De Bortoli Noble One Botrytis Semillon

If there is such a thing as angels, this is what their blood tastes like.

Stone's Original Green Ginger

They had it in the port section of the LCBO. Sold as a flavoured wine, it's strong ginger with a sweet wine taste. Would definitely buy again. Reminds me of an odd mix of ice wine and Jamaican ginger beer. A good winter drink. Warms you up with booze and ginger.

I bought this on a whim, figuring it would be a disappointment. Usually those sorts of bets fail. The bottle seemed too cheap to taste good.

A nice surprise.

Sandeman LBV Porto 2004

Dark. Sweet. Complex. Buy it again. Makes me want to chug it, not sip. Not sure why.

A red silk sheet wrapped around a brick. An angry purple child beating on a drum with a greasy chicken leg. A church full of three legged frogs on fire, and the cooking smell fills the neighborhood.

Nice.

Graham's tawny port aged 20 years

If you love me, prove it by buying me a crate of this stuff. $30 a bottle. Worth every penny.

Croft Pink

Good, but kind of like the Kool Ade of port. Adolescent. Punchy. Not complex. No depth. Sweet.

Feels like a good, plain drink to have in the fridge for some unthinking drunkenness.

Might buy it again, but probably not. The coca-cola of port. Feels mass produced somehow. The same way a Coke tastes. It's okay, even enjoyable, but it's just a Coke for fuck's sakes.

It does taste "pink" somehow. Almost flowery.

Uh oh.

Prune juice (or prune nectar) tastes kind of like non-alcoholic port. It is cheaper, though. Has anyone else noticed this? Are there mixed drinks that include prune juice? Must do some research.

Imperial Canadian Sherry

Let's slum it and try this $8 bottle of what I expect to be shit. Science tells us that if I give you a drink and say it costs a lot, you will love it. If I tell you it's cheap drek, you'll hate it. This is cheap drek. But maybe it will be great, despite the screw top and the low price?





I suspect any drink that has fluorescent orange lettering on the label will be a big disapointment. Here goes.

It's the colour of weak tea. It smells like soda pop. It tastes like an ashtray. What the hell is that flavour in the middle? Tastes like rotten oranges.

Or orange pekoe tea left out for six weeks. Harsh, scratchy, and brings out my phlegm. Yuck. This is the drink of the homeless and maybe for cooking. Drinking it straight is just plain mean.

Now all I can taste is orange, or something like orange. Weak and putrid. Yuck.

Thank goodness Michelle bought some gin and tonic for later.

Taylor Fladgate First Estate

My coworkers, knowing I like port, bought me this for my birthday. I've tried Taylor Fladgate stuff before, and found it dull. Specifically, I tried the late bottled vintage 2003.

This first estate stuff tastes like the unaged baby brother of the older stuff. Sweeter, weaker, and a same long, low burn. It's not bad, but not thrilling.

Strangely, I think I like the young taste a little more than the aged stuff, but this first estate port burns harder. It's like a teenage version of the 2003 port - cruder, more violent, more brash. And I found Mr 2003 a bit bossy in the first place.

Acceptable, but a little crude. As with the other Taylor Fladgate port, I suspect this would taste better with something. By itself, it's a bore.

Lustau Dry Amontillado Los Arcos Sherry

"You're gay."

"What? Why would you say that?"

"Because you drink sherry! That stuff is for queers and little old ladies, and little old ladies who are queer!"

"No, no, no. You're wrong. Sherry is for homeless people. Or at least, that's what I see them buying. The $8 bottle of fortified wine sherry that they keep behind the counter at the grocery store wine shop. If it was out in the open, people would steal it left and right."

"Gay, little old ladies who are homeless then?"

"But this is no $8 bottle, friend. This cost me $20."

"Gay homeless snobby old ladies."

The bottle says, "Tawny gold colour. Nutty with a touch of sweetness. Dry finish."

"See? That screams gay little old ladies!"

And it's tough to argue with that, because I know an old lady named Tawny, and she's all of that and a bag of chips.

Anyway, the drink.

"Ugh! Why did I buy this crap? It tastes like fucking paint thinner."

"Okay, you might be straight."

"Nutty? It tastes like a burning acorn shat out by a constipated squirrel. It flies across the tongue like a burning bullet. Yuck. Dry. I have to stop buying dry stuff. I keep forgetting how much I hate dry booze. Liquids should be wet, damn it."

