Free Wine Blog VIII: It’s Like The Popov Of Wine

This is not to be confused with a Free Wine Blog/A Wine Blog That Is Free. The wine is free, but the blog is going to cost you. Don’t worry, I’ll send you an invoice. Yes, by reading this disclaimer, you have already agreed to pay me. This also shouldn’t be confused with Shitty Wine Blog, which is the far superior blog I am lampooning. If you want better writing about terrible wine, go to that blog and disregard this one. Brittany actually knows what she’s talking about when it comes to kitsch beveraging. 

Making an ass of yourself takes its toll after some time. Making an ass of yourself 5 nights a week is a wholly different kind of hustle. And with that, I found myself exhausted and panicky on a Tuesday afternoon. I was in dire need of some Coze Time. It’d been over a week since I last went straight home after work. Since then, I haven’t even heard Vin Scully’s voice or enjoyed an empty house. Oh crap, I feel like a parent. Please tell me I’m not a parent. No? Good. Anyways, Tuesday night was alright for Coze Time and I decided to capitalize on it by opening up the ol’ Free Wine Drawer. Because that’s the only way I can relax: by doing work disguised as leisure disguised as work disguised as leisure.

Oh goody. It’s the Terra di Vulcano Dry Muscat. With my basic knowledge of French, I can deduce that the name translates to “Volcano Haus Dried Muskrat”. I had to Google an image of a muskrat to refresh my memory and dear lord are they adorable! Why anyone would want to kill them, dry up their bodies ad liquify the remains for yuppie consumption is beyond me. Like I’ve said before, I don’t know shit about wine. Maybe that’s what the muskrats want? Maybe it’s ancient Italian tradition? Maybe they all died on the volcano? There are simply too many questions that will be left unanswered. So I might as well just start drinking.

Mouth-Feels

– The bottle seemed to be a little ambiguous about what color the wine actually was. With its dark green hue, it could’ve gone either way. When I pulled back the foil, the inside was slightly stained red. Oh good. It’s a red one. Then you could imagine my dismay when I poured a glass that was whiter than Portland. I guess the foil had some residual muskrat blood on it. Way to keep things sanitary, Volcano Haus!

– At first taste, I got a big waft of hamburger skittles. There were some savory notes combined with general semi-sweet chemicalness. On second taste, the hamburger was gone and I was left with the flavorless base that skittles would be made out of. It was by far one of the most annoying wines I’ve ever tasted. Deceiving appearance, dull flavor and not even the satisfaction of a boozy afterbite. People actually drink this stuff for fun. They drink it because they like it. What an incredible world we live in. One that’s filled with morons. I can only assume that they farm-raised the muskrats to eat lots of sugar before being slaughtered and liquified.

– Thank my sweet bippy that I actually brought home some food to accompany this carnivoric sludge. I paired it with some extremely questionable sushi. Oh good. Muskrat and smelly tuna. This will end well. To my surprise/horror, combining the two opened up a whole new world of taste. The wine acted as a flavoring agent to make the sushi pop. Who needs wasabi when you have dried muskrat, amirite? I was halfway tempted to pour the wine into a bowl and eat the sushi like a breakfast cereal. But the mental image of that made my stomach churn. Suddenly, the sushi did nothing at all to mask the wine’s menace.

– An immunity was built. The rest of the bottle tasted like nothing at all, followed immediately by a gut ache. I guess this is what you would call “rotgut wine”. It’s like the Popov Vodka of wine. Which now makes sense. Observe:

Russian AF Vodka Name [Popov, Skol, Crystal Palace] = Rotgut

Old Fashioned/Blue Collar American Beer Name [Schaffer’s, Hamms, Strohs, Blatz] = Rotgut

Easy-To-Pronounce Italian Wine Name made out of muskrats = Rotgut

Basically, anything that seems appropriate to the medium is inappropriate to your stomach.

Earth-Feels

The heart of this wine belongs in a sleepy town in Kansas. Jeff goes to the store with his mom. Not because he wanted to, but because there’s nothing good on TV at 4:30. At 5:00, it’s a different story, but he’ll be back home by then. Hopefully. Whatever. It feels good for Jeff to get out of the house. That’s his excuse and he’ll tell it to anyone that asks.

“I’ll just wait in the car”, Jeff tells his mom as she slams the door of her 1996 Ford Taurus. Jeff turns the keys over so that he can roll down the window and listen to the radio. Arm sticking out, doing a wave-motion that only seems appropriate in a moving car, Jeff mumbles the words to the new Puddle Of Mudd song. Or maybe it’s Staind. These new bands all sound the same to Jeff. A ragged man walks up to the Taurus with a stolen electric razor in tow. Even with the amount of distraction Jeff is going through, even he can fill in the blanks. We all know what happens next.

Experience-Feels

– I’ve been drinking free wine for a good amount of time. You would think that it would happen early or not at all, but this was the first free wine to get me Drunk™. Like stupid, rolling around on the couch drunk. D-R-U-N-K. The sensation was very confusing and disproportionate to the amount that I actually drank.

– Halfway through the bottle, I felt some bad stuff coming on. I tried to soak it up with an extravagant amount of horseradish cheddar cheese, but I think that made it worse. I knew I was gone when I scribbled in my notebook, “Chase Utley looks like a good dad or shitty wedgie-giving uncle. One or the other. It’s the gleam in his eye”. The only other note I wrote after that was “Hi-Chew showers. Forever.” of which I already forgot the meaning.

– At one point, I decided to sit on the kitchen floor and read the new issue of Old Man Logan. It made me cry a little. Seeing Wolverine leave his loved ones is a very emotional thing for a person that is wine-drunk. Or at least I think that’s the norm? Hope?

– At about 1 AM, I got a text from Mymainmanzook. He had just bought a domain, but couldn’t route it [or at least that’s what I think it was?]. He asked me to send a letter to “them”, to which I did:

He then told me that I got it all wrong. I should’ve really wrote that letter to the governor of Silicon Valley, to wit:

– I went to bed and had a really long dream about being perpetually late for a flight. This happens 4 times a week. Nothing new to report. Except this time, I thought it was acceptable to take a Jamaica-Bound F Train to JFK. Hah! Boy, my dreams sure do get crazy!!!

Volcano Haus Dried Muskrat: You’ll feel emotional and capable of writing letters, but not capable of writing emotional letters!

-TeeCoZee