Because I’m perpetually behind in all aspects of my life, I now find myself spending time that I don’t have perusing productivity websites looking for ways to get time “back.”  So far, I’m (at best) breaking even in terms of getting back the time I spend perusing productivity websites.

One of the cardinal sins of productivity these days is multitasking, which is almost universally derided as the enemy of true efficacy. So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that knows me well when I tell you that I resorted to multitasking in order to get through a backlog of wine and wine product samples to review.

What you might call shiftless otioseness, I call adding value. 

Ok, whatever…

So, I used a product sample to open a wine sample, and poured that wine sample through another product sample (into a glass that I purchased myself, so that part won’t get reviewed – I do have some limit on the number of freebies to be strung together (apparently, that limit is three). 

The result – a review of the True Utility Twistick, the massive 2006 Luce Della Vite red, and the Vinturi Wine Aerator (yeah, I know – I’m the last wine guy alive to try the Vinturi). I had fun, but didn’t get to the semi-orgasmic status suggested by the image on the back of one of the products (see inset pic).

Man, I’m already tired and I haven’t even gotten into any details yet. Can you just come back tomorrow?  No?  Fine, let’s get started…

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As in, three 2005s, or 3 different wines all from the 2005 vintage.

Other than their harvest year, they’ve got little in common apart from the fact that I tasted all three as samples over the last week or so, and in a rare case of vinous serendipity found all three to be excellent (a real treat for me) and probably worthy of your time (and your cash).  So much so that I decided to write a “what-I-drank-last-week” style article, which I don’t often do (not to be taken as a “statement” on the validity of such pieces, by the way).

An alternative title for today’s post might be “Dude-i-locks And the Three Reds,” seeing as how one of these wines is a bit overpriced, the other a bit underpriced, and the price of the third is juuuuust riiiiight.

Let’s start with the slightly overpriced wine, Trefethen’s 2005 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley), which you can sample as part of their ingenious “mini bottle” offering before you decide to plunk down $100 on a full 750 ml bottle.  This wine is most decidedly not a wine for now.  It’s a wine for 5-7 years from now.  Tasting it right out of the bottle now, you might exude a heavy sigh and a look that says “Oh shit, what did I just spend a hundred clams on?!???” – a veritable mess of dense dark fruits, tight tannic grip, vanillin oak and booze all vying for your attention. BUT… a day in the decanter will show what this wine is capable of becoming in a few years, which is downright magical.  It’s like a miracle will happen in that decanter, which on day two will greet you with an enormous wine of power and depth, waves of black fruits, red jams, chocolate, and tiny amounts of nuts and black olives to really seal the deal into awesomeness.  If you don’t think Napa Cabs are capable of aging, then you and I ought to split a bottle of this, come back to it in 2015, and see who won the bet.

And now, our second wine, which is probably slightly underpriced (I know, right?)…

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Alright folks – time for another giveaway, this week featuring a brand new release from leading World Music label Putumayo.  The new CD, titled Latin Party, is a funky, dance-infused, eclectic mix of tunes from Latin American artists, and features bands hailing from Cuba, the U.S., Peru, Columbia, Mexico, and Jamaica.

From the album press release:

“It includes a mix of boogaloo, funk, cumbia, son, salsa, ska and dancehall and spotlights cutting-edge bands and rising stars that pay homage to Latin music’s past while creatively moving it into the 21st century… features songs from New York-based hip-hop collective Brooklyn Funk essentials, Texas-raised Mexican-American musician and producer A.B. Quintanilla III (Selena’s brother), Peruvian salsera Cecilia Noël, multicultural French/Cuban collective Mas Bajo, Afro-Cuban group Luis Mangual y su Conjunto Mangual featuring José Mangual Jr. and from Colombia, three respected groups: salsa super group Fruko Y Orquesta, popular salsa band Orquesta Lo Nuestro and ska/reggae band Coffee Makers. The CD liner notes also feature a drink recipe by Food Network chef Daisy Martinez and an appetizer recipe by leading Mexican chef Patricia Quintana, owner of renowned Mexican restaurant Izote.”

And YOU can win a copy of Latin Party just by commenting on this here post!

Here’s the dilly-yo:

Leave a comment and tell us what wine would you pair with this album of funky Latin dance grooves?  At the end of next week, a winner will be randomly selected from the commenters using a super-secret, totally objective process that involves my dog (details are best left unexplained).  That winner could, of course, be YOU!

I’ll kick things off with my choice of wine pairing…

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Following is a guest post from Chicago-born poet and food-and-travel writer Matthew Gavin Frank, who is, by the account of any reasonably sane person, a very interesting guy.

Frank has, at turns, held the following jobs:

• proprietor of an Alaskan breakfast joint
• menu designer for Julia Roberts’s private parties in Taos
• sommelier for Chefs Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand in Chicago
• instructor of creative writing to undergraduates in Phoenixa
• poetry teacher to soldiers and their families near Fort Drum in upstate New York.

I told you he was an interesting character.

If that doesn’t totally sell you, this probably will:

Frank has just released the book Barolo (The University of Nebraska Press, 2010), which, as he described it to me, is “about my illegal work in the Piemontese Italian food and wine industry,” during which he spent six months “living out of a tent in the garden of the local Pittatore farmhouse.”

Frank’s guest post is excerpted (with permission) from Barolo (around $17 at Amazon.com), and describes his first meeting with Piemontese vintner Luciano Sandrone, who sounds like the Italian version of Wolverine.  I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did, though I suppose that we’re going to have to get the book to find out how what happens next in this intriguing tale…

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