"How can a liquid be dry, anyway?"

"In this case, it's like licking sandpaper. Mind you, this poison is a very nice tawny gold colour."



"Yes, I suppose it does LOOK good."

"Each sip is worse than the last. So not my thing. Ugh. I'm sure some people would like it, but why? Ugh. It tastes like unsweetened ginger ale with a hint of liquid battery."

"Now that's just cruel."

"No, no. It's horrid. Yuck!"

"Maybe you just have an unrefined pallette."

"No. It sucks."

"Well, let me see if you really have a pallette worth paying attention to. What are you have for dinner?"

"Kraft Dinner and salad."

"Yeah. Okay. No. Not listening to you. Sorry."

"God damn it."

Taylor Fladgate late bottled vintage Porto 2003

This is a serious looking bottle. Black. Red and white label. It's very threatening and serious. But what about the contents?

Very dark and purple looking. First taste is like a hard kiss. A little cowardly.

Put out or screw off, port. What's with this hard to get nonsense?

Tastes a little basic. Sweet start, burn aftertaste.

Doesn't do much for me. Seems to ride up my nose, like horseradish does. Never had a port do that before.

Tastes very grape. Almost like the artificial grape of kid's candy. If they made burning grape candy with an alcohol content, this would be it.

Unimpressive. It's not cheap rotgut crap, but there's nothing special about this stuff. It's good, but without personality.

Michelle says it has "plummy depth" after a short sharp burst at the start. I think it's a plummy shallowness, myself.

Maybe I'm just not in the mood for this stuff. It feels like it's drying out the inside of my mouth.

Something about this port pisses me off. This port is a lie. A betrayal. It's sweet, flat, crisp, dry, dull. Autumn leaves in my mouth. It feels like the taste promises one thing and then gives me another.

I'm not even sure why, but I don't like it. I wouldn't buy it again. It's okay, but just too flat.

Dow's Late Bottled Vintage Port 2004

Okay. Enough screwing around. Let's get to work here. I mean, come on -- Korean raspberry wine? Fuck that shit. Let's open a motherfucking bottle of port, my friends. Let's taste some magic.

First off, I'm no port snob. I just like the taste of it. So I'm not entirely sure what it means when the small print reads, "Bottled 2009". Is that bad? Where was this port sitting for 5 years? I guess in a barrel. But the whole 2004, 2009 thing has me a little confused. Maybe I've been ripped off or something I don't know.

This port is purple and opaque. It's thick, buddy. This is no watery crap. And that's what I like to see. And I haven't tasted it yet, because I'm worried. What if it's not love at first taste? Plus I like to torture myself. I've poured a glass and I'm just looking at it. I'm also talking to it.

You better be good, you bastard. I think you cost me $24 or so. Which is cheap-ish for port.

Okay, okay. Here goes. First taste.

Nice. Very purple. Very girly, somehow, at the start. Slides down the throat. Oh, and there's the burn, in my belly.

I know a lot of people hate this, but flavour really does have a time to it. A start, a middle, an end. Some flavours can be real rollercoasters. This port tastes like wide open road. The horizon goes on forever. There are clouds, way off in the distance. A storm. That's the burn at the end. But until you see those clouds, smooth driving. Did they just pave this highway? I think they did.

Oh, this is some nice shit. I don't even drive, and it makes me dream of open roads through cool desert as the sun sets somewhere behind us. Super smooth road. It's hard to tell if we're even moving.

Come to think of it, we probably shouldn't be drinking and driving. Oh look! There's a lizard by the side of the road, wearing a peach vest, talking into a cellphone.

"Hey," the lizard says, slow and smooth and deep, "I just made a killing on the stock market. I invested in pig futures."

Pig futures? What the hell does that mean?

"Michelle! Taste this smooth driving deep throated lizard on the highway port!"

She does. "It's very subtle," she says.

It is.

Would buy again. Very nice.

Dow's Late Bottled Vintage Port 2004

Gochang Bokbunja / Korean Raspberry Wine / Sun Woon

"Brewed by fermentation with yellow earth water in the yellow earth cave," claims the bottle. What the hell does that mean?

At $13 a bottle, I'm not expecting much. I like fruity liqueurs, but a lot of them taste like cough syrop.

