Getting Stupider

I was just sent a link to the very latest in gender guided marketing in my beloved world of wine, gave me the exact same feeling in my gut and caused the same response I got when I saw Mommy Juice, Skinny Girl and Mommy's Time Out, wine labels, "Pandering, insulting and utter bullshit". Seeing as there is a crack pot team of scheming asswads out there marketing to the diet obsessed "Mommy" crowd this clever marketer opted to aim for some lower hanging fruit as it were. Not jump full into the trenches and scrap it out for the "Fuck I've Gained 3 Pounds & My Kid Is An Asshole" set, nope too much competition there, no lets go for the truly desperate and horribly needy group of women that is all too often ignored....therefore ripe and aching for our attention, not to mention bitter and in need of a drink.

So now we can add this truly tragic and woefully ridiculous brand to the others in the steaming pile of absolutely infuriating and insulting marketing, "For girls"...

Hot Flash Wines (Nope, only wish I were kidding) http://hotflashwines.com/wines/ 

Go to their site and you can purchase:

Covers Off Chardonnay
Mood Swing Merlot 
And the knee-slappingly hilarious
Zin-O-Pause

(Founded by a woman, an old one....so much for sisterhood. Twat.)
Sigh....

So I'm now scanning the interwebs, pouring over pictures in order to get label ideas for gender specific brand

 MadMen Midlife Crisis Wines

We will offer heavy bottles featuring pictures of super-hawt, scantily clad chicks that would never, in a million years, bone you. That said the labels can act as "inspirational" material at the end of the night when the bottle is as dry as your palm...and lonely heart. Be the first of your pathetic friends to slobber over the surgically enhanced label models and chemically generated wines. What you gonna try first? 

Bonerfied Bonarda
Sagging Sack Syrah
Less "Leaded" Than It Used To Be Meritage ( Our lower alcohol offering)
Or our special cuvee or reserve wine if you will...
Let Us Mega Your Purple (A blend of Lodi Zinfandel and Viagra) 

Taking pre-orders now.

 

Beat boys

Today makes it a full week, well I guess the days/numbers might be a bit askew seeing as I flew out last Sunday night Los Angeles time and it is now a quarter to 2:00 in the AM here in the tiny picturesque village of Hautvillers in Champagne. Landed in Paris Monday night with 2 other of my travel mates, including the importer that asked us all to come, met with, had dinner with the final of, “The Four” in Paris before we all packed, (and I am talking PACKED as all of us are on two week plus trips here) what was to be our chariot and headed to Angers, a stunningly beautiful village in the Loire. So by the time this post posts it will be Monday there so in some jacked up way I think that makes a week. 

I had many a grandiose plan of writing about each and every day I’ve spent here. Recap the adventures, and misadventures, (don’t worry Josh and Jim…and One Armed Steve, your secrets are safe, for now) packed with stories that gushed with wine knowledge, tidbits on what’s been happening here, the silky textured cheeses and wine soaked sauces we’ve eaten, the caves we walked through and the young vibrant wines we drank but, well as is always the way with these trips to Europe shit happened like drunk and no internet access on the days or nights when I wasn’t….okay on the night when I wasn’t. Most nights we didn’t turn in until way after that fifteen minutes of clarity that seems to happen right before you crash, full-bellied and perfumed with wine, into your pillow, or next wrong decision and the nights that had us behaving in a fashion that might allow the buzzy mutterings of how I was getting along, well there was no internets. Pisser for me as I have down-right bursting at my already tight seams to share and junk. I know both of you that follow must be terribly curious….. 

I have this splendid 15 minutes, an actual table to type on, a glass of 2011 Aliane Morgon Cote du Py Beaujolais at my side, the interwebs at my fingertips and the ache in the pit of my tummy that reminds me how much I miss this space, and both of you, when I’m away too long. In short, a quick update before washing my pudgy face, climbing into my jammies and falling asleep before my alarm starts screaming at me, in less than five hours from now, that I have to get up and stuff my girth into something incredibly wrinkled and head into Reims for a series of Champagne tastings…the real reason I’m here.

When Aline asked me to join her on this tasting and research trip to Champagne I was, of course, first flattered and second like a dribbling idiot, mouth watering like that creepy rapey wolf in those old Loony Tunes cartoons. How could, or would I pass this up?! Well then all the other stuff comes flaring up. Can I get the time off? Can I afford the flight, hotels, dinners and being away from the store? Where else are we going? Is anyone else invited…and when I heard there were to be two other, very prominent retailers on the trip? Will we get along? Will they like, or better yet, get me? Took the leap and by the time we were on that long drive from Paris to Angers in the Loire Valley, that very first night we were already in fits of laughter that would only grow louder, and deeper. 

I’ve spent the past five six days with the most incredible group of honest, funny, crazy and hilarious people. I can’t think of a time I’ve laughed as loud, for so long and even up to the very last few moments, us racing down a nearly empty French beltway to get half of our little road trip family to the airport on time to catch their flight to Bordeaux, Aline and I moving on to our little Champagne adventure, our theme song, “Give me the beat boys and move my soul, I wanna get lost in the rock and roll” bouncing through the cabin of the car, our voices in unison, hands clapping…pulling off the road for one last photo, in a field of yellow…me trying to wipe the tears from my eyes before anyone noticed.

