It takes seven times before you’ll like Campari
It was about six or seven years ago. I was enamoured with the marketing campaign for an exotic Italian liqueur. The ads all showed smart, sophisticated Europeans sipping a wondrously red drink from elegant, crystal glasses. The people in the ads were attractive, sexy and just flat gorgeous. I wanted to be like them.
I bought my first bottle of Campari and took it home.
On the bottle there was a bottle tag with two recipes: Campari and soda and something called a “Negroni.” With great expectation I mixed the simple highball: two parts club soda, one part Campari, served in a tall glass with lots of ice. I used my best crystal so I would experience the drink just like those people in the ads.
“Blah!” I yelled out loud. My wife looked at me strangely. (OK, that’s not so unusual.)
I didn’t like it.
I drank the whole drink and then mixed myself another, this time four parts soda, one part Campari.
I didn’t like that drink any better.
I would try Campari again and again over the next several weeks. But it didn’t matter how I mixed it: on the rocks, in a Negroni, as a shot. No matter what, I always had the same reaction: “Blah!”
Eventually, I shoved the bottle behind the thirty or so other bottles in the cabinet under my wet bar. I soon forgot I had it.
A few years later, I pulled the two-thirds full bottle out from its hiding place and remembered, bitterly, my previous experiences.
“Good riddance!” I said as I threw the bottle out.
Flash forward several years to late 2006.
I’m walking around my local Spec’s looking for something new to try and there’s that exotic red liqueur staring me in the face.
“Try me again,” I hear the bottle say. “The Italians have been drinking me for 146 years. I must be good for something.”
“Liar!” I scream. The store clerk asks me to keep the noise down.
But something inside me tells me that what the bottle said must be right. So, hesitantly, I put a bottle into my shopping cart and roll the cart to the checkout register.
Thirty minutes later, I’m sitting at home looking at a tall, elegant crystal glass with two parts club soda, one part Campari and lots of ice.
I take a reluctant sip.
“Hmm,” I say. “Needs a little gin and a touch of sweet vermouth.”
Negroni
1 ounce gin (I like Boodles for everyday)
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce Camparishake, serve up with an orange slice
Dinner in the sky
The picture says it all.
Worth a trip to Belgium all by itself.
Thanks to Neyah White for his post.
Tim Elliott is my friend
Is Tim Elliott is my friend? No, not really. I’ve never met the man.
Tim is famous as one of the original wine bloggers and podcasters with his WineCast site.
I have followed Tim’s WineCast regularly for months and sometimes that kind of familiarity can feel like true friendship. (You know, sorta like the lady who stalked David Letterman for years.) But in this case (don’t worry Tim), I really am Tim’s friend on a website called the OpenWine Consortium.
“What kind of site is OpenWine, John?” you might ask.
OpenWine Consortium is a global, non-profit wine industry association featuring the newest generation of emerging companies, wineries, publishers, services and a motivated community dedicated to changing the world of wine.
If you’re familiar with some of the other networking sites (like LinkedIn or FaceBook) you might recognize the features. Anyone can sign-up as a member and post information about themselves. Your information and the information about hundreds of other members are linked together in a way that helps everyone communicate in a meaningful way.
“Huh? What’s that mean?” would be a normal response right about now.
Think cocktail party, diary, phone book and Christmas card list all rolled into one. It’s pretty new (having just started in February 2008).
Wanna find and visit with other people that know about wine? Join the OpenWine Consortium.
Two tee-shirts at Lowe’s
It’s midday on a Sunday. I live in west Houston and I had just driven over to the local Lowe’s hardware store to buy a new mailbox. Someone had decided to slam their car into my old one late Friday night and the mailman complained to me on Saturday.
I’m thinking that my whole investment at Lowe’s should be less than ten bucks for a plastic mailbox and the small piece of wood I need to mount it on my old mail post.
I walk into the store and ask the first employee I see: “Mailboxes?” A model of efficiency: short and to the point don’t you think?
She gives me a funny look and rolls her eyes back inside her head like she’s looking for the answer. It takes maybe thirty seconds until she finally says, “Aisle seventeen.”
Great, I’m at aisle one. I was hoping to do this whole shopping spree in less time than it took for her to answer and now I gotta walk all the way across the store.
I’m a fast walker but it still takes more than a minute to get to aisle seventeen. I turn and walk quickly to where the mailboxes are when behind me I hear, “Oh, sir, can you come here a second? I want to show you what my husband is wearing.”
Now there’s something I didn’t expect to hear when I entered this store.
I’m confused, a little, but I walk back toward the attractive 30-something brunette. She’s at the end of the aisle pointing towards her husband who’s two aisles down. When I reach the end of the aisle she says, “look at his tee-shirt. It’s the same as yours.”
Well, I look at his and then I have to look at mine. I’m a guy; I haven’t a clue what shirt I picked out this morning.
Turns out I’m wearing a Portsmouth Brewery souvenir tee-shirt I picked up last December when I was visiting my son in New Hampshire. That guy two aisles down, the husband of the lady standing next to me, is wearing the same souvenir shirt in the same color.
“It’s his favorite shirt,” says the wife. “He won’t let me throw it away even though it’s old and faded. He just loves their beer and that shirt!”
I wave to him. We both seem a little bit embarrassed by the whole matter.
“Hmm. I was just there a few months ago. My son lives up there.”
I walk back to the mailboxes wondering if there’s any cosmic significance to it all.
The Portsmouth Brewery
56 Market Street
Portsmouth NH 03801
(603) 431-1115
www.portsmouthbrewery.com
