VOTE WILEY

A while back, my friend Wiley asked me if I could pen a political manifesto for him. I didn't get as far as a full-fledged manifesto, but hopefully this letter convinces you to donate to his cause. You would probably know him from his street art projects all over Houston.

Dear Resident,

The world is a cruel and hideous place. What remains of our cherished democracy is run by special interests and corrupt politicians. Perhaps its impossible to imagine a human left alive who has retained their integrity, one who hasn’t been seduced into selling their principles for money or power. Many of us have forgotten the promise of the American dream, and we are taunted by its caricature in our children’s social studies textbooks. Sometimes it’s enough to drive a good person completely insane. I beseech you to take that pistol out of your mouth, friend. There is a beacon of hope in the gloom, and his name is Wiley.

 Wiley has arrived to bring America back to its former glory.  Wiley hates problems and will eradicate them with a vengeance. Wiley is a legendary peacemaker and team builder. He will roll up his sleeves and confidently do away with whatever is upsetting you at this exact moment. Wiley will clean up your neighborhood and drive the drug dealers out. Unless you like drugs, in which case Wiley will use taxpayer money to give you drugs for free. Wiley will create a complex and beautiful bureaucratic system to satisfy drug lovers and opponents simultaneously. Maybe you don’t see how it could be possible, because you do not possess the staggering genius that Wiley wields like a giant golden samurai sword, gleaming in the sun. Wiley will make sure you do not feel self conscious about being less intelligent than he is. He will give you a hypoallergenic puppy and you will forget why you are upset.

Do you hang your head in shame at the sick, twisted future you’ve created for your children? Wiley will make it better. He will drink the poison from the rivers, and breathe deep the smog blanketing your impossible, sprawling metropolis. He will consume your mistakes, and excrete precious metals that have great scientific utility. Or in the case of the smog, Wiley will exhale a decadent cloud of potpourri that will also cure asthma in chronic sufferers. Wiley’s body chemistry doesn’t work like yours. Scientists aren’t entirely sure what Wiley is, but what is clear to us is that he is thousands of years old, and smells like freshly cut cucumbers at all times.

Wiley despises war, unless you like war, then Wiley is totally into war. Wiley will wipe the Middle East off the face of the earth in a nuclear holocaust. Or he could bring the war torn peoples together under the same roof, and host an imperial banquet, where enemies would throw their arms around each other, feast on otherworldly delights, and sing ancient drinking songs well into the morning- with a newfound understanding of love and compassion for their fellow man. Or he could create a virus that kills incredibly specific swaths of the human race. Wiley could engineer a virus that kills only people with blonde hair, or a nerve gas that only paralyzes Christians. People would vomit in horror and disgust at the ease and speed with which Wiley could end the human race. Or they would totally ask for his quiche recipe at a church fundraiser in a poor third world neighborhood. Wiley would build playgrounds with the money he raised from puppet shows and Baklava eating contests at this church fundraiser. Wiley’s humanitarian efforts would make the Peace Corps look like a fucking joke. Or he would go down in history as the most horrifying and insane mass murderer that walked the earth. It’s really whatever you want.

Wiley is a family man, and a man of god. Whichever god you worship, that is the one that Wiley grew up with. He was married to his wife in the church you’ve attended your entire life. Don’t get him wrong- Wiley respects all religious beliefs. But your traditions are the ones he holds closest to his heart. Wiley’s family is perfect, and closely resembles yours. Your kids don’t have time to love Wiley more than you, because they’re busy playing with the hypoallergenic Labradoodle that Wiley gave you. Even if they were self aware enough to know that they should abandon you for Wiley, Wiley would lovingly explain that normal people (you) need love too.

America needs Wiley. The world needs America to need Wiley. It is said that Wiley is the nucleus of the universe, and that all creation revolves around and originates from him. Wiley will lower your taxes, unless you would prefer that he raise them. Wiley will immediately raise your taxes, if that is what you desire.

