AficioNada

Right now, fires are pushing across the hills outside the Napa Valley. They have blockaded Wooden Valley Road, the street I briefly lived on when I first moved to California.

And what about here on the valley floor? Aside from the smoke, which has made itself comfortable in the towns and on the highway, it's business as usal. Ten pm on a Monday night, and the big machines are out tossing sulfur over the vines. There's comfort in that. As for me, I am revisiting my past week, wondering how I am going to fit every road trip and restaurant experience and wine tasting into one column.

Well, tonight I'm not. Tonight, I'm plumping up your vocabularly rather than your spare tire. Here, a few of my favorite adjectives for drunkeness (there are so many ways to say it) and other delicious finds as well as one sober reminder:

1. bosky: adj. Tipsy on the point of becoming drunk (also known as the stopping point, or the stage where Brooke becomes an excellent pool player)

2. crapulent/crapulous: adj. drunk; suffering from sickness caused by overdrinking

3. nasute: adj. having a keen or discerning  sense of smell (what all wine writers hope can be said about them)

4. pyrophoric: adj. igniting on exposure to air (not exactly wine-related, except at the present moment, when the hills and valleys around us are embraced by fire)

And now, the serious stuff. Unfortunately, this only applies to women. Ladies, did you realize that our size is not the only deterrant from consuming the same quantities of liquor as men? Our livers, it seems, also lack a certain enzyme that helps our bodies process alcohol. Ladies, repeat after me: Bosky, gooodd. Crapulent, baaadd. Ok?

*Similar phrases and definitions can be found in Foyle's Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words.

A few more folks on wine and nutrition for all those doubting Thomas' out there:

I have enjoyed great health at a great age because everyday since I can remember I have consumed a bottle of wine except when I have not felt well. Then I have consumed two bottles. -A Bishop of Seville Baron

If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life. - Sir Alexander Fleming

I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens.  - Thomas Jefferson

Wine had such ill effects on Noah’s health that it was all he could do to live 950 years. Show me a total abstainer that ever lived that long.  - Will Rogers

Still, even Noah sometimes didn't know when to say when. When he was good and pickled, his kids had to cover his nakedness while he slept.  And, with a two bottle-minimum when sick, I imagine the Bishop of Seville also had one or two sodden slips. Reminder: No one wants to invite guests over only to find Drunk Dad curled up in the BarcaLounger in his birthday suit.

Speaking of the language of wine, here are two unusual words for you to swish around in your mouth. Like most wine words, their foundation may be based in other “languages,” but they’ve had no problem making the transition..

- Acolaust (n): A person who enjoys indulging in sensual pleasures; a sensualist. Have I met any acolausts in the Napa Valley? Only one or two…hundred! It’s hard to make wine if you don’t have an affection for texture. And taste. And touch.

- Afflatus (n): Inspiration, especially a divinely inspired creative impulse. The word comes from the Latin ‘afflare,’ which means ‘to breathe on.’ Ever had any wines that made you think of Heaven’s breath? Here are 2 divinely inspired wines with equally divine – ie, great bang for the buck - prices (in this gal’s opinion and in no particular order):

1.  
   1. Boheme Wines 2004 Que Syrah Vineyard Syrah. A Syrah that tastes of smoke and minerals? Yes, please! $50/bottle does not a table-wine make, but for a great Syrah from a phenomenal vineyard – one of the coldest along the Sonoma Coast – it qualifies as a superior value for one of my favorite special occasion wines.
   2. Chateau Coufran, Haut-Medoc, 2003. Here we have a Merlot-based Bordeaux from the LEFT Bank that combines the lean, mineral-y quality I so love about Medoc and Haut-Medoc wines with the chewable, blackberry compote quality of Merlot. I do so love anomalies, especially when they cost less than $25. This wine’s getting increasingly hard to find, but I did find a few bottles left on BlackTie wines’ site.

Both wines make me think of bouquets of wild violets and just-sharpened pencils. That graphite quality certainly sends me over the moon (I have a thing for school supplies). BUT, it's the combo that makes these wines - for me - more than a passing crush. "Love?" Robert James Waller wrote in Slow Waltz for Georgia Ann. "I cannot analyze that. It is of a piece. Taken apart, it becomes something else, and the gull-like melody that is ours disappears."

Who's to judge what sings to our hearts?

Living in the Napa Valley isn't all gardens and grapevines. Almost every week, the power goes out somewhere in the valley. Often for hours at a time. Sometimes only for a minute. In fact, the power just went out for about 30 seconds, just long enough for my webhost to declare everything I had written in the past hour (and saved, by the way) LOST. Which is why, friends, you will have to wait for the post I just wrote about California Chardonnay.

Until then, a quote to tide you over:

"If you offer a man bacon, you can get him to do anything."       - As said by a Kentucky bacon curer to Pete Wells; "Animal Farm," Oxford American Magazine Spring 2005

I blame Sicily, because lately I've been craving Zibibbo (a Sicillian varietal used in the dessert wines of Pantelleria -a tiny Sicilian island I'm desperate to visit), spaghetti con ricci (mmm, sea urchin juice!), cuttlefish and....

  the Italian language? What can I say? Sometimes words are more satiating than any food or drink, especially if that word can be applied to food and drink! 

I'd like to present you with mollare, and - dun-da-da-dun! (those would be the sounding trumpets, for anyone confused) - mollare's many siblings. Technically, these aren't "culinary" words. In my opinion, they should be.

Mollare (vb): to slacken, which is something that can happen to any wine, but especially aged wine, once it has peaked and begun its flavor and texture decline.

Molle (adj): "Molle means not only soft and limber, but flabby, pliant, even wanton," says Helen Barolini in an essay titled "How I Learned to Speak Italian" in a 1998 issue of The Southwest Review. Wanton on a good day; flabby on a bad? Sounds like a few Chardonnays I know.

Mollezza (n): Barolini calls it, "That intriguing word meaning effiminancy." Some might call this sissy-ish; but I think that only qualifies if the subject at hand - a rustic Right-Bank St. Emillion, perhaps - is supposed to be full of manly-ness. I have met a few effeminate wines that were plenty appealing. Like a man in a ruffled apron; it's about inherent character, not clothes. If it's there, it's there.

Molletone (n): Literally, Bartoloni says, "a swanskin." Or a soft skin. The skin of swans (sigh). Sounds like aged red Burgundy to me. With such loveliness, of course, comes hyper-sensitivity and/or thin skin and volatility.  

      "For the sea is not always as calm as when it was planting kisses on your gloves." - Giovanni Verga, Picturesque Lives.

Too often, Verga, a 19th century Sicilian writer, would say, we only want to clap our hands in wonder at those giant rocks, set in the deep blue sea, without suffering any of the hardships that goes along with such beauty. Loving and loathing really are such similar creatures...