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.