Please vote for Wiley. Please also make a donation at our website votewiley.com. Break into your parent’s house and steal their jewelry so that you might pawn it, and donate that money as well. Once you have emptied your bank accounts and exhausted all of your material options, please consider having sex with strangers for money that you would immediately donate to a VoteWiley representative standing outside the dirty motel room you now live in. Please also donate blood. Your blood, your children’s blood, even that drifter passed out by the dumpster (nobody will miss him). Wiley also accepts blood plasma, locks of hair longer than ten (10) inches, bone marrow, sperm, eggs, teeth in good condition, and large patches of human skin, if fresh.

In certain circumstances you may be asked to carry out tasks for Wiley under cover of darkness against his opponents. A VoteWiley representative will supply you with a security guard uniform, a duplicate keycard, and a silenced pistol. If you are captured, please use the cyanide pill that a VoteWiley representative has surgically implanted in the roof of your mouth while you were last sleeping. Under no circumstances are you to be captured alive. Please be careful as you help us build America as Wiley sees it.

Can you picture the opulence of Wiley’s America? If you concentrate hard, perhaps you can see the mountains of treasure that you will dreamily lounge on.  Can you see your palace that you purchased in cash earned from an unprecedented economic boom? Can you feel the warm glow of accomplishment, from knowing you played a role in ushering a new era of prosperity? Imagine the riot of joy as Wiley walks out onto the court and pitches the first ball of the sportsmatch to celebrate the oncoming eternal utopia! Can you hear the wails of the doubters, the naysayers, as they sob uncontrollably, digging their own graves at gunpoint? Isn’t it beautiful?

Vote for Wiley.

-Justin Vann

Senior Campaign Manager for VoteWiley

AMERICAN SOMM

            The world is being torn apart, as far as you can tell from twitter. In Cairo, the streets are drenched in gallons of blood, spent shell casings, and the dead. Far away from the horror in Egypt, you swerve to avoid killing a bicycle courier in the rain, and you spill painfully hot coffee on your inner thigh. You can tell it was brewed too hot, a pity considering this is Esmeralda Gesha that the roaster would be furious to know was being mistreated. You’re on your way to a big wine tasting. Perhaps it’s the coffee that’s making your heart race, but you know better.

The notion of interacting with hundreds of other wine professionals is making you feel nauseous.

            It fills you with dull panic, with a gentle hum of anxiety. You come to a stoplight and look at the beautiful flowers the city planted in the median. You note the attention to detail, right down to the crushed oyster shells that surround the flowerbed. You would never know that the landscaping company gets much of their products from overseas. The crushed oyster shells came from Sudan, but they aren’t actually oyster shells. They’re human teeth. You will never learn this truth, because you’re counting the syllables in your boilerplate answer to “Hey man how’s it going?”

            In the hotel ballroom, salespeople will grab you and enthusiastically drag you to a table full of their wine, the way a coyote might drag a mortally wounded, struggling calf. You HAVE to try this Manzanilla Pasada. This petillant Naturel Pineau D’Aunis. This Carbonic Macerated Nerello Mascalese. You will try them, and you will let them talk to you about the slope of the vineyards. They will tell you the story of the soil, the majesty of great tangled roots stretching infinitely into the earth for a drop of water, for a sense of place. They make this wine sustainably, responsibly. They let the earth guide their hand, and coo into their ear softly. When our earth mother has made physiological ripeness known to us, the vineyard workers gently pluck the grapes under cover of darkness, and gently wipe the dew away. They set only the finest clusters in ancient hand-woven baskets, gently.

            The national sales manager for a company that sells wine with cute animal names like “Wild Weasel” and “Sidewinder” will pause, choking on tears, on the beauty, the enormity of it all. You too will choke on your true feelings, and out of respect, you will not express them. The truth is you don’t care.

