Going off-script: corporate dreams fall flat with Skinnygirl® Chardonnay

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: Parting the Red Sea: Manischewitz Concord Grape wine

This month, your esteemed critics were faced with a predicament that has plagued sitcom writers since the beginning of time—namely whether to produce a holiday-themed installment before or after the true day of celebration. Luckily, fulfilling our remaining Kickstarter rewards from last semester’s wildly successful $135 bacchanalia impressed upon us the necessity of delivering this review in advance of Passover. Thus, we have finally brought to fruition Will’s sororal obligation to sample Manischewitz Concord Grape wine.
While France and Israel have both developed robust Kosher wine industries, the Manischewitz bottle is what most American Jews reach for when celebrating Seder or Shabbat. Despite Martin’s preemptive chiding by a fellow Hannaford shopper when purchasing the wine, our consumption took place under decidedly non-ceremonial circumstances. However, we took care to pair our drinking with one of Manischewitz’s other Kosher offerings: Everything Matzah—an essential nosh not only for times of lessened leaven, but also for all 353, 354, 355, 383, 384 or 385 days of the lunar year.
The Passover season also allowed your esteemed critics to indulge their shared passion for musical theater, as the obvious soundtrack to our night’s proceedings was “Fiddler on the Roof.” Though we at first erroneously settled upon the 1995 Anthony Newley rendition, we were quick to correct our mistake and substitute in the exemplary original 1964 cast recording, anchored by legendary thespian Zero Mostel. The emotional roller coaster we rode from “Prologue: Tradition” to “Anatevka” proved the perfect accompaniment to our prolonged consumption of the generously sized bottle.
Though the 1.5L Magnum ($8.99) provided double the usual quantity of wine, its wide neck foiled our normal decanting method with the VinOair. Even without this aerating augmentation, the Vitis labrusca-corn syrup medley manifested itself in a powerfully “grapey” nose and mucilaginous mouthfeel. We immediately had transcultural flashbacks to the Scuppernong debacle of last January 29, but the ritualistic qualities of the Manischewitz proved much more comforting than its similarly sweet cousin. We were then transported even further back to the tweenage joy—real and imagined—of swallowing thimblesworths of “Mani” at bar and bat mitzvahs, dreams of adult beverage adulation whirring in our heads.
Now ready to make good on those earlier aspirations, we find that this wine performed poorly by every single college metric we have developed to date. However lacking in taste the Manischewitz may have been, it more than succeeded in reminding us of the rich cultural heritage of the Jewish people. Recreational Manischewitz use may prove to be unwise, and JSwipe may not pass muster as a digital Yente, but as we neared the end of the bottle, our yearning for connection was satisfied. Chag Sameach! Additional Notes:
Tonight’s Soundtrack: “Fiddler on the Roof” (Original Broadway Cast Recording)Will: “Can my quote be, ‘Could whoever took my boots with yellow laces from Red Brick please them return to me?’”Martin: “If I was an Israeli trap DJ, my name would be ‘Lazer Wolf.’” Nose: 3.6/5Body: 1.8/5Mouthfeel: 1.8/5Legs: 3.6/5Taste: 1.8/5

Bottom of the Barrel

Going off-script: corporate dreams fall flat with Skinnygirl® Chardonnay

This piece represents the opinion of the authors:

April 1, 2016

Long-time readers of our column will know that your esteemed critics are not only devoted aficionados of Bravo’s myriad “Real Housewives” series but also connoisseurs of fine wines. We can hardly go more than a few paragraphs without mentioning Teresa Giudice’s legal travails or Phaedra Parks’s thriving funerary business or Andy Cohen’s dog Wacha. Thus, it should come as no surprise that we have been dying to review one of Bethenny Frankel’s Skinnygirl® wines for our column. Thanks to a wonderful closeout sale at Hannaford this week that knocked the price of the 2012 Chardonnay down to $5.89, the oenophile entrepreneur’s wares finally met our singular review criterion.

Skinnygirl®: The Wine Collection Chardonnay boasts the “complex, lingering flavors” of everyone’s favorite white, while still managing to come in at only 100 calories per standard serving. Strangely absent from the label, however, is the statistic that most other wines average only 128 calories per standard serving. Nonetheless, we wished to immerse ourselves in the lifestyle transmediated by way of Skinnygirl®’s intertextual advertising campaign. Could anyone become a Skinnygirl® as long as they identified as “sophisticated and sassy?” Or was it a privilege conferred upon an elite few, those willing to submit themselves to the aspirational dictums formerly espoused by Bethenny Frankel but now enjoined by the crypto-plutocratic regime of Suntory Holdings Limited? Does drinking Skinnygirl® make one a skinny girl, a Skinny Girl or a Skinnygirl®?

We momentarily acquiesced to the idealized lifestyle peddled by this multinational conglomerate. But in doing so, did we lose any flavor when we said goodbye to those 28 calories, or, rather, does the wine taste better coupled with the knowledge that we can safely eat 14 Tic Tacs guilt-free at some other point in the day? The Chardonnay poured out of the screw-top bottle quite loudly, surprising your critics with a babbling brook of well-aged white. We made sure to follow the label’s suggested pairing with “food and friends,” ignoring the potentially cannibalistic interpretation of the phrase.

We soon realized that the Chardonnay weighed in at a paltry 10% alcohol by volume, much lower than our previously reviewed bottles. This diminutive percentage may have contributed to the fact that the Skinnygirl® tasted very much like juice, a comparison your esteemed critics—unlike many other published reviewers—do not make lightly. As a result, the Chardonnay was eminently drinkable, though it did seem to lack the brio of other previously sampled wines. The overall result was much like drinking Diet Coke after a lifetime of imbibing Coca-Cola Classic. That being said, the faint peach intimations lulled us into such easy, convivial conversation that we felt empowered to embark on our own entrepreneurial endeavors.

In the end, Skinnygirl® Chardonnay failed to deliver any memorable flavor or meaningful caloric savings, and the packaged fantasy of sinless sin promised by the promotional material evaporated as soon as we finished the bottle. Nevertheless, much like the reality show that sired it, Skinnygirl® allowed us to temporarily transcend the banality of our post-break Monday night blues.

While the production status of “Real Housewives of Brunswick” may be still up in the air, any budding wine critics interested in pursuing a year of scholarship—and a life of learning—in the viticultural arts should contact mkrzywy@bowdoin.edu or wdanfort@bowdoin.edu for more information on continuing the illustrious legacy of Bottom of the Barrel.

Additional Notes:
Tonight’s Soundtrack: Billy Joel
Will: “Do you think the CPC could help me become a reality television personality, talk show host, author, chef and entrepreneur?”
Martin: “This is the flirtiest wine I’ve ever tasted.”

Nose: 2/5
Body: 1.5/5
Mouthfeel: 3/5
Legs: 3/5
Taste: 2.5/5

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