I want to make sure you have an enjoyable time, but also that you travel safe, remain safe and make it home alive.  Drinking too much and driving can endanger not just yourself, but everyone around you.  As a Responsible Server of Alcohol, I urge you to take every precaution to make it home safely, including:

• Plan ahead and have a designated driver
• Taste, don’t drink
• Eat plenty of food to absorb alcohol
• Use a breathalyzer, now available at many establishments
• Listen to your friends and loved ones if they mention you need to be careful
• Hire a cab or grab a lift with a friend if offered and there is any doubt as to your sobriety

You are responsible for yourself, your loved ones and others around you.  A split second can change – or end – your life.  Don’t get so caught up in celebration, that you lose control of your senses and judgment.  Drive safe, keep well and have a great New Years Eve!

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013.  Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
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Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

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I (as I expect many of us) was told to restrain from alcohol while taking antibiotics because the alcohol would invalidate the effect of the antibiotics, but this is just not true.  Most antibiotics will work fine while consuming moderate amounts of alcohol.  “There are only three antibiotics that realistically carry a risk of the nasty ‘fainting and vomiting’ reaction (the so-called ‘disulfiram reaction’) when combined with alcohol. They go by the catchy names of metronidazole, tinidizole and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. But they are marketed under many different brand names – the most familiar being Flagyl, Fasigyn and Bactrim respectively” (sourced from ABC Health and Wellbeing Online Forum, 3 December, 2009).  There are numerous other sources that all agree (just Google ‘wine and antibiotics’ or ‘alcohol and antibiotics’ for numerous validations).  As little as half a beer or a glass of wine may cause the disulfiram reaction when combine with the ‘bad three.’  But these antibiotics are used to target limited types of infections and only represent a very small portion of prescribed antibiotics.

I checked my prescribed antibiotic and verified it was not among the ‘bad three.’  Therefore, and with the doctors blessing, I will be sharing a bottle of wine this evening with friends over dinner.  Even more importantly, a business colleague brought over a bottle of 1986 Chateau Lafite, which if given the opportunity, I would not pass on even if it did induce ‘fainting and vomiting!’

Make sure to validate that your antibiotics are not among the ‘bad three’ if you want to consider drinking while taking them.  For most of us, it should not be a problem, but it is always important to verify it won’t be.  Safe and happy drinking!

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013.  Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar on Facebook
Wine Pinterest Boards
Twitter:  Steve Shipley @shipleyaust;   InkIT Publishing @inkitpub

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I have opened a bottle of the 2006 Bannockburn Pinot Noir from the Geelong area in Victoria.  Year-in, year-out, Bannockburn makes exceptional Pinot Noirs.  I was first introduced to the 1998 vintage of this wine which was an exceptional and unusual Pinot Noir.  I finished off my last bottle (thank God I had two dozen to last!) about a year ago and it was still magnificent.  Very few Pinot Noirs will last this distance, but the 1998 Bannockburn Pinot Noir just went on and on! 

This wine (the 1998 vintage) is very complex, full flavored and combines berry flavors with some musky, almost musty flavors but in a very positive manner.  This wine would go very well with a mushroom ragout, eggplant or any other dark vegetable.  I can see myself smoking a fine Cuban cigar while sipping this wine!  The 2006 is similar, but a touch lighter and not quite as complex.  However, it is still a truly wonderful wine.  I purchased two dozen of both the 2005 and 2006 vintages of the Bannockburn Pinot Noir, but enjoy the 2006 more.  It will also last longer.  However, taste is a matter of ‘courses for horses’ and I know several people who prefer the 2005 vintage.

The 2006 Bannockburn Pinot has a very light but tart chokeberry or elderberry taste combined with flavors from the dark, moist forest floor.  Yet, the different flavors are highly integrated, the texture smooth and perfectly balanced, making an excellent wine.  I am drinking it on its own as I write this and it fills the senses!  It also is serving its purpose as a medicinal wine to reduce the ache in my tooth and pick up my spirits overall!  I am excited to have this wine with dinner in about 30 minutes!

A lot of people rave about New Zealand Pinot Noirs, but I need to look no further than Geelong, Victoria for my favorite Pinot Noir in Australia and New Zealand.  (I have had slightly better Pinot Noirs from France, but at two to three times the price of the Bannockburn.)

