This is a spicy, tannic, almost chewy red wine — exactly the kind of red I love to uncork when it’s snowy and cold and I need to cuddle up with a book.  It pairs extremely well with chili or a rich stew, but beware of pairing it with pasta or pizza.  This is an assertive wine and needs it strongly flavored, slightly fatty foods to stand up to it.

Rating: Buy a bottle/buy a case

But not all of Jane Austen’s novels are gems on the level of P&P.  I think one of them in particular could seriously benefit from the addition of some undead antagonists.  For your consideration, I present the following Austen mash-up idea: The Vampires of Mansfield Park.

Let’s be honest.  The original Mansfield Park is a snooze.*  Heroine Fanny Price is a passive drip, especially next to her neighbor, the witty and assertive Mary Crawford.  Mary’s charming brother Henry Crawford is an appealing suitor for Fanny, yet Fanny inexplicably rejects him to continue pining over her boring cousin Edmund Bertram, who barely seems to know Fanny exists until the last 10 pages of the book.  The Crawford siblings are allegedly the villains of the piece but their only real crime** seems to be not being dull enough to suit the tedious Bertram/Price clan.

Now, think about how much awesomer the book would be if the Crawfords (and possibly some of the other characters) were vampires.

Suddenly, Fanny’s resistance to Henry’s advances becomes much more understandable.  Edmund’s near-total indifference to Fanny — a major obstacle to caring about the original book’s key romance — could be explained by Mary putting him under thrall.  Fanny’s disagreeable Aunt Norris would be even more odious with supernatural abilities.  Also, the long sequence in the book where Fanny agonizes over finding the right chain for her cross pendant wouldn’t seem so insipid if she were going to a ball filled with vampires.

What do you think?  Do you like MP the way it is, or do you agree that a few bloodsucking undead would really improve the story?+

Also, Heathcliff’s behavior in Wuthering Heights would make a lot more sense if he were a werewolf.  Just saying.

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*  I am not alone in thinking this, I’m sure.  In college, a wonderful scholar from Oxford gave a guest lecture in my English class.  She was delighted to learn we were reading an Austen novel, but her enthusiasm dissolved when she learned we’d been assigned Mansfield Park. “… oh,” she said, visibly deflating.

** OK, yes, Henry sleeps with the married Maria Bertram.  Fair enough.  But I’ve always felt that Mary’s supposed villainy was only tacked on at the end to explain why Edmund would ever choose Fanny over Mary.

+  Apparently there’s already a Mansfield Park and Mummies, which is sadly not available from my library.  I may have to spring the $5 for the Kindle version.

That got me thinking about what an enthusiastic home bartender could reasonably keep around without bankrupting herself or spending hours tracking down obscure ingredients.  I started envisioning a more basic book of cocktails, one with recipes based around a list of ingredients that most cocktail enthusiasts will already have around, or that will be easy to obtain and versatile once you get them home.  So what would we expect a fairly well-stocked home bar to have on hand?  Here’s the list I came up with.

Our Canadian bar

Essential cocktail bases
(a well-stocked home bar should include all of these)
Vodka
At least one type of whiskey — Bourbon, rye, or Scotch
Gin

Optional cocktail bases
(may be in stock depending on taste)
Dark rum
Tequila
Other type(s) of whiskey

Common cocktail ingredients
(most cocktail-savvy home bartenders will have one or more of the following)
Triple Sec/Cointreau/Grand Marnier (probably the most commonly used mixer)
Sweet vermouth (if you like Manhattans)
Dry vermouth (if you like classic Martinis)
Elderflower liqueur (if you like things that are delicious)
Elderflower syrup (see above — a budget-friendly alternative to the liqueur)
Grenadine (What do you do with this besides make a Tequila Sunrise?)
Bitters (definitely Angostura, possibly also orange)

Fair-game affordable fresh ingredients
Sugar/simple syrup
Lemons, limes, and grapefruit
Assorted Juice (orange, cranberry, pomegranate)
Mint
Honey
Fresh ginger root
Maraschino cherries

What liquors and ingredients do you find indispensable for your home bar?

