The Cocktail Hour brings you: wine and words, and free kisses.

Fancy a little wine and poetry? Why not send Lia a wine and food haiku. I just learned of this fun blog event. Check it out here, at Swirling Notions.

I’m going to try to come up with one that incorporates a new (to me) wine: Txakolina. Given that this wine itself has four syllables in its name, I’ll have to work on it a while. When I was strolling through the racks at Astor Wines waiting for our Russ & Daughters class to get underway, I remembered hearing Jose Andres talk about this wine on his great show, Made in Spain. I found the Spanish wines and was just homing in on the Txakolina selection when I couldn’t help but notice a very well dressed woman, speaking impeccable Spanish. No one would know looking at me, that I could understand it, so I always struggle with how to disclose that I can understand them. I’m such a language geek though, I’m always eager to learn more and partly for me, I like to listen just to test my comprehension. Not to eavesdrop. It’s hard to turn off my curious ears…

So, there I was struggling internally and pretending to just be studying the labels, which I was only able to focus on partially. (Where is she from? Can I tell by her accent? Can I tell if she is a native speaker? What words do I recognize? Oh. Stop listening, focus! Txakolina.)

She must have noticed me staring with laser like focus and what looked like obvious incomprehension at the labels. She offered an opinion. In perfect English. Adding a bit about how Txakolina is usually fermented and pointing to one that she said was superior. In fact, she had been working at that very vineyard in that year it was bottled.

Phew! What a stroke of luck that she was there on the very day I was visiting. And she only thought I was illiterate, not nosy.

This wine from Basque is a perfect summer sipper, light, slightly frizzante, quite refreshing. Tart, citrusy-acid, fruit, too. Not one for heavy lifting, but that’s not what summer’s about, is it?

Enjoy some and see if you can help me fold it into a neat little haiku…

So what about the kisses?

Check out Beija at Alibi in the Liberty Hotel. I told you about Beija a short time ago, here. It’s another perfect summer libation.

See you this Sunday evening. Use this address to RSVP: VIP@Beija.net and Beija will pick up your first cocktail! See, I never make a promise I can’t keep!

~ by jacqueline1230 on August 8, 2008.