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While I was looking forward to the wine drinking with some enthusiasm, I was not prepared for the sensual experience that came from the ‘foreplay’ or preparation.  The excitement started to ebb by making the choice of what wine to drink, and increased as I proceeded to open the bottle.  Since the bottle had a screw top (instead of a cork), I did not have the sensual pleasure of removing a challenging cork which some of the ‘more mature ladies’ use in protest of one’s advances! 

However, things quickly picked up again when I decanted the bottle through a filter and aerator.  What a joy to visualize the rich, almost purple color of the beautiful liquid spray out through the aerator and cascade down the side of the decanter.  The smell of wine drifting upward as the liquid trickles down providing a tingling to multiple senses.

As the wine continued to decant, I approached my selection of Riedel glasses, choosing to go with the Cabernet Sauvignon Vinum Extreme (a slightly more sensual stem over the Vinum!) and brought it back to the counter.  The excitement mounted as I poured the wine from decanter into glass to the perfect height (the widest part of the globe) and tenderly and slowly swirled the wine to further speed the aeration process and watch the magic liquid go around and around, like the CERN particle accelerator in (very!) slow motion (crikey, I am sounding like I should be writing “50 Shades of Red” or something!)

As I walked to my desk, anticipating my first sip in three weeks, I was trembling and had to be careful to not spill the wine onto my clothes or the floor.  I then placed the glass on my desk and stared at my prize, my possession that I was about to consume, being in total control of the situation.

My God, I am breathless again writing this as I remember the pursuit and the anticipation more than the act itself!  This is the closest I have been to comparing the wine drinking experience to an erotic sexual experience.  However, for now, let’s just leave it that drinking wine can be something sensual!

On a final and true physiologic note, what makes wine drinking truly sensual is that it fills and satisfies all of the senses from sight to smell to taste to feeling (the texture of the wine on your palate) and even in some cases hearing (by listening to the decanting and swirling processes).  And you can’t do many things that excite the senses more than that!

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The 1999 Zema Estate, however, is one of the truly magnificent Cabernet Sauvignons I have had over the years and I only had three bottles left.  It is a wine to share with great food and great friends.  Having even fonder memories of the 2006 Coldstream Hills Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon than the the 2008 Stonefields Aribtrage, I decided that would be by bottle to “come off the wagon with.” 

The reason I decided to switch to the 2006 Colstream Hills Reserve Cabernet was various, including:

• It was slightly lower in alcohol (14% versus 14.5%) than the Stonefields Arbitrage.
• It reminded me of the gracious individual and the “heart and soul” of Lindeman’s for 12 years, Damien Harrison, who sold it to me and is a legend in the wine industry and the great wine times we have had together.
• I did review with my bride, Deanna Lang, who writes DAZ in the Kitchen, what we were having for dinner tonight which is a minced meat, cheese and elbow pasta casserole dish for which I thought the slightly more complex (but not overly complicated for the casserole) wine would go better with, considering the extra onions, garlic and other spices she tends to add into most recipes, and I am expected she will tonight also!

Therefore I made the switch to the Coldstream Hills Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon and glad I did!  This wine cost about $50 per bottle (even though I was able to get it at a stock clearance for $30 per bottle).  Upon decanting, it appeared slightly flat and a bit tight, but within ten minutes had opened up nicely, became more flavorful, and had a strong taste of blackcurrant, slight taste of black olive tapenade, and a bit of leather which appears to be as much a matter of texture as taste.

I personally love the smell of leather and find a wine to be more enjoyable when it is a bit leathery on the tongue and palate.  (I have only met one person in my life who hated the smell of new leather, but that’s a different story!)  I also surprisingly loved the ritual of decanting and serving the wine and was shocked at how much I missed the ritual and experience during the last three weeks, but that’s the topic for another post.

Now that I have had a glass while writing this blog (and ‘no’, I did not make it to the library to read!), I am going to wait until dinner to have another glass with the mince casserole!  Back to the good times of enjoying great food and great wine!

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Should I have the wine with a meal and if so, should I be concerned about matching the wine to the food on offering?  That seems to be a bit restrictive .  And given I am coming off of illness, I should probably have a red instead of a white wine or sweet wine as there is documented evidence of the slightly further health benefits of red wine!  (Or at least I can use that as an excuse to drink a good red, not that I need any excuses!)  Should it be an organic wine to ensure I do not have any lingering reaction to sulphar dioxide or other additives in the wine?

I certainly do not want it to be one of my ‘last’ bottles of a particular vintage of limited stock as it is not that special an occasion.  I expect I will open the bottle before dinner, sometime in the afternoon and have my first sips while sitting in my reading chair, relaxing after a morning of errands.  Or if my bride is watching an afternoon movie, I may bring the glass of wine to our apartment unit library and read – that is always a special treat!

