Forty Bottles of Ringboree

Talon 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon
With chili, on the deck, with a group of friends.

Bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree: 32

As you now doubt know, the enjoyment of a particular bottle of wine has much more to do with the surrounding circumstances than it does with the wine itself. A terrible wine with good friends can result in fun and good stories later. But I digress.

Anyways, the Talon Cab is exactly the style of Cab that I like. Big and bold, with caramel, chocolate, dusty earthy aromas, and just a hint of mint. It was perfect with the chilli and the night air.

Unfortunately, it was my last bottle of Talon, leaving me in a situation where the only wines that I have are ones that are to be saved for a special occasion, or ones that I really want to keep for another couple of years. I think I may have one wine that I can open on a whim, and that's a bottle of Fat Bastard Chardonnay - still a very very nice wine.

Perhaps I can get out to Talon today and get another case of yumminess.

For those of you not in this area, Talon is a local winery, out on Tates Creek road, and it's extremely unlikely that it''s available outside of the central Kentucky area. Sorry.

Bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree: 15 Price, unknown - this was one of the monthly selections in the Wine Of The Month club from Liquor Barn. Alc, 14% Label coming as soon as I get it off and scanned in. If it doesn't soak off easily, I'll just take a picture.

The main reason that I started this blog is that I've forgotten how to talk about wine. I used to drink at least a bottle of wine every week, and I knew how to taste it, how to smell it, and how to talk about it. Now I find myself being unable to figure out the aromas, and unable to describe it. This is very, very disappointing to me.

The reasons that I have forgotten how to talk about wine are more complex, but they come down to two relatively simple causes.

First, for the last 3 years, I've lived in a teensy apartment, roughly the size of my nose. Consequently, it was very difficult for me to have people over for dinner. Consequently, I seldom had an opportunity to serve fine wines. Sure, I could open a bottle for myself, but drinking a whole bottle by myself is not only depressing, but is likely to lead me to be a permanent drunk. And, whatever products I buy to keep the wine fresher for longer, that doesn't fix the essential problem that drinking wine alone just isn't as fun as drinking it with someone else.

The second reason is a little more complicated, and far too silly to go into. Besides which, a) you wouldn't believe it, and b) you'd post all sorts of silly comments that I've heard a bzillion times before and would have to delete. So what's the point of going into it?

So, in light of these things, I approach this, the first wine of the 40 Bottles site, with some trepidation. This is increased by the fact that reading Spanish labels has always posed a considerable challenge for me.

Crianza is a spanish term meaning "aged in oak." So far so good. Villarroya de la Sierra is something of the mountain. I presume that this is the name of the wine, or perhaps the name of the vineyard. And, likewise, I assume that Ia is the name of the producer. Finally, Calatayud is a wine producing region.

Of course, you could have determined all of that in a few minutes on Google, just like I did.

As for the wine itself, we had it with grilled barbequeued chicken, cooked on my own back porch. It stood up well to that bold taste, and enhanced it, with aromas and tastes of black cherry and strawberry. As it opened, there were, strangely, aromas of menthol and pine, which seemed odd, but I'm going to write what I smell, and not attempt to second-guess. At least, much.

So the general concept of this site is that I tend to think of wines on a scale of one to forty. Measured, of course, in bottles of Ring Bo Ree. Of course.

All wines are thus measured against the unrealistically high standard of that mythical wine, consumed these many years ago. Yes, it was the 1992 Far Niente Cab.

The year was 1997. It was the peak of the dot com days. We had a bunch of investor capital, and, obviously, the way to make money was to go to the left coast and spend that money as fast as possible. So we went to Internet World 1997 in San Jose, CA.

To give you an idea of how absurd these folks were about purging money as fast as possible, I'll just mention that the evening entertainment on the second day of the conference was Chicago. So perhaps 200 of us had a sort of private Chicago concert. I sat in the front row and sang along loudly to "25 or 6 to 4" and "Does anybody know what time it is?"

Anyways, one evening during the conference we went to a fancy overpriced restaurant, and I was asked to pick the wine.

You know how it is, when you go out to dinner and someone else is paying. There are two categories on the wine list. The affordable ones, and the rest. I picked the wine all the way at the top of the affordable list. The most expensive one I thought I could get away with. The 1992 Far Niente.

Wow.

Even the name (Far Niente means "doing nothing") is great. This wine was big, bold, complex, and far more wine than I had any idea what to do with way back then.

Since that time, I have had perhaps 3 wines that measured up to the mark. The Cakebread cabs that I've had are two of them.

So, that sets the stage. That's the 40 mark. Everything else strives to come close.

Yes, my scale is arbitrary and silly. By that measure, it is indistinguishable from the scales of certain well known magazines which I will refrain from mentioning. ;-) At least I don't expect anyone to agree with me.

The Jumblies, by Edward Lear

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, 'You'll all be drowned!'
They called aloud, 'Our Sieve ain't big,
But we don't care a button! we don't care a fig!
In a Sieve we'll go to sea!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
'O won't they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it's extremely wrong
In a Sieve to sail so fast!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, 'How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
'O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a Sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
In the shade of the mountains brown!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more,
And every one said, 'How tall they've grown!
For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, 'If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,---
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.