            The truth is that you only care about what produces results. If dumping boiling hot liquid mercury into the soil made the wine taste better you would do it. If you had to stick a dagger in a baby goat’s heart and pull it out to worship Satan at the stroke of midnight to save the grapes of champagne from the bitter frost of January, you’d do it. Bull’s blood was once used to filter particle matter out of red wine. Why stop there? We use the blood of our vineyard management team. Every year we bleed them out, and bury them, dying but still alive in the vineyard. Their weak death throes till the soil and allow for better aeration and drainage. The cycle of life is complete, and all that is left after centuries, is their teeth.

            You have terrible visions.  You have impulses that rise up inside of you, which you haven’t acted on, thanks to what is left of your self-control.

            You friend asks, Hey man, how’s it going? Great! I just came back from Barolo; a distributor paid for the entire trip and set my itinerary, because I sold three pallets of their second label, the one with the parrot on it. Anyway get this, I hired some manual laborers to help me salt the vineyards of the top five Barolo producers. Nothing will grow in those soils for a millennia! I got em good! Your friend will be speechless in horror, because they aren’t exactly sure what the top five vineyards in Barolo are. Not knowing the answer to a question is very shameful in your world.

            Are you going to take your next big test? What level are you? You answer something like Oh I’m a class C. You’re staring at something in the distance, and your friend is visibly flustered, is that a new system? Is that the new beer test? Mixology perhaps? I mean previous spirit exams were more focused on base ingredients, but is this more uh, mixing-centric? You remember a time when it all mattered to you this much. But now you are jaded and losing it, and this is where you wish you could just rip your dick off, limp and bloody, and hand it to them without an ounce of formality. And you would just cryptically mutter, mixology. Here are my mutilated genitals, mixology.

            You slither over to a table of California reds, the winemaker is telling you that this wine spent 18 months in new French oak, in house cooperage of course. You decide to act out, and you widen your eyes and almost shout THAT SOUNDS EXPENSIVE I’M PRETTY SURE I CAN’T AFFORD IT. You back away slowly, in mock horror. The winemaker is pleading with you; it gets down to 40 dollars a bottle by the glass.

            In your head, you’re burning down the biggest distributor warehouses, full of pallets of wine they’re either aggressively incentivized to sell, or small parcels of actual good wine that they didn’t know they had in stock anyway. It's not anyone's fault, this is just how it has to work you say, as you would place huge cans of gasoline strategically. You breathe deep in the ballroom and smile, imagining the smell of a burning warehouse full of wine. Picture a great spire of black smoke rising up from the warehouse. You imagine a swarm of police cruisers surrounding you in the parking lot and you greet the police with terrible news. Some of our stock has been heat damaged, check your orders carefully!

            You’re fantasizing about storming a dining room with a machete, snatching away iPad wine lists, and smashing them on the corner of tables. Hey asshole! I was reading that! I was looking at a map of Vosne-Romanee motherfucker, what gives you the right? You powerwalk towards the angry guest, and you’re gibbering apologies. What where you thinking with all this violence? Here you say, try this instead. You grab their hands and clasp them around a flashbang grenade, after suavely removing the spoon. This is a token of my appreciation. Please enjoy.

            You’re never going to get your moment of angry indulgence; you’ll never receive catharsis. Are you sure that your industry is broken? You seem to be the only one here that hasn’t moved in 30 minutes, you’re the only one flushed and sweating, with heart palpitations. What are you missing? Maybe you should become a brand ambassador for a liquor company. Maybe you should become a mercenary for KBR. Maybe you should stick your finger down your throat and vomit on the guy who is making sure everyone who comes to his table knows that this particular rose dessert wine is known as an “LPR”. Before he can say “liquid panty remover” you would grab him by his thin, fashionable tie, and vomit blood on him.

