Fulkerson Red Zeppelin - Saturday Nov. 7th

My friend Ryan has a habit of buying things purely on an aesthetic level. This is a polite way of saying he like to buy things based on how pretty they are. We stopped at a local liquor store yesterday (Century Wine and Liquor) and began perusing the absolutely gargantuan amount of hooch they crammed into that place. I have never seen so much shit in my life under one roof and I lived with my mom for 21 years (hey ma!). Anyway, yesterday we made purchases of a wholly unholy manner. Ryan bought about 5 bottles of liquor, which totaled an equivalent sum to what his friend Mark bought. His friend Mark bought a bottle of Maker's Mark and some random Drambruie cream thing. Yeah, 5 bottles for $40. It was a stellar trip. We both managed to get two things in common though: white dog corn whiskey and Fulkerson Red Zeppelin. The Red Zeppelin was at his insistence. It was a "pizza and wings" wine and, since I was going to get pizza and wings, it seemed like a logical choice. He said I'd like it.

This is the man that also gave me bacon vodka. I should have been smart about this.

Frankly, I should have been suspicious when the description of the bottle literally says "Come on wine people......LOOSEN UP!"

Yeah, it says that on the back of the bottle. Word. For. Word. They also use abbreviations (like pleasin'). They also recommend chilling it. It is a red wine. They finally end it with gusto by belting out a caps lock "ROCK ON!" because we all know caps lock is cruise control for cool. It is a Finger Lakes red table wine and, dear readers, it is like drinking a potent mix of rubbing alcohol, kool-aid, and anti-freeze.

I was mystified why it said, in laymen's terms, "chill me". Reds are supposed to be drank at room temperature from everything I've learned so a cold red was rather perplexing. Then I had a glass and realized why. If you DON'T chill it it is like going into a diabetic coma with a healthy dose of methanol poisoning on top of it. I'd use cloyingly as a descriptor but that would be an understatement. In retrospect, this would be awesome to distill, or go through a second fermentation, because the residual sugar level has to exceed 50%. It is pretty much the total gross national export of sugar from all of South America...in one bottle. Honestly, I tried nosing this and my nose hair singed off and left me sniffing down mucus that tasted like Luden's Cough Drops. I tried picking out flavors, it was just sweet with an apparent alcoholic content. I tried folks, but couldn't get very far.

However, its actually NOT a bad wine. It is really, really sweet, yeah, but I think it would work well in a sangria. Some citrus and maybe some brandy would even out the sweetness and throwing it on the rocks with club soda would make it pretty damn good, I think. Also, I think it would be a fantastic glaze for something. Get some chicken breasts, some thyme and rosemary, and just marinate the shit out of 'em with some of this wine, then grill it while sloshing some of this stuff on there. That'd be really good. It does taste fruity on closer inspection (I'm drinking a slightly watered glass as I type this) so I think using it as a glaze for grilled chicken would be awesome. It'd make for nice fruity chicken, with delicious thyme and rosemary flavor, and the sugar in the wine would caramelize quite nicely, I think. Upon reflection, I was going to drain-pour this but I think I'll keep it around. I think it will go nicely with some tonic water.

So...yeah. It's a mixed review. As a straight-up drinking wine it's pretty terrible. Very sweet, limited fruit flavors, it doesn't pour well straight from the bottle. But used in mixed drinks, sangria, or recipes this wine's got serious potential.



And it's got a fucking zeppelin on the front of it, so it can't be too bad, I guess. Maybe it pairs well with Led Zeppelin. I'll try it and let you know.