OK, so how many Winepisser readers enjoy a peanut butter and jelly sandwich which has been rubbed in celery salt and truffle oil? Not many I expect.
What about a fine filet mignon that has been cooked to perfection and then soaked in the leftover milk from a bowl of Count Chockula cereal?
Yeah, well how about a nice cabernet blend shoved into barrels that some shithead used to make cheap bourbon in?
I didn’t think so. And yet that’s what some assholes want us to believe, that aging wine in bourbon barrels is going to improve the wine. Of course the ultimate effect is the exact opposite, and it results in wine that tastes like it’s been served in a glass that was left overnight from someone’s bachelor party and never washed, and probably had some cigarette butts in it to boot.
I’ve tried a few of these gimmicky garbage blends recently, and the effect is always the same: a not bad wine marred significantly by an overpotent nose that smells like a gay bar urinal cake and an aftertaste that’s about the same. The Cooper and Thief blend I wrote about here was the least offensive, but not much so.
Bourbon is made from corn grain and melted confederate flags, so mixing wine with it will naturally foul up the thing. It’s a baffling choice, but I can see the marketing appeal. It sounds cool. But if you think about it for a few seconds — wine mixed with bourbon? — you can quickly sense how it will end. Not good.
So I’m unlikely to stop marketing assholes from mixing wine with anything they can get their hands on just to sell bottles, but I do appeal to whatever souls may be left in the winemakers who are forced to make this stuff. Stop it, already. Or I swear to God, I will invite you over and serve you a gorgeous salmon fillet that, just as I put it on your plate, I rub with some week-old dirty laundry.