{"id":5122,"date":"2023-10-31T10:25:10","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T17:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5122"},"modified":"2023-10-31T14:25:48","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T21:25:48","slug":"happyhallowine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5122","title":{"rendered":"Happy&hellip;Hallowine!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/DraculaWine.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"DraculaWine\" style=\"margin: 0px 14px 0px 2px; float: left; display: inline; background-image: none;\" border=\"0\" alt=\"DraculaWine\" src=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/DraculaWine_thumb.jpg\" width=\"247\" align=\"left\" height=\"545\" \/><\/a>Drink enough of it, and you will definitely be happy. In a sense it was an obvious thing to do: Universal Studios partnered with Australian vintner 19 Crimes to bring you\u2026monster-themed wine. Alas, there are just two: <a href=\"https:\/\/19crimes.com\/?gclsrc=ds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dracula Red Blend and Frankenstein Cabernet Sauvignon<\/a>. Bummer. How about a Wolfman White Blend? or a Mummy Malbec? Maybe if this year\u2019s special monster editions sell well, they\u2019ll expand the brand next year.<\/p>\n<p>As best I can tell (and I\u2019ve drunk 19 Crimes Red Blend off and on for years) Dracula Red Blend is the same Red Blend I know well: Medium-bodied, fruit-forward, no detectable tannins. It doesn\u2019t quite qualify as a \u201csoft\u201d red blend like Menage a Trois Silk, but it\u2019s in the ballpark. Solid pizza wine, or doubtless good with bratwurst on the grill. In recent years I\u2019ve come to favor dark red blends, like the brilliant but sadly discontinued Gnarly Head Authentic Black. This isn\u2019t that. On the other hand, I drink zins and pinots here and there so I don\u2019t get tired of soft-ish red blends. 19 Crimes Red Blend would serve that same purpose well. Oh\u2014and the label supposedly glows in the dark. I guess I\u2019ll find out tonight.<\/p>\n<p>As for old Frankie Cab, you\u2019re going to have to try it yourself because it\u2019s a rare Cabernet Sauvignon that I can drink with a straight face. Once again, I\u2019m a supertaster, and to me, oaky tannins dominate the taste of the wine. I don\u2019t chew on oak floorboards. And I don\u2019t drink cabs. (Ok, before my friend Jim Strickland jumps in to remind me, he found a cab that I actually like, from Daou. It passed muster with me because it\u2019s reasonably fruit-forward, with so little oak that I can actually taste the fruit.)<\/p>\n<p>If you pair wine with music (I do sometimes) consider Franz Liszt\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZrmaZGjWg1I\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Totentanz<\/a>,\u201d a piano-centric orchestral piece based loosely on the venerable <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dies_irae\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dies Irae chant<\/a>. Definitely a Halloweeny minor-key composition, full of bassoon noodling and superhuman Liszty piano work I could never dream of while I was playing pop songs (badly) on our piano when I was in college.<\/p>\n<p>Hey, not everybody is good at everything. Have fun tonight, and perhaps hoist a drink with Drac.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Drink enough of it, and you will definitely be happy. In a sense it was an obvious thing to do: Universal Studios partnered with Australian vintner 19 Crimes to bring you\u2026monster-themed wine. Alas, there are just two: Dracula Red Blend and Frankenstein Cabernet Sauvignon. Bummer. How about a Wolfman White Blend? or a Mummy Malbec? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-5122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5122"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5128,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5122\/revisions\/5128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}