Robert Parker is the dean of all wine critics, and is known for his colorful descriptions of vintages using such rococo terms as "finesse and elegance with near-beefy depth," or "blue-tinged, almost like roasted lilacs," or our personal favorite, "as ash-heavy and skunky as the carcass of a freshly flamethrown wildebeest."*
Therefore, we borrow his mojo for some jarring flavor combinations of our own:
1. What type of wine is your football team? A Penfolds Grange: only madly popular after 1990 or so, ghastly screw-top aesthetics appalling the old guard, and ferocious quality despite the lack of mythos and Frenchified foofery. Also very, very good most of the time.
2. Your best vintage--year, and describe in wine-y terms. 2006: for the earthy, daring pepper of the defense, with solid fat body through the middle, a lacy tethering of high notes through the secondary holding the middle range accents of thorny brush, barbed wire, and heavy flavors of heated sledgehammer together.
3. Robert Parker reviews your arch enemy. Go. Florida State: like North Georgia muscadine wines, but with a more whorish saccharine edge; like lighter fluid devoid of it admirable flammable qualities and spunk. Aged past its prime since 2000 or so.
4. Describe yourself in wine terms. Oh, like cheap champagne: bubbly, dry, consumed best in small doses, and prone to blowing up when shaken. Works quickly and effectively, and also wears off in similar fashion.
See you tonight when you click here to listen at 9 p.m. EDT.
*Not actually true in fact, but in spirit it reads like Parker.