Homemade Caprese

I've never made one of these myself before but a friend recently gave me some tomatoes from his garden so I decided to give it a shot. Man, so tasty and so easy. I paired it with a rather light Pinot Grigio, they really went well together. This is going to become a regular staple at my house.

Disposable Single Serving Wine Glasses

Call me a wine snob if you will (and you should because I totally am) but I have a feeling that this may not be the best glass of wine I've ever tasted:

According to our old friend Matt over at Crave, the inventor of this disposable stemware actually took it on a show dedicated to finding cool new products, and it was rejected. The joke’s on them; they’re blowing up over in the UK. At £2.25 a glass (~$3.40) they’re not exactly cost effective, but neither is buying a Rainier for $4 at a bar downtown — why do I do that?

And cost aside, the real advantage is in the simple fact that it’s sealed and good to go. The foil top is like a yogurt container’s, keeping your wine fresh and your legal status legit. No need for unsightly paper bags! Just wait till the fuzz goes by, pop the top, and enjoy a nice glass of… Le Froglet?! What kind of name for a wine is that?

Now I'm all about convenience, recycling and drinking vino but I can say with almost total certainty that I'll never partake of this product. Why? Because wine already comes in a disposable single serving size: it's called a bottle. Don't open it if you're not gonna finish it.

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Matrix Reloaded Chateau Fight Scene

Posted merely because it's 2:00 in the morning, I'm eating crab-stuffed salmon whilst drinking a second bottle of very nice Chardonnay and I wanted to watch one of the most gorgeous, bad-ass fight scenes ever digitized (it's not fully letter boxed but just try to deal):


At this point I can't imagine a time in my life when this scene will ever seem old or boring.

Book Club Break

No time for blogging today. My book club is meeting to discuss our latest tome over some BBQ and vino on a day so beautiful that it not only makes me glad to be alive but also extra glad that I'm spending it in Northern California. If you have the means to live here, or even just visit, I highly recommend it. Oh, and how this man is still alive is completely beyond me. I thought that I'd abused my body with chemicals but Ozzy is in a whole other realm of crazy. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Brain Rage's Belated Second Birthday

It was actually back on February 20th and I totally spaced on the date this year; it's a good thing I don't have any kids. We've slowed down a bit in our second year (I say "we" because my liberal hate monkey Thade handles most of the complicated IT work; the constant presence of banana peels lying around everywhere is somewhat of a nuisance but the simian really knows his HTML) since I've cut back on the vino and the subsequent alcohol-fueled rants yet our 2000th post went up just a few days ago and there have only been a handful of days over the last two years without new posts.

As always, thanks to everyone who wastes time reading Brain Rage and a special thanks to all those who take the time to leave comments, suggestions, criticisms, etc. Your participation in this virtual community makes this as much fun for me to write as I hope you find it to read, and the fact that I've never had to implement comment moderation is a testament to the civility and manners of the average reader here despite your disparate views on a wide range of subjects. So I suppose I'll keep writing here until I either find something better to do or until I run out of opinions (don't count on the latter happening anytime soon though). Thanks again, Ragers.

"Wine Is Bottled Poetry." - R.L. Stevenson

No time for blogging today, I have a wine party with many friends to attend. So much for curtailing my gluttonous holiday ways. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone has a good one today. Go Aggies and go Cowboys!

Your Wine Has Body, But Does It Have Balls?

It does if it comes in a wine globe:

The screwtop has already challenged the tradition and snobbery behind the cork. But are you ready to order wine from a dispenser?

N2Wine, makers of 'wine globes' believe that yes, yes you are ready to buy wines distributed from big vats. They argue that the aging process is overrated and that 90% of wines are as good when bottled as they'll ever be. (Sommeliers in the audience are welcome to affirm or refute that point in the comments while we move on.)

Wine globes are glass containers capable of holding 33 or 70 bottles of wine (depending on the size) that are specifically designed to thwart oxidization, the chemical reaction that ages wine, by preventing any air from entering the system. Instead, the globes vino-filled spheres constantly topped off by "food-grade" nitrogen when liquid levels deplete, essentially freezing wine's flavor in time.

The wine is also under constant water-cooled temperature regulation so that it's served perfectly every time and, obviously, the system can offer more wines by the glass than most restaurants currently offer. A $20,000 wine globe system holds 24 varietals of wine—or 168 bottles in all—putting each wine globe at about a $1000 price but eliminating the need for a cellar.

A quick search of this site will reveal that I can be a bit snobbish about my vino and my first, knee-jerk reaction to this system (I would indeed dispute their claims about the in-bottle aging process) is one of abhoration but I have to remind myself that I love new technologies so I'll admit that I'd consider trying out these globes, had I the discretionary income to afford them of course. Hey, synthetic cork and screw caps have already replaced the old standby. If better tech keeps wine lasting longer and tasting better, who am I to reject progress?

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Powdered Red Wine

I think I just found what I'm going to substitute for Tang when I eventually take my space flight. This an English translation of the German website:

The beverage powder that comes in convenient portions packed in pouches has an alcoholic content of 8,2%, which is similar to a light bottled wine.