The common library in our apartment unit

Yes, I think that will be the venue – sitting in the common library with a good book on food writing “The Table Comes First” by Adam Gopnik.  And the wine will be an Australian Cabernet Sauvignon.  While I love my big tannin wines – especially Shiraz – I believe a slightly simpler and lower alcohol Cabernet Sauvignon is the way to go.  One possibility is the 2008 Stonefields Vineyards Arbitrage Cabernet Sauvignon from the Wrattonbully region in South Australia.  Wrattonbully has some of the best Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards in the world!  I have had numerous great bottles of Wrattonbully Cabernet Sauvignon for around $20 – $25 per bottle.  I have had a few bottles of this particular wine before, so I know it will be good.  (However, in reading the label on the bottle, I see the wine has a 14.5% alcohol content which is higher than I was expecting.)

I may also consider a bottle of the 1997 Lindeman’s St George, or the 2006 Coldstream Hills Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, but I would need to go the cellar to retrieve a bottle of those wines, while the Stonefields Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon  is right in front of me!

While I may consider a few other choices tomorrow, I believe the path has been set and it may take a bit more effort than I want to put into it to change course!  I will let you know my final decision and how it tasted in a few days.

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While I have not had a completely dry July, it has been three weeks now without drinking.  I was just so worn down and then got sick and on antibiotics for a while.  While I am feeling a lot better, I certainly am not back at full strength and not at the point where I know I would greatly enjoy opening and sharing a bottle.  I had a 5 minute workout on the treadmill today just to try to force back some fitness and it was clear I tried this a few days too early.  I am glad I had enough smarts to quit after five minutes even though I thought I was feeling pretty good; I was quite drained and light headed from the experience.  It will be another three days before I try to exercise further.

By not drinking, it has also lessened my desire to write about wine (and certainly removed the reason to write about what wine has been matched up with what food), so I have had a bit of a lull the last few weeks, even though I have got a few decent posts out.  I also thought it could be good opportunity to recycle some of my earlier posts as they only had about ten page views when I was getting started four months back.

I hope to be back into opening and sharing a bottle by this weekend as I really miss thinking about a meal as the complete package including the matching wine.  I read recently that it was only in the 19th century that wine and food matching came into vogue.  I find this hard to believe as cooking has been around forever blending many different ingredients into amazing recipes.  Matching up particular types of grapes and flavors of wine to enhance the eating experience seems like a natural extension to cooking and certainly seems like it should be something that has been around forever or at least as long as food has and wine has existed!  I guess there are “somethings new under the sun!”

Because we were sick, we had to cancel one dinner party with a Masterchef and some great wines and I am looking forward to rescheduling it soon.  But first I am anxious just to get a good glass with some meat or pasta!  Maybe by tomorrow or the next day!  I certainly want to be a “winner’ (or winer) again soon!

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However, like most passions, I found I was really missing both (1) drinking wine, and (2) writing about it.  While I have had a number of topics about which I wanted to write, I just could not get focused enough to turn out a column.  Last weekend, I cranked out four blog postings of some size and complexity to have available for publication during the week.  This weekend’s efforts are limited to this one post.

But I found myself constantly thinking about wine, and was able to pull up memories of how different wines tasted.  And that is the silver lining in the cloud!  I realized that even if I am at the point health-wise where I do not have the physical ability to ever enjoy wine again, I will always have memories that I can draw upon to continue to savor the experience.  And a great part of enjoying wine, is not just the tasting but sharing the experience with others!

I recently found out from one of my MW (Master of Wine) friends that we start to lose our palate around the age of 65.  This greatly concerned me as I am 59 and have more wine than I can drink in the next six years!  However, he assured me that the loss of capabilities is minute and really of concern more so for wine judges and ‘super tasters.’  For example, James Halliday, the great Australian wine critic is in his mid-70s and still able to perform his avocation at the highest level.

I plan on drinking wine regularly for the next 20 – 30 years (God willing), and hope that my taste buds are up to the task.  However, if they are not, then I am still certain that I will enjoy the experience, but utilizing my memory more than my taste buds!  And it might be a real blessing as I may no longer be able to discern that small, but quite noticeable difference between the 1997 Château D’Yquem (at $300 per half bottle) and the 1998 Château D’Yquem (at $180 per half bottle)!

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