            A little girl holding an AK-47 is rummaging through the ruins of Muammar Gaddafi’s palace in Libya. She finds a bottle of 2001 chateau Pavie. Does she understand what it is? You are not there to explain to her that 2001 is drinking REALLY well right now. If you were there, you could help decant the wine (which is mostly Merlot, with a healthy dose of Cab Franc) into a decanter or a filthy broken coffee cup. You could tell her how the wine was recently upgrade from Premier Grand Cru Classe B to preimer grand cru classe A, a huge honor. Maybe she would be crying because at the age of five, she had been robbed of any semblance of childhood, the only reminder of happier days is a cookie monster flashlight duct-taped to her AK-47. You would lean in and comfort her, telling her that everyone knew Pavie was pretty much a class A, and she should feel better knowing that it is now formally recognized as such.

            None of this can happen though, because you are being slowly crippled by anxiety at this wine tasting in a large air conditioned hotel in North America.

Client Profile: Mala Sichuan

 

We’re delighted to announce that Mala Sichuan has a shiny, pretty new beverage program courtesy of PSA Wines. In contrast to our work with Paulie’s, which was a tune-up, this project was the creation of a new list from the ground up.  

Sichuan cuisine was a fascinating challenge to us, because most people don’t try very hard to pair beverages with it. The Sichuan peppercorn - which causes a tingly, palate-numbing sensation, has the ability to confound almost all wine and beer pairings. This is why few diners ever venture farther than Tsingtao lager with this cuisine. When we first learned about Mala Sichuan, we thought it would be thrilling to take a crack at pairing with this distinctive, intense style of food.

In terms of food and wine pairing, our researched indicated Sichuan cuisine was still largely an untamed wilderness. Much of the work done with pairing wine with Sichuan food was being done on a BYOB basis (as many wine and Chinese food pairings are). A Sichuan restaurant with a built-in beverage program that explicitly flattered the food was almost unheard of.

Our imagination was tingling, like we had sprinkled Sichuan Peppercorns on the surface of our brains. Someone needed to do this. We asked husband and wife team Heng and Cori if they were interested in letting us work with them. They accepted, and we did our best to not squeal like children with glee. Heng asked initially, “I like sweet wines. Are those considered good?”

Doing my best to conceal my excitement, I said “We’re gonna get along just fine, you guys.”

German Riesling with considerable sugar content was the only easy choice. Sugar and acid can tango gracefully with the peppercorn, and we settled on Leitz Dragonstone as a value-driven option to combat the hurricane of spice some 3 alarm dishes deliver. We also found a nice demi-sec vouvray from Pinon (which may change based on availability, but it’s a hell of a good producer to start with). Things get trickier when you remove sugar from the playing field. We knew champagne tested well, but we needed a more affordable option- not counting on champagne prices to work well. We summoned Treveri brut sparkling chardonnay from Washington as our sparkling wine. Finally, we rounded it out with an herbaceous, crispy Gruner Vertliner from Domane Wachau in Austria.

I was forgetting something, maybe on purpose. I tried to sneak by without a red wine. Heng and Cori insisted, and they were right to do so, I’m just stubborn. We brought in a cru Beaujolais from Jean-Paul Brun, which has intensity, but not so much tannin that it would be discombobulated by the Sichuan peppercorn.

We had wine down, but wine can’t carry a massive Sichuan meal by itself. It was time to call the loose cannon that gets results at any cost: beer.

We sighed a breath of relief that hops worked well here. A classic California IPA like Stone worked wonders across the board with the spiciest dishes, but came off a little heavy-handed with delicate dishes.

Wheat beer was the last thing we expected to work well. Convention says that wheat beer is meant for low flavor-impact dishes like salads and white meats, not so much the capsaicin avalanche that is Sichuan food. We were delighted to find out that it not only worked well, but it worked as well as IPA did. What’s more, the wheat beer showed more versatility than IPA: showing its delicate side with mild dishes, and capably wiping the palate clean when dishes got rowdy. We went with a pair of classics, Ayinger Hefeweizen from Germany, and Blanche de Bruxelles Witbier from Belgium.

The last thing we were floored to discover was how well cider worked with everything. It demonstrated stunning versatility that might be unrivaled on the list. It was the dark horse of Mala’s program. Samuel Smith’s organic Cider was a classic that we loved for this untraditional context.