The Brown Derby (adapted from Saveur)
1 ounce bourbon
1 ounce fresh grapefruit juice
1 T honey syrup**
Pour liquid ingredients into ice-filled cocktail shaker.  Shake gently until cold and strain into a cocktail glass.

I have to admit that I was initially a bit skeptical of these ingredients.  I was worried that the bourbon and honey wouldn’t play nice with one another and that the cocktail would be excessively sweet.  But the Brown Derby is actually a delightful little drink and ridiculously easy to boot. If you love bourbon and/or grapefruit, definitely give this one a try!

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*  Interestingly, internet searching revealed that there are two very different versions of the Brown Derby.  One is made with bourbon and grapefruit juice; the other is made with dark rum, lime juice, and maple syrup.  The rum Brown Derby sounded intriguing, but since I didn’t have rum in my Canadian bar, bourbon it was.

**  Honey syrup is a 1:1 mix of honey and water, warmed gently until homogenous and then cooled.  You can’t just use straight honey because it will glob and stick when it hits the ice in your cocktail shaker.  Making a syrup is a bit more work than Saveur’s approach, but I prefer making the syrup to simply mixing warm-ish water and honey — the latter approach didn’t entirely prevent the honey from globbing up in the cocktail shaker.

Incidentally, making honey syrup is a fabulous way to salvage crystallized honey into something useable.  Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.

