Red Fire Zinfandel Ignites Romance and Dispels Valentine’s Day Darkness

Bottom of the Barrel: Wines of Future Past: Duplin’s “Scuppernong” fails to bridge generational divide

Like the Magi of Matthew 2:1-12, your esteemed critics have returned to Bowdoin bearing gifts from their distant homelands. From the maritime reaches of Silicon Valley, Will Danforth brings forth two tokens of the future. The first, the “VinOair,” is a plastic spigot that instantaneously aerates the wine through vacuum-tube technology. The second, the Cork Pops “Auto-Corker,” guarantees forceful wine stopper ejection via compressed air.
The introduction of such technological marvels raises serious ethical quandaries about the veracity of our expert appraisals going forward. Like Icarus, now we too soar at the boundaries of human potential. Have we transgressed against the laws of God, man and our editors through artificial aeration? At the dawn of this new year, does our use of these devices portend a millenarian shift for our column?
Perhaps these questions are best left to the philosophers; we have wine to drink.From the rolling hills of the Southern Piedmont, Martin brings a relic of our nation’s winemaking past: Duplin Winery’s Scuppernong. Derived from the muscadine, one of the only grapes native to North America and the alleged favorite of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, the Scuppernong makes our tasting feel like yet another chapter in the perennial struggle between tradition and modernity.
Despite the historical import of the Scuppernong to Martin’s home of North Carolina, his public school education failed to enlighten him about his state’s viticultural heritage. He hoped that North Carolina’s best could hold its own against wines tried in previous installments with provenance in Will’s home state of California.
Fortunately or unfortunately, Scuppernong reinforces widely held stereotypes about the pace of life in the South. The wine imparted a flavor reminiscent of sweet-sticky molasses as it slid slowly down our throats. Quoth James Jelin ’16, “This is incredibly sugary. Please don’t make me drink the rest of this [glass].” Indeed, each quaff left our mouths coated with a cloying residue that made us feel as though we were rapidly developing dental cavities. It was as if a six-year-old child had imagineered his understanding of wine into existence.
Nonetheless, our journalistic integrity dictated that we, as well as James Jelin, finish the Scuppernong. Given the historical success of this variety, the wine’s viscous and saccharine nature left us confused as to how anyone could finish more than a minute sampling. As we sacrificed ourselves on the altar of our column, we sought elucidation as to the wine’s enigmatic appeal from the bottle’s label. Though the seagull and lighthouse graphics may have been composed of Microsoft clip art, we found them oddly comforting. With outstretched wings, the bird ruptured the frame of its rectangular sticker, offering us the promise that, like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, we too could ascend to a higher plane of existence if we just kept flying.
Enlightened by our journey, we finally concluded that the Scuppernong was nothing more than an inexpensive and disappointing alternative to port or sherry. We can only hope to avoid a renaissance of this anachronistic offering in our lifetimes.

Bottom of the Barrel: Gekkeikan sake pushes the limits of our grape-y palates

There are these two young Orient columnists walking through Hannaford, and they happen to meet a managing editor walking the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the wine?” And the two young columnists walk on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes,
“What the hell is wine?”
With apologies to David Foster Wallace, this anecdote offers some insight into the ontological confusion facing your esteemed critics this past week. At some point in the preceding days, we had been visited by the notion to expand the frontiers of our journalistic endeavor and review sake, the traditional Japanese fermented rice wine. Emboldened by this sense of culinary adventure, we set off to procure the necessary ingredient for our review. The Gekkeikan bottle on the bottom shelf of the wine aisle immediately grabbed our attention, with an arrestingly simple typographic label and a luminous green tint to the glass.
Once back in the safe eyrie of Coles Tower, we were soon disarmed by the ease of the screw-off top, which rendered impotent our arsenal of uncorking accouterments upon which we have leaned so heavily this semester in our criticism. Lacking traditional Japanese serving vessels, we were forced to rely on the heretofore-unquestioned orthodoxy of our Libbey stemware. Our doubt and uncertainty were further compounded by the handful of serving and tasting techniques offered on the back label. How could we neophytes choose between the hot traditional manner and chilled on the rocks? We split the difference and sampled the beverage at room temperature. Upon pouring, the sake resembled a faint white wine, with a stronger pair of legs than one would expect from a similarly hued Pinot Gris.
Despite our best attempts to understand the sake within our carefully constructed critical schema, the first sip obliterated our finely woven hermeneutical tapestry. The thin body apparent in the glass belied a syrupy viscosity that assaulted our taste buds and lingered in our olfactory membranes, as if someone had beguiled us into drinking ethanol. Like a work of analytical cubism, the sake broke up the basic flavors of rice into disorienting mix of its component parts without offering any sort of gustatory cohesion. Despondent—and just a bit nauseous—we spiraled into confusion.
Over the past few months, we had immersed ourselves so fully in the world of wine that we seemed primed to take on any challenge. We knew wine and we knew how to taste. But our conception of wine had become so hermetic and self-referential that even something as minimally divergent as drinking beverages fermented from rice rather than grapes could dispel the illusion of this column being our Künstlerroman.
Had we ever really known what wine was? We, as published connoisseurs, loathed our selection for this week, yet many laypersons had extolled its virtues. Were we hindered by our own expertise, or had our column just been constructed upon a false premise, with only witty aphorisms and sly references to support it? If rice can be made into wine, then what should one call the fermented product of other grains if not wine as well? Had the fiat of precedent falsely circumscribed us to view the world in only red and white? Or, rather, were the amber hues of beer part of our journalistic birthright as well?
For our own physical and metaphysical welfare, we will refrain from Gekkeikan sake for the time being, and would recommend doing the same. However, we’ve heard that Ballast Point makes a damn good IPA.