More than the list, we have had so much fun teaching the staff about the new wines and beers. Cori warned before the first class, “Many of our employees speak English as their second language. You may need to slow down and let me translate at certain points.” Everyone had a good poker face for the first class, and while I was hopeful, I wasn’t sure if everyone got something from it. When differentiating between German and French pronunciations, I assured several staff members, “Don’t worry, I don’t speak French or German either. This is difficult for me too.” Cori pointed out that I spelled “Gruner Veltliner” incorrectly on the menu, proving my point.

My concerns were put to rest days later, when one of Mala’s beer reps texted me excitedly, “They reordered 3 cases of the Ayinger and one case of the stone!” When I returned later that week, bottle sales had surged. The staff was selling wine and beer, and I was bowled over by the palpable excitement of everyone about their new beverage program.

We definitely feel an emotional attachment to this project.

Not only did the owners let us in, not only did the staff pick up this incredibly complex subject matter quickly, but (most importantly) the guests have enjoyed the program immensely. Even guests who were bummed by the disappearance of certain adjunct lagers were won over by their introduction to Hefeweizen (the official favorite drink of Mala, it seems). Even guests who shun sweet wines enthusiastically enjoyed the demi-sec Vouvray.

We will continue to advise Mala Sichuan moving forward. We are so lucky to have them as a client. They are some of the nicest people we have ever met, and we are honored that they have taken us into their business.

And yes. They still serve Tsingtao, because it’s good.

Adventures in Consulting

I don’t usually write because I want to. It’s a kind of pressure release mechanism. When I see enough things that I think are noteworthy, I weave them all into a blog and post it. Hopefully the contents don’t get me arrested. Ladies and gentlemen, I am writing this blog for you today because I have seen some things in the past few weeks.

For the first time in my life, I am working for myself. I have always been really good at focusing on a singular task, while someone else ensures the trains generally run on time. I no longer have the luxury of someone else watching over me. I am pulling wires out of my brain and rearranging them so that I might become the organized, proactive person I never was.

This new job is exhilarating. That’s a word that encapsulates fear and excitement happening concurrently. I like wine a lot. But I love talking to people about it. I knew I loved selling wine to people, to guests on a dining room floor. Now my path has taken on new dimension. I am selling wine to other wine buyers and salespeople.

Selling wine in retail is different from selling wine on a restaurant floor. On the floor, you get to see the guest taste the wine, and if you did your job, theirs eyes get wide and they tell you they love it. Retail deprives you of that moment of joy from the guest. I’ve had the discussion with people like Antonio Gianola- we like that validation, and we miss it when it’s gone. Since I left the floor at Ox, I have been hunting for that moment.

About 2 weeks ago, I held my first staff training class for a client. Easy enough, but the twist was the entire staff spoke English as their second language. The owner told me, “You talk fast and you use a lot of big words. Don’t talk like that in front of the staff. Talk very slowly, and I may ask you to stop from time to time so I can translate.” Nice. If I talk too fast I’ll lose them, and if I talk too slowly, I’ll worry they think I’m being condescending. I could not be more desperate to gain the trust of these incredibly nice people, because my destiny is now linked with theirs.

Watching people try IPA for the first time is a trip. Everybody’s face twists in agony as they experience the bitterness, and they’re turning angry eyes towards me, like I tricked them into trying this beer that sets off the evolutionary alarm bell for poison. Stammering and gesturing wildly, I defend myself, “Now try it with the food! Quick!” They reach for the food and chew, suddenly everybody’s expressions lighten. One server blurts out excitedly, “I hate the IPA less with the food!” I pound the table with my fist, causing the lazy susan to tremble, “Hate it less! I’ll take it! I told you IPA would work!” We’re all laughing hysterically. All I can think to myself is oh my god, this is actually working.

