Old World, New World and a Big Ass Bottle to Wash Away the Tears

When I started this blog three weeks ago, I said that I would be blogging within 24 hours of each of our games. A lofty goal, but one that I had stayed relatively true to through our first three games. Then came Wednesday's game, a game that saw the Mad Ants race out to a 26-point lead with six minutes left in the Third Quarter. With most teams - and by "most" I mean 98% of all teams at the pro, college, high school, junior high, and pee wee levels - such a large lead would be safe. The Mad Ants, however, have spent the better part of three seasons looking at such leads as a challenge - they know they'll find a way to give away the game, they just try to find novel avenues for doing so each time.

With such a bad taste in my mouth from the loss, and being tired of writing negative blogs about the team, I decided to wait until our weekend two-game set against Iowa to blog. Surely I'd have something positive to say about after those two games. We're bound to win one of them, right? Absolutely, positively, take-it-to-the-bank WRONG. We got destroyed in both games, including the Saturday game in which the nation again got to see us again on Versus.

So, with three straight losses fresh in my mind, I went to the store to grab the most fitting bottle I could find - a bottle of Gabbiano Chianti. What is significant about Gabbiano, you ask? Nothing, other than the fact that it was a large-format 1.5L bottle, and I had a lot of sorrows to drink away. A 1.5L bottle is often referred to as a Magnum, and contains two normal-sized bottles. At $11.99 for the Magnum, the Gabbiano Chianti was really a great buy. Not a ton going on either the nose or the palate, but it was really pleasant, and you certainly cannot expect much more than that from a wine that costs only $6/bottle (do the math with me!).

As non-descript as the wine may have been, it does bring up two interesting (to me, at least) talking points: the first is the bottle size, which deserves a bit more attention. Bottle size is an issue that very rarely becomes a factor in buying a wine. Of course if you have dinner guests - or are hiding from the fact that you sell tickets to a terrible basketball team - a Magnum is a convenient option. However, other even larger bottles do exist. These bottles are popular in the French regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy, each of which - typical of the French - find it necessary to have their own separate naming system for these large format bottles. Having lived in Burgundy I lean their direction and will therefore give you only the Burgundy names, all of which have Biblical significance. A 3.0L bottle (4 btl equivalent) is a Jeroboam, a 4.5L is a Rehoboam, a 6.0L bottle is a Methusalah, 9.0L bottle is a Salmanazer, a 12.0L bottle is a Balthasar and a 15.0L bottle (a whopping twenty bottle equivalent) is a Nebuchadnezzar. While impressing the wine-drinker is one reason for creating such large bottles, aging is another: the small amount of air in the bottle (between the cork and the wine) and a large amount of wine results in a small air-to-wine ratio, which favors slow development of the wine when compared with smaller formats.

The second significant element of the Gabbiano Chianti is the identification by region (Northern Italy) instead of by grape varietal, such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. Most Old World wines - i.e., wines made in Europe and the Mediterranean basin - are identified by region, whereas most New World wines - wines made in America, Australia/New Zealand, South Africa and South America - are identified by varietal. This makes shopping for New World wines fairly simple, and buying Old World wines quite complex. To successfully navigate Old World wines, it is necessary to know which regions grow which type of grapes. For example, wineries in Chianti use almost exclusively Sangiovese grapes. Listing the grape varieties grown in each Old World region is well beyond the scope of this blog, but a good reference site is www.bettertastingwine.com/appellation.html.

I have no doubt that I will revisit Old World v. New World topic in a later blog, so for now I will simply advise you to either research a region individually before buying a wine from that region, or dive right in a grab whatever bottle looks good! In the meantime, I will cross my fingers and hope that Jeff Potter can pull off some roster moves that will give us a New Team...