I’ll write more when I can, I've got many a story, wine and food, lots of stuff about France that you ought to know...and then there is still Champagne but tonight, tonight, “Give me the beat boys and free my soul”

Jim Knight and Josh Hoover, thank you so much for the laughter, the alcohol induced brain damage and the memories that will be part of who I am forever. Not only are you fiercely talented in your field, you are simply superb humans and I love you now, like it or not. 

Please, don’t drift away…  

 

Orange Soda

“Um, how much is it?” my face down-turned, eyes looking up from the seat I was stuffed into, tummy flipping about beneath the ill-fitting and slightly stained shirt that stretched across my awkwardly changing frame. “I’m sorry doll, I can’t hear you, what did you say?” the heavily sprayed, willowy flight attendant now bending down closer to my face, her perfume filling my nostrils as I once again asked, in response to her, “Would you like a soda?” with, “How much is it?” this time just a little louder.

It was my first time on an airplane. I was terrified but in that way where you can’t quite tell if it feels horrible or wonderful. The idea of vacation as foreign as another language to me. Vacation in my world meant an extra paycheck for Mom, which meant the brakes would stop making that horrific scraping sound, or we would have a week or two off from the endless calls from bill collectors. A vacation from our “situation” was something I knew but a vacation as in locking up your apartment, sleeping in a hotel or getting on an airplane? Well that was never a topic of consideration as it wasn’t ever really a possibility. Travel was a thing my mother did before she had kids. Yet another thing we robbed her of, a story of long ago and not something I knew how to feel about, I mean other than guilty. 

“Oh sweetheart, that’s precious” the flight attendant resting her warm hand upon my shoulder as I held open the envelope I was handed by my mother before I boarded. The paper wallet containing the sixty-five dollars that was, in my mind, going to keep me fed and housed for the next two weeks. A bent finger brushed beneath my chin and a sweet whisper in my ear, “They’re free honey” and I was sitting back in my seat, plastic cup full of ice and orange soda on my tray, nervous heart screaming about under my shirt as our plane split through the sky taking me to a whole other state and to visit my mother’s sister and the cousin I didn’t really know. In some strange version of my reality, this trip was the biggest thing that had ever happened to me. Forget that I’d run barefoot through the blazing hot sand of summer on Mexican beaches and lost a parent, no this big metal tube sailing through the air and the exotic Colorado my destination, this was as big a deal as there was. My first vacation was spent with total strangers and for the weird little blonde girl that felt alone in most situations, it was perfect. 

The next summer would find me once again on a fancy flight to far off Colorado, the relatives a touch more familiar but no closer to knowing, or caring to know me, not that I was aching for them to or honestly, all that interested in knowing them. Their mountain top life almost storybook like to me and their….protection, of their own business and feelings keeping me from having even an inkling of what their lives were really like. It was that kind of familial distance that screamed kinfolk to me, which is why even now that word “Family” holds with it an arms-length connotation. Two summers on a plane, the second time having the shoulders-back confidence to order my orange soda knowing it was free. A little more life and information behind me and when the third summer came round and my mother spoke to me while stroking the incredibly soft locks of my sweet baby sister as she let me know that my days on flying metal tubes were over because she needed me to stay home and help watch the baby, the zipping up of luggage, of baggage that would pluck me down from the clouds of far away and remind me, vacations are brief escapes from our situation, nothing more.

Until…..

Some years later I would meet a man. One that was raised on another planet than I. One that was treated to plane rides, walks on the beach that didn’t come with the churning tummy of fear and loneliness that I had known, but came with another set of situational vacations that sent him running into the arms of beckoning trouble and danger….but his came with a strong set of maternal arms that dug him out and eventually set him on the path that led to me. This man at 21 years old would wrap his awkward arms around a tiny biracial boy, buy him the BIG water guns, pepper his brown face with kisses and let Jeremy call him “Dad” way before I was ready to even commit to being a couple. A man that would leave me frustrated and dumbfounded that he couldn’t feel my feet dug in, hear my “Leave me alone!” screaming and silently, stealthily just showed up over and over again. This man came to us with a routine and desire to see new things, take a break from our situation and he taught both Jeremy and I to seek the new. No matter how scraping the brakes no matter how late the credit card payment….we learned through his patient touch that we needed, needed and deserved that break and would grow as people by just handing over the paper wallet and buckling in for the ride. 

“Would you like a glass of Champagne before takeoff?” a question I will be hearing in just a few hours. I’m boarding a plane and headed to Europe for the 8^th time in 11 years. I’ll fly over states that my real family and I have traversed and investigated, the most of the United States checked off my internal growth chart, the world now feeling like it is in the soft warm center of my palm, the knife of my desire and curiosity slipped beneath its shell, my wrist ready to twist….my palate wide open and prepared for the next bite.

“I’ll have an orange soda”

See you on the other side…

Paris

Loire

Chablis

Beaune

Nuits Saint Georges

Champagne.....

Here I come, paper wallet wide open, take what you need.