The gangly one next to me is grinning with the bottle of IPA in his hand. “You like the pairing?” I ask. He’s searching for the words, and his emphasis is wonderful, “This beer is... baDASS!” I ask him if he wants more, and he politely refuses. Later after class is done around midnight, he walks up to me and says, “I sorry I not drink very much. I only have driver’s permit. No driver license. Zero tolerance if pull over.” Then it dawns on me: I just taught a 15 year old about pairing hoppy beer with spicy food. I also introduced the staff to their new favorite drink: Hefeweizen. As for the wine program? The staff unanimously agreed that Riesling was the best pairing with the food, and my wine geek heart swelled with pride.

A dull panic grips me these days as I move my carefully sourced funds around, and watch them begin to shrink. But a roomful of heartfelt thank-yous after my first wine class broke my heart, and made me forget every ounce of stress this job has created. This is the only thing that could possibly supplant the validation I got from the guest. That feeling that I did something pure and wholesome, not for money but for the sake of making the world a better place for my favorite drink. This is what got me through the punishing 15 hour days in the beginning weeks of Oxheart. I have rediscovered my validation from a bizarre and wonderful source: my consulting clients.

I worry that maybe my master plan won’t work, that it’s all going to blow up in my face. Then I get a text from a beer rep, “Hey man! [Horizon Firestorm] reordered three cases of wheat and one case of IPA today.” I’m cheering to myself in my truck as I race back to Montrose. Across town, I’m sitting down with another client, showing them that a more prestigious wine producer that has a more delicious wine than the restaurant’s current selection that is actually cheaper. I’m helping them design an inventory spreadsheet that lets them analyze their cost of goods with surgical precision. I’m especially fond of showing people how to make more money with their existing program (in a way that doesn’t screw over the guest!).

The empty space between client meetings is filled with video brainstorming. How do we teach something that isn’t common knowledge, but make it fun to watch? This is a much more daunting task to me than writing a wine list. Many of our videos are shot in a single take, which means onlookers get to see me repeat a monologue about twenty times before I get it right (even then, I’m still looking slightly awkward). Clayton doesn’t have years of formal video editing or camera job experience, but I am floored by his ability to pick up any technical subject and master it in a matter of weeks. His custom-designed, battery-powered wireless audio setup is a marvel of engineering. I can tell he’s slightly annoyed that he hasn’t gotten to use any special effects yet (like green screen technology, helicopter mounted cameras, or slow motion). Let me assure you that when we’ve mastered our content, we will flex our technical muscles. God help me, Clayton is probably designing a bullet-time camera setup as I write this.

Many people have helped me along the way. As I said before, I am a massively disorganized person, and the fact that I even have the minimal framework of a company to announce is thanks to a lot of people. The following is a list of the people who are not formally listed on our website as collaborators.

-Thanks to Jay Rascoe for designing my first logo for me. Ultimately I let Matthew Tabor create our final logo, which is featured on the website. However Jay’s logo was a major catalyst for me actually visualizing the company, and not thinking of it as some far-away goal.  More than that, Jay has always encouraged me when I was self-conscious about my writing on Weapons Grade and now Battlesong. I would like to take this moment to encourage him in a similar fashion: Jay, you had better keep writing, because you are one of the funniest writers I’ve ever met. You could probably create an HBO series around all the insane stuff you’ve seen, and I insist you share it with the world. Jay’s blog is http://www.gunsandtacos.com/ You should read it.

-Thanks to Bob and Paige Martin. Bob and Paige are some of the most hardcore Oxheart fans ever. When I told them my ridiculous plans, they immediately helped me secure my domain name, and confirmed that I could indeed create an LCC named “PSA Wines”. Bob has created numerous businesses, and he helped me set up the initial framework of PSA WAY faster than I could have on my own. Beyond the actual help they have given me, they have been cheerleaders for every project Justin, Karen, and I have even remotely been involved in. More than THAT, they’re a frustratingly perfect and picturesque power couple that radiates positive energy like exposed plutonium reactor rods. No seriously, downtown magazine named them in a list of badass power couples:

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/258631e7#/258631e7/26

Also, Paige Martin is a relator in the same way that a member of SEAL Team 6 is a soldier. If you are looking at property downtown, you’d be crazy not to reach out to her:

http://www.houstonproperties.com/houston-realtor-contact-us.html

-Finally, thanks to Justin and Karen at Oxheart. They have supported me immensely as friends and as bosses. They have lent me critical support in helping me create the framework of PSA, and then the logistical knowhow to execute it, respectively.

