Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned

Many of our garden wines are of a lighter nature -- suited for that sun-blasted day of mid-summer, especially. Wines that are lemon-tinted, peach-colored, lightly blushed, verging on the clear ... somehow on a winter's night when chill pervades the rooms and we contemplate turning up the thermostat instead of reaching for a cooling draught of cellar-aging garden-essence, many of the homegrowns seem not to be the evening's ingredient quite being called for.

At such a moment a dry red of the grape variety might come to mind ... but the house recently has had no dry reds -- except the bottle of cooking red, sitting beside the refrigerator.

That one is amusing in its origin. It is our only wine picked up at a garage sale. In a garage in a nearby village we found a wine-making kit, which seemed worthwhile buying for the spare equipment. It included an airtight, sealed bag of grape pressings, however. I thought to myself, Why not? So into a small crock the purply stuff went.

The answer to Why not? is that the kit came originally from one of those execrable super-blights to American commerce Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned, where people shop for lowest quality, at lowest cost to personal wallet, and at greatest cost to society.

The wine, which we more-or-less call Whose Name Shall Go Unmentioned Wine, is awful, of course. Which is why it sits beside refrigerator awaiting tomato sauces.

Cheers ...