I’ve been told that admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery. I’m more than happy to admit that I have a dastardly addiction problem (well, two, actually), but I have no desire to recover from either addiction. You see, I’m a ho. Not the kind that trades her bodily wares on the corner of 12th and M NW at Sunday morning at 4 a.m. (Though I was once mistaken for a prostitute at 5 a.m. as I sat on the stoop of the stairs outside my front door waiting for T.Rex to get off work, despite me being dressed in athletic shorts and a baggy puma t-shirt; this leads me to believe that tomboy fantasies are being underserved by the active prostitution population), but a (1) wine and (2) bath and body products ho.
Now, the bath and body products ho-dom has been a lifestyle pattern since college. Many a person has been forced to restrain me as I pass by lotions and potions stores in the mall, lest I buy my tenth bottle of body wash or lotion. (Let’s see…a current review of my body washes alone reveals Oil of Olay, Korres Fig, Body Shop Olive, H2O Natural Spring Body Polish, The Thymes Ginger Milk, some Honey and Fig concoction I brought back from New Zealand, and Molton Brown’s Wild Indigo — and that’s not even counting what I might have squirreled away in shame underneath my bathroom sink. My repository of body lotions is a subject for another day.)
The wine ho thing is a new phenomena, however, spurned into existence by (a) a sudden doubling of my old government hack salary and (b) recent wine trips to New Zealand and Sonoma, wherein I discovered that Greeks were onto something with wine-infused Bacchanalia. I started 2007 being a big believer in the $5-9 specials at Trader Joe’s, with the occasional splurge into $15-20 wineland, and I finish it with a wine fridge stocked with 53 bottles of wine, champagne, and port ranging in price from a mere $9.99 all the way to $100. How in holly green hell did this happen? What started out a novel interest in having wines shipped back to myself from New Zealand and California has turned into full-fledged maniacal passion, complete with a Wine Spectator membership, a notebook of tasting notes, and strange Saturday phone calls with the wine expert of an Oregon wine shop about the virtues of Oregon versus New Zealand pinot and California versus Washington State Cabernet.
So, since I have decided to jump off the bridge ‘o crazy into a flowing river of wine, I have decided that the best way to get company in Crazy Town is by sharing my love of fermented grapes and oak barrels. (I could certainly also share my love of all things smelly and lotion-y, but something tells me that y’all would prefer to hear about food and wine over, say, the foam ratio of different body washes I’ve tried or how how soft and supple different lotions make my skin.)
So, we begin this foray with Thursday night’s dinner. I whipped up a grilled sirloin with caramelized shallots and blue cheese, grilled asparagus, and sourdough bread topped with fig jam and more blue cheese and paired that with a 2005 Mayo Family Russian River Zinfindel($30/bottle) that T.Rex and I bought in Healdsburg, California (the Mayo Family has a delightful tasting room outpost in Healdsburg, which is about 30 minutes north of Sonoma, where they pair their wines with delightful niblets like peanut butter and jam and left-over Chinese food — a delightful sensory experience not to be missed). The Zinfindel was good, but unremarkable on its own; paired with the blue cheese and steak, however, it was the picture perfect definition of “orgasm in my mouth.” Just a touch of spice and blackberry jam to accentuate the boldness of the blue cheese and the texture of the steak. Damn, if I ate like that every night, I’d be a very happy, 300-pound woman. Yum yum.
If you’re the type who only spends $30 on a bottle of wine either (a) at a restaurant when that’s the cheapest bottle you can find or (b) when you’re trying to get into someone’s pants, then I recommend pairing your steak with a 2004 Naouoaia Red from the Naoussa region of Greece, which can be obtained for a bargain $9.99 at Whole Foods (just look for the label that’s entirely in the Greek alphabet!) Not as fruity or jammy as a good Zinfindel, but it has hints of nuts and spice and is eminently drinkable with a a good cut of cow (I paired it with some free-range, grass-fed New York strip) or on its own. I went back and bought two more bottles of the Naouoaia after trying it a month or so ago (one more for me and one for a Christmas gift). 53 bottles and counting…y’all need to get your arses out to DC to help me drink this damn wine!
