Review for Tuesday - 03/07/2006 by Ssezi

The first beverage of the night is the answer to a question no one asked: what do snobby recovering alcoholics drink instead of O'Douls? Apparently Inglenook has the answer, and has simultaneously found a use for the water Welch's cleans their vats out with, it's near wine. For those who've slammed down the Martinelli's at alcohol free weddings, know now that your hosts actually were serving the "good stuff", they could have foisted of this pap on you. Apparently Bill is angling for an Inglenook sponsorship, struggling to find the positive in this beverage's existence and coming up with this gem: "it's better than water." To which all the other reviewers unanimously replied no.

Believe it or not from the enthusiasm of the reviewers this was pretty much the high point of the festivities tonight. The general consensus is a wine with a little more finish and depth than typical Italian wines. On the other hand, first impressions count and apparently this wine takes a while to grow on you.

This wine may have suffered from a pairing with a spoiled bottle of Grey Poupon. For a wine named after an object as stolid and mundane as a mail box oddly enough this wine was all over the map in terms of reviews. One reviewer found it both heavy and light, although I thought it sweet another reviewer found it dry. Perhaps we were sampling some Schrodinger's Cat like superposition of wines, perhaps we'd entered the Twilight Zone, or perhaps we were just tired.

I don't know if we're grumpy tonight or just unlucky. This wine marks the beginning of a rough stretch for potential reviews. The most coherent opinion can be summed up thusly, "it tastes like a tire store smells."

You can't go home again. Now that the winers are in full swing and the training wheels have come off our taste buds this previous wine tasting champion pulls in two toilet bowl ratings. I believe that's a record for actual wines, as opposed to other beverages, we've reviewed so far. Fatigue may be playing a part as well as the reviews are atypically concise this week.

At this point the pace of consumption and the decidedly poor quality of the last few wines have taken their toll. Granted that this is a Merlot, and mindless followers of received pop culture opinion that we are we count that against it. However it is a dry wine with some pleasant characteristics, vintage notwithstanding, and may actually be better than we thought tonight if drunk in a more conducive atmosphere. Ed apparently has a better promotional gig than Bill's with Inglenook, managing to plug both the Sonoma county tourism industry and the wine. Take his review with a grain of salt.

John doesn't like it not one bit, John doesn't like it not one wit. John doesn't like it with a mouse, John doesn't like it on a house. John doesn't like it here or there. John doesn't like it anywhere. John doesn't like apertifs. The rest of us though, apparently think vodka is the perfect complement to a jar of Smucker's preserves.

One of these reviewers ain't like the others, one of these reviewers doesn't taste things the same. See if you can figure out which reviewer thought we needed to raid the dregs of the hosts wine cellars for more materials for "review". Should you ever find yourself in a similar situation consider it a good sign that perhaps one should start sobering up. Language warning, we have lost all semblance of self control at this point and the recording devolves into musings on what words are FCC sanctioned for broadcast. Incidentally, sanction is one of the rare words that is its own antonym.