Bottom of the Barrel

Red Fire Zinfandel Ignites Romance and Dispels Valentine’s Day Darkness

This piece represents the opinion of the authors:

February 12, 2016

Valentine’s Day is here once more to remind us that Christian martyrdom is almost always rewarded with a great commercialized holiday. If the onslaught of winter assignments has left you scrambling for V-Day plans, never fear—your esteemed wine critics have you covered. Together, Martin and Will have distilled their respective romantic histories and added a dash of their trademark wine-based wit in order to bring you, our beloved readers, a fool-proof guide to a satisfying Valentine’s Day, with or without a significant other. While the amorous advice of two single senior men who spend more time on LinkedIn than on Tinder may seem suspect, our step-by-step plan is guaranteed to work. However, if our plans do fail to spark the flame this weekend, please direct all queries or complaints to orientopinion@bowdoin.edu.

Step 1: Purchase one bottle of Red Fire Old Vine Zinfandel ($8.99) from Hannaford. Billed as the “essential BBQ wine,” this Italian red is sure to ignite the passion of young collegiate hearts in this winter of our discontent. Though this pugliese Zinfandel suggests pairing with the “bold flavors and spice combos of barbecue” (note the change in orthography), we suspect the true intent of the original Italian tasting notes may not have survived the translation into English. Instead, we invite you to couple the wine with the second-tier chocolate of a Russell Stover assortment ($4.99, also from Hannaford). While the chocolate may lack the signature umami of grilled meats, it is hard to ignore the widely-acknowledged aphrodisiacal power of cacao products in mid-February.

Step 2: Attempt to open your Zinfandel with a Cork Pops Auto-Corker before discovering that your compressed air canister—an essential element of the device—is mysteriously empty after only two uses. Lament the all-too-human limitations of the Silicon Valley culinary technocracy before resorting to traditional Luddite methods. In wine-tasting, as in romance, the simplest way is often the best way.

Step 3: Exalt at the continued successful performance of the VinOAir vacuum aerator and pour the appropriate (and responsible!) number of glasses for the evening ahead. Marvel at the subtle jammy, sweet—but not unbecoming—medley of flavors presented by Red “Fuego” Fire. Exclaim how lucky you are to have found such a fantastic bargain wine at a time when the other sweaty-palmed would-be-romantics at Hannaford are nervously reaching for whatever slight innuendo-labeled wine they can find (your esteemed critics had the class and conviction to ignore the “Menage à Trois” and “Spin the Bottle” wines prominently featured in the aisle). Then, as you plop one of the Stover’s confections into your mouth, argue about the proper pronunciation of caramel (while Merriam-Webster accepts both variants, we all know which is correct) in your first real lovers’ quarrel.

Step 4: Congratulate yourself on executing a perfect Valentine’s Day evening, all for less than $15. Who says that romance requires overly priced cards or a dinner out to a restaurant like Trattoria Athena, where you may have happened to go for the past three years with someone else in tow before you had your heart cruelly torn out of your chest and stomped on in front of you? If, like Jason Derulo, you find yourself “ridin’ solo” this Valentine’s Day, take pride in your newly heightened degree of fiscal autonomy and treat yourself to another bottle of Red Fire Old Vine Zinfandel with all the money you’ve saved by being single. Rest assured that your esteemed critics will be doing the same in short order.

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