Wine for Cat Pee

Today we discuss Madeira's, tomorrow German Rieslings, because those babies are a delight.

First, the Madeiras. I'm not sure I had ever had a straight Madeira before. Certainly I had had Madeira-based sauces, and because of that I always thought Madeira was a cooking wine, but it is also often served chilled as an aperatif, or with cheese courses. It tastes a bit like sherry and port combined.

What I thought very cool is the fact that unlike most wines which are aged in a cool environment, Madeiras are essentially cooked, either in heated steel vats or left to heat in the sun in wood barrels, so it in essence becomes caramelized. Madeira can be dry or sweet, and to be honest, it is not my favorite, though I would like to try some with a cheese course, because I think the cheese would balance it nicely.

One of these Madeiras had a very unfortunate aroma. I kept smelling it and making "the face", and when I looked around, I saw others smelling it and also making "the face". The "I just sucked on a lemon" face, or in my mother's case, the "I smell someone smoking a cigarette in the next county" face. Or the cat face. Anyone who has ever owned a cat will know the face of which I speak: it is the face they make when they smell something that they simply don't like. My cat used to make it, and almost always after she smelled my feet. She would lean down, sniff my feet and then look up at me, mouth open, almost panting, a slightly stunned look on her face. It was always so insulting somehow, and I wanted to scream: "You just spent a half an hour licking your own ass, but my FEET are what send you over the edge??!!"

Anyway, this Madeira did not smell like feet, instead it reeked of cat pee, and the last thing we wanted to do was taste it, especially since it only tasted marginally better than it smelled.

Lest I make it seem as though all Madeira smell like kitty pee, I will say I tasted a couple of them that I really liked. One of these was the Cossart Gordon Rainwater Med-Dry Madeira. This was light and smooth, with a bit of raisin to it. Apparently this wine was used to toast the signing of the Declaration on Independence, so it is also a patriotic wine, and it does not, I promise, smell like wee.

Until tomorrow...