Initial impression - it is exactly what they say it is, raspberry wine. Tastes just like that. Nice and mellow. No harsh after burn. A good dessert wine.

I like it. It's competent and straight-forward, if a little simple. Kind of a one note wonder.

"Hello, I'm raspberry wine."

And?

"And nothing. I'm raspberry wine."

That's it? Seriously?

"What? What else do you want?"

I'm not sure, really. I mean, you are tasty, but so what?

"Well, I am 15% alcohol, so I will get you drunk."

Oh yes, there is that.

It's quite yummy, on further sipping. I'm still left with this feeling that it's missing something. I'm not sure this will sound offensive, but there's something very communist about the taste. (Is Korea a communist country?)

"I shall make raspberry wine with a cunning simplicity and plainness, that will oppose the complexity of capitalist excess and decadence."

And so they did and here we are. It's almost Buddhist in its simplicity. One long raspberry note. Maybe it would taste better with food or something to make that note more complicated. On it's own, it's a little too plain. Good, but needs a slice of tart lemon meringue pie to be great.

Man, I could go for some pie right now.

Gochang Bokbunja Korean Raspberry Wine

Zubrowka Bison Vodka (flavoured vodka)

"Hey, Keith Fountain, I have started a blog about the booze I drink. I prefer sweet sherries and ports, for I am a girly man. No hard whiskey or any of that manly stuff for me."

"You are in luck, Nikolaus Maack! I have a bottle of imported Polish vodka that I hate because it is sweet as diabetic shit."

"I will gladly take that bottle off your hands."

"Hooray!"

"Yippee!"

I think the conversation went something like that.

After letting the bottle sit in my freezer all day, I poured myself a glass.

Initial impression: what the hell? Sweet. Strange. Strong.

Later: sort of vanilla like. If you melted a vanilla candle and drank it while somehow keeping it lit, it would taste like this.

"I am Polish prostitute. I sleep with you. I am sweet young girl. You like my beautiful body? You must like it, or I kick you in Canadian gonads, make you cry like boy who lose pet goat."

Wow. Polish whore, three kisses from you and I can barely walk.

"Surprise, stupid Canadian boy. I not Polish prostitute. I bison disguised as Polish prostitute by wearing pink mini-skirt. That why picture of bison on label."

I don't care. I still love you. Plus I am now drunk out of my mind on a tiny glass of your essence. But wait - what did Keith say before he sent me home with this bottle?

The ghostly memory of Keith's voice drifts across the room:

"Nik, they put a long blade of 'bison grass' in every bottle of this stuff. The joke is that a bison peed on the grass, and that's why the vodka is yellow."

What? Noooooooooo!

"Ha ha ha! Stupid Canadian boy!"

Just then, Michelle came home from work.

"Michelle! Taste this!"

"I don't know. Straight vodka. Hmm."

"Taste it! Take a sip! Taste it!"

"Ok! Ok!" (Slurp!) "Thats pretty good, actually. It tastes like cookies."

And that is how I saved myself from being raped by a Polish bison prostitute.

Good stuff. Would buy again. Very enjoyable sipping it straight. Nice, spicy, sweet, but not cloyingly sweet. Has kick. Lovely, brutal. Like a mistress dressed in vanilla, spanking me senseless.

Zubrowka Bison Vodka

Justino Madeira

Justino's Madeira Verdelho: ten years old.

Not very sweet. Kind of bitter, actually. Maybe I should avoid dry port. Watery and lifeless. Sort of tastes like worms and oak. A clear, wimpy brown. Lemon? Really? Seems weird to taste lemon in it. Harsh. Drinkable, and gets me drunk fast. More medicinal than pleasurable. Tastes red and purple. Mostly yellow. Burns.

This is an angry dwarf, who wants to fight me, but I can't take him seriously. He wants me to fight, but instead I laugh and tell him to sit down and relax. He won't. He really wants to fight me, and it's kind of embarrassing. He grows on you, after a while, but there's always that irritating sense that he's a jerk, even if we are starting to get friendly with each other.

Justino's Madeira

I Forget What I Drank

I like drinking port, but then I forget what I've tried already. So this is a blog, mostly for me, to remember what I've tried out. I don't drink a lot or often, so this probably will be mostly empty. Oh well.