Image from merriegirl.blogspot.com

Coincidentally, this weekend I mixed up a delicious cocktail that was almost exactly the same color as Kelly’s Oleg Cassini dress, a delicious combination of Hendrick’s gin, elderflower syrup, and grapefruit juice.  After Googling to verify that there wasn’t already a cocktail with this name, I decided to name my new little gin drink after Kelly’s character in “Rear Window,” one of my all-time favorite movies.

~~~~~~~~~~
The Lisa Fremont
1 ounce fresh grapefruit juice
1 ounce gin
0.25 ounces (1/2 T) elderflower syrup (IKEA Saft Fläder or other)

Combine ingredients in ice-filled cocktail shaker; shake gently until cold.  Strain into a martini glass or (even better!) a champagne coupe.*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is a light, refreshing cocktail that I think is elegant and feminine enough to please its fictional namesake.  I don’t have elderflower liqueur in my Toronto bar, but I’ll bet substituting a half ounce of St. Germain for the quarter ounce of Saft Fläder would also yield a lovely cocktail.

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*  Does anyone know where I can buy old-fashioned champagne coupes?**  I love them for cocktails because they are so elegant and sensibly-sized.
**  That groan you just heard was my husband bemoaning the fact that I’ve found a new glassware fixation.

My verdict: This is another solid bargain from the Côtes du Rhône region and I would recommend it unreservedly to Trader Joe’s fans.  This is slightly rounder and more fruit-forward than my TJ’s standby Valréas Côtes du Rhône and will appeal to those who find the Valréas too dry.  At the slightly higher price, Perrin won’t replace Valréas as our favorite everyday “pizza wine,” but I will definitely grab a bottle when I’m in the mood for something with a bit more fruit on the palate.

I turned bright red.  ”I mean, it’s not bad … I don’t want to be difficult,” I blurted.  We kept the bottle.  I couldn’t bring myself to ask the restaurant to take a loss on an open bottle when there was nothing actually wrong with it.

Last week I had another uh-oh moment when we were out to dinner with friends.  I chose a Sangiovese from their wine list, the waitress poured a taste for me, and the wine tasted … a bit odd.  It bubbled slightly in the glass (although that could have been the result of a vigorous pour) and had an acidic hint bordering on sourness.  This could have been a sign that the wine has been stored at a high temperature and has undergone some bad chemical reactions in the bottle.  I’ve opened bottles before that were so markedly fizzy and sour that I knew they’d gone to vinegar, but with this wine I wasn’t sure.  Maybe it just wasn’t to my taste?  I said nothing and spent the rest of the evening wondering if our friends also noticed that it might be slightly off.

I don’t want to turn into an insufferable jerk who demands to see the manager when she doesn’t like the temperature the Bordeaux is served at, but I hate paying restaurant markups on a bottle of wine that I don’t really care for — or, worse, a bottle that might have been stored improperly.  On the other hand, I am also deeply conflict-phobic, which means I’m terrified that the waiter or waitress will argue with me if I try to send the bottle back.

Have you ever sent back a bottle of wine?  Would you send back a bottle because it’s not a style of wine you enjoy, or only if it’s corked or otherwise “off”?  Any advice for a chicken like me who hates to make a scene and dreads arguing with people in public?

But last week during a bitchfest, Liz put her foot down and ordered us to all say something nice about 2011.  So instead of listing all of the ways this year has wronged me, here are the things I’ve been proud of or grateful for in 2011.

• I finished a paper I’m really proud of and it was accepted for publication in a great journal.
• We found the perfect apartment in Toronto and I no longer live in a basement.
• I have a great relationship with my dissertation advisor — which is not always true for grad students and newly-minted PhDs.  I can trust him to both encourage me and tell me the truth during this insane, awful job market.
• Econo Man and I booked tickets to Mexico for a February getaway.
• Sis and Captain Awesome tied the knot.
• Two more dear friends got married.
• One of my best friends had an absolutely adorable baby boy (whom she selfishly refuses to let me steal and raise for her).
• I started experimenting with cocktails, thus giving my inner chemist a venue in which she can mix things in exact ratios, and also introducing me to Hendrick’s gin and the Whiskey Smash.
• I spent all of 2011 happily married to a wonderful, supportive man.

Now it’s your turn!  Anyone want to celebrate the end of 2011 by sharing the nice things that happened?

I tried, you guys. I really, really tried to make these not quite as alcoholic as my usual recipes. But I tested a recipe with three times as much pomegranate juice and slightly less vodka and it just tasted flat — like watered-down pomegranate juice. I tried 2 ounces of pomegranate juice to 1 ounce of vodka — still flat and boring, no matter how much lemon juice I added. Only when I bumped up the booze and decreased the pomegranate juice to 1 ounce per cocktail was I happy with the cocktail.

Maybe if I’d used a different pomegranate juice the less-alcoholic cocktails might have tasted more appealing (I used Trader Joe’s). Or maybe I’m just irrevocably a strong-cocktails person. Regardless, if this sounds like too much vodka for your holiday party, try Oprah’s recipe, which has a 4:1 ratio of pomegranate juice to liquor.

Pomegranate Martinis (Adapted from Ina Garten) — Makes 1
1 ounce pomegranate juice
1.5 ounces vodka
0.5 ounces triple sec or Cointreau
0.5 ounces lemon or lime juice
Pour liquid ingredients into an ice-filled shaker. Shake well and strain into martini glass.

Pomegranate Martinis in a pitcher – Makes 10
1 + 1/4 cup (10 oz) pomegranate juice
2 cup (16 oz) vodka
2/3 cup (~5oz) triple sec
2/3 cup (~5oz) fresh-squeezed lemon or lime juice
Pour liquid ingredients into ice-filled pitcher; stir and pour immediately into martini glasses, straining out the ice.

You may be tempted to skip the lemon/lime juice. Don’t. The pomegranate juice is very sweet and needs the acidity of the citrus to cut it. I thought lime juice was the best choice for this cocktail but lemon does just fine in a pinch.

In my opinion, unless you’re hosting a party of hardcore Champagne lovers, Crémant d’Alsace will please a wider range of palates than Champagne.  Crémant d’Alsace tends to be less acidic and less “toasty” (for lack of a better word) than Champagne-region sparkling wines.  We have tried and really liked the charming Lucien Albrecht Crémants — my favorite is the rosé.  And at a recent tasting, this $18 Willm Blanc des Noirs Crémant blew a much more expensive California sparkling wine out of the water.  It had livelier flavors, more subtlety, and more depth than its Napa Valley competitor, which tasted harsh and acidic in comparison.

Plus, it’s a pretty color!  This is a Blanc de Noirs, so the slight hint of pink you’re seeing is a bit of the color from the skins of the Pinot Noir grapes.

The best part?  Most Crémant d’Alsace sparkling wines will be under $20.  This is a great example of the quality-to-price you can get if you’re willing to look for unusual regions or unfamiliar labels.