Above: What to pair with Chex Mix? Stinky, oxidized Domaine de Montbourgeau 2006 Chardonnay (with a little Savagnin). What else? Now, how’s that for fusion? Photos by Tracie B.

Do you think that Dr. V minds that I borrow his “impossible wine pairing” schtick? I’m sure he doesn’t (do you, Dr. V?)…

Tracie B and I love this wine (which we paired last night with Mrs. B’s Chex Mix). It’s got that irresistible oxidized stinkiness that we love. Not everyone will like this wine (man, does it stink!) but at roughly $28 in our market it’s one of our favorite “Saturday night” wines. If I’m not mistaken, the first time I tasted this wine (probably the 05) was at a dinner in Los Angeles where wine guru Paul Wasserman was charged with picking a wine that Alice would like unqualifiedly. He chose it because it was “the most oxidized wine on the list” (we were at Palate)!

Above: It also paired extraordinarily well with Mrs. B’s pulled pork, topped with mayonnaise and sliced red onions.

Our far-out pairing of stinky oxidized wine from the Jura in France (an über-wine-geek wine) with some southern comfort seems all the more a propos today in the light of Cory’s excellent post from the other day On Tasting Notes. I’ve long maintained, borrowing a phrase from the great Italian twentieth-century writer Carlo Emilio Gadda, that tasting notes are the “lice” of wine writing. Just read the comment thread to the post: those who defend the obscene practice of fanciful, capricious tasting notes only prove Cory’s well-made point!

The best wine writing (in my book) is about context, people, and pairing: whom with, where, when, and why you opened a given wine and how it made you feel — not the supercilious virtuosismo of strong-armed tasting notes where certain wine writers and bloggers (and we all know whom we’re talking about) seem to thumb-wrestle the notes out of the wines they taste.

In other news…

Above: Tracie B took this photo with her new Blackberry!

Tracie B and I are in Orange, Texas for the first of her wedding showers. I’ve been itching to see more of Lousiana (yes, it’s Lou-siana ’round these parts) and so Tracie B had promised to accompany me across the border (which is also the city limit) to one of the gambling joints. I’d never gambled before in my life and it was fun to have a drink and blow ten bucks on video poker (although, man, it was smoky in there!).

Above: It’s illegal to transport beautiful Texan women (before marriage) across the Lousiana border but Rev. B gave me permission in this one case.

In the glow of our upcoming wedding, Tracie B is more beautiful than ever! To borrow the phrase that Franco has already taken to calling her, she is a simply gorgeous sposina. :-)

We’ve also been having fun planning our honeymoon. Guess where we’re going? You guessed it! MUMBAI! ;-)