Big props to Uncle Verne!!!!

[Botafogo]

The Weenie was in this morning picking up his order and shooting the breeze and just happened to "remember" that he had an "extra, kind of interesting bottle" in the car...

So, he brings in a 1982 Chateau Chambert-Marbuzet Sainte Estephe and gives some story about it being left over from a dinner last night and opens it for his morning constitutional. It is AMAZING: fragrantly scented with violets, aged beef, dried stone fruits, fecund soil, your high school sweetheart's special love musk and more. It is silky and inviting and downright flirtatious in the mouth and we LOVE IT.

Being shit stirrers by nature, we taunt vendors with it all day, making them smell it and take a sip and telling them "now THAT is WINE" and pronouncing their fancy, new world extract-o-bombs to be excellent (but expensive, fruit compote. We let a lovely young jazz singer taste a little and she says, "someone should write a song about that: it is epic love poetry..."

Verne and I had previously had a conversation about how the definition of a great wine is that you can give some to someone who doesn't know squat (or care) about wine and they would immediately say "WOW! I need to drink more of that stuff, maybe I should start learning about wine". This made the case in spades...

Ten days to Rio, Roberto