.


My inlaws left yesterday afternoon and it was a very nice visit. They brought up with them several dozen things from Doug's grandmother's house as she's moved into assisted living. We have some cool crocks in one of our fireplaces now, and some nice colonial style candlesticks with globey things to go over them. For when our front rooms are put together. Doug's mother brought up the big box of vintage advertising. Now I need hooks and wire to go in the backs of the frames in order to get them hung on certain walls.

She also brought up some glasses. Doug's grandmother received these glasses as a wedding gift from her sister way back in the day.

Doug referred to them as wine glasses, but his mother corrected him and said they were water glasses from a company called Fostoria.

Doug said to me "whatever, we'll drink monkey wine out of them and call them wine glasses."

I know about as much about glass companies and their histories as I do wine, so when Doug's mother told me they were Fostoria and I didn't fall over on my side in shock and amazement she gave me this look like I had three heads.

"You DO know who Fostoria Glass is, don't you?"

uh. No.

She made sure to inform me and now I know who Fostoria Glass is and I know these glasses are worth more than the kind you get even at the nicest glassware section of the nicest homegoods store on the planet.

They'll be in the china cabinet, not in the glasses cabinet. For sure. I haven't even seen them yet, so I don't know what they look like. She packed them for transport and they're... packed. I think I have eight tons of wrapping to go through just to get to the first. They could be horribly ugly expensive glasses. Who knows.


Do not step off the blue stripe!While my inlaws were here, we went up to NH and Maine to visit old forts and enjoy the ocean. We went to Fort Stark first, and enjoyed it there greatly. Then we went to Fort Constitution closer into Portsmouth Harbor.

After 9/11 this fort was closed to public visits for a long time because the Coast Guard has its offices here. And it would obviously be a security risk to allow anyone to parade right through their parking lot and into the old fort. There would be chaos.

This blue line is painted from the parking area to the fort. There are signs all over informing visitors that they must stay on the line, they may not stray off the line, line strayers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law... etc etc etc.

You'd better believe I mocked that.
Here's a short video of me, behaving poorly, filmed by Jessica. Enjoy.
(quicktime, 1.23mb)


Anyway. I have to get a move on. Doug took Geoff to the dentist this morning for a cleaning. When we made the appointment in January it seemed so far away... now the summer is halfway over and I'm kind of stunned.

I think I may be having lunch with a friend from college today who I don't think I've seen in about 7 years. So that should be fun. More on that later.

And I guess that's about it. Have a good day in all you do. Oh! I have to remember to put the trash out. It is Wednesday already, not Monday. sigh.

No comments:

Post a Comment