One would assume that you add a measured amount of water to achieve the correct taste and alcohol content. Yes, yes, I know: to a true oenophile this is assuredly viticultural blasphemy but I plan on drinking when I'm in space, goddamn it! I assume that I'll have to make due with some sort of zero-g sippy cup rather than Riddell crystal though. This undoubtedly illustrates the term "roughing it".

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Wine Tastes Great To Ward Off Caterpillars

I'd never heard this before but evolutionarily it makes sense:

Caterpillars play a major, although indirect, role in all of our lives by exerting a chronic force on plants to evolve mechanisms to discourage herbivores. Plants are immobile. Caterpillars are omnipresent. If a plant is to survive through evolutionary time, it must have defenses, many of which are chemical: latexes, alkaloids, terpenes, tannins, and myriad others. Many of these compounds have medicinal (opium, salicylic acid = aspirin, digitalis, and taxol), culinary (tea, coffee, pepper, cinnamon, paprika, cumin, and other spices), and commercial (rubber and turpentine) values. And should you have an appreciation for fine red wines, be assured that the tannins that give the wine its body and character are there for an entirely different reason. Tannins are digestibility reducers manufactured by many woody plants that cross-link proteins and make them chemically unavailable to the organisms that ingest them. Thus, if only in a round-about way, life would be considerably less rich and less interesting (and much less flavorful) without caterpillars.

On behalf of oenophiles everywhere thanks for the vino, caterpillars.

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Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy

At my book club meeting last Sunday evening I had a conversation with several friends about the simple act of appreciating all of the incredible things that we as Americans living in Northern California at the dawn of the 21st century have available to us. And I'm not just talking about how we can drive a few hours in one direction to the snow or a few hours in the other direction to the beach or a few hours in another direction to wine country (all of which is really, really cool).

I'm talking about all of the little things that I personally try very hard to appreciate every time I experience them: going to sleep in a big soft bed with clean sheets every night, taking a steaming hot shower wrapped in clean tile every morning, popping open a nice bottle of Pinot Noir in the evening and taking that first bite of a juicy, medium rare steak minutes off the grill shortly thereafter. Not only will the vast majority of human beings on the planet right now never get to indulge in these seemingly simple pleasures most of us here usually take for granted most of the time, but the vast majority of people to have ever walked the Earth most likely never even knew that such pleasures existed.

And those are the thoughts that went through my mind when I watched this video of Louis CK on Conan O'Brien's show the other night decrying the general ennui prevalent across our great nation in the midst of (despite the narratives being sung recently in the 24 hour news media) one of the most prosperous times in the absolute most prosperous nation ever to exist on this planet:

I can't honestly say that I'm always happy with my life and everything in it but I do try to make a concerted effort to be particularly mindful, and especially thankful, for all of the wonderful things I've seen and experienced thus far with what little time has been afforded to me on this planet. Here's hoping that the rest of you are doing the same.

Sunday Heroes

I love the idea of Jesus on a power trip fueled by his own ambiguity; "Aaahh...":

Nothing To Wine About

The end of a very long era:

While New World wines have adopted the screw top for years - with up to 90 per cent of New Zealand wines and 60 per cent of Australian bottles using them – giving up the time-honoured cork has met with much stiffer resistance in France beyond the cheaper end of the market.

But according to one wine expert, two of the world's top names - Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in Burgundy, whose bottles can sell for tens of thousands of pounds, and Bordeaux's legendary Chateau Margaux – are now looking into screw tops.

I don't even like synthetic corks so of course I consider screw caps to be an abomination but hey, that's progress. And admittedly, they do prevent oxidation much better and more consistently than either type of cork. I just like the ceremony of opening the bottle the old fashioned way; there's always an aura of anticipation for what you're going to get from that particular bottle that twisting off a screw cap just can't inspire. C'est le vin.

Wine Spectrometer

Just one more piece of future tech that I want to own now (click on image to enlarge).

RIP, Robert Mondavi

Robert Mondavi, the pioneering winemaker that put Northern California on the same par with Western Europe, died peacefully at his home in Yountville today. An enthusiastic proponent of the health benefits of moderate consumption of wine, he championed the use of cold fermentation, stainless steel tanks and French oak barrels. He also introduced blind tastings in Napa Valley and his winery was amongst the first to go public. Sometimes overshadowed by the familial turmoil that has become a dramatic California wine country legend, his winery produced consistently amazing vintages year after year, making his one of the most widely recognized and respected names in California viticulture. Raise a glass.

Old Winery, New Idea

Oxford Landing is a winery based in southern Australia which has come up with a unique marketing idea. Now the wine snob in me has frequently expressed my displeasure (ie. talked some serious shit) about nontraditional changes to the industry such as synthetic corks and screw caps but I think that this idea seems quite useful and innovative.

Using the tags at the bottom of college campus fliers as inspiration, they've added this perforated flap to the back label of their bottles containing all of the pertinent information you would want to remember if you had enjoyed the bottle at a friend's house or out at a restaurant but were a bit too buzzed by the end to remember it all. Smart. And yes, I'm asking myself why I didn't think of this too.

[Update: A bit of sniffing around the blogosphere reveals that many Australian wine labels seem to include this feature. It seems that a company by the name of Collotype Labels patented this idea, called Wine Find, in 2001 and has been printing and supplying labels to many wineries down under for years. I still think it's clever.]