It’s probably too early to start thanking people, but I am already getting something amazing out of this. Thanks to everyone for helping me create my dream job out of thin air.

If you’re still reading, it means that you’ve learned well from certain movies to stick around after the credits, to catch a glimpse of a critical piece of spoiler information. So here it is: On Friday, May 31^st, PSA will reveal our first restaurant client. It’s a doozy.

Love you Houston,

-Justin Vann

Hot Sauce

I feel condescended to when hot sauce bottles provide me with a list of things to put hot sauce on. Are people seriously holding the bottle, paralyzed with fear, wondering if they *should* put hot sauce on food item X? I feel pretty insane when I look at that complimentary list of suggestions. In my imagination, it always spirals out of control...

Try hot sauce on a variety of foods. Such as:

Pizza

Tacos

Hamburgers

Vegetables

Salads

Eggs

Chicken

Beef

Soups

Sauces

Hot dogs

Pizza tacos

Hamburger soup

Nacho salads

Fish

Rice

Certain sandwiches

Salad Tacos

Taco pizza

Hamburger tacos

Cake

Fish nachos

Hamburger hamburgers

Salad burgers (not burger salads)

Rice Tacos

A noodle

Apple dogs

Other hot sauces

Eagles

Chocolate

Sushi

Rabbit

Strangers

Homework

NATO Peacekeeping missions

Origami

Seashells

Rotten Jack-o-lanterns

Snow

Tiramisu

Human teeth

Sawdust

Melon rinds

Flowers

Tarot Cards

Croutons

Rare Earth Metals

The Serengeti

 

And everything else!

Puke and Causality

As I slither into the bathroom to dry heave for the third time this morning, I cannot help but concede that this is the most poetic way I could start the day.

Last night at Erin Smith and David Leftwich’s birthday party, I was lecturing John Letoto about the virtues of getting completely wasted, every once in a while. The minimum number I threw out was once a year. John wouldn’t have it, and it makes sense. John, who pours latte art with the intensity and precision of a brain surgeon, would never want to compromise his killer instinct. He would never allow himself to overindulge, and wield his thermo-pen with a shaky hand the next day. But I continue to make the case and spit in the face of karma:

It’s a fun challenge to warp your perception with alcohol and keep your cool. I suppose that’s the same mentality that people use with hallucinogens, but you know what I mean. Let’s be adults and admit it: we like the way alcohol makes us feel. It’s a fun thing to remind people of when I find myself locked into a wine monologue:

“So this is like fino sherry but its French, specifically from the Jura. Vin Jaune is 100% savagnin that ages in cask for 6 years under a ‘voile’ of yeasts. The production process is similar, but it’s important to note that Vin Jaune is unfortified. Where fino is meant to be consumed as fresh as possible, Vin Jaune can age almost indefinitely. It’s really complex and elegant, pairs wonderfully with umami-driven food, oh and I almost forgot! It contains alcohol! So as you drink it, you will notice that everything will get exponentially more awesome. Your chances of doing something thrilling, newsworthy, or dangerous will increase markedly. Please enjoy several bottles of it with a wedge of briny Comte cheese, then get arrested for having sex in an aquarium that you broke into.”

Even hangovers are wonderful so long as they’re infrequent. You experience all sensory input as if it was your first time feeling sunlight, or smelling cut grass. It’s jarring, like if you could actually remember the first time you drew breath. You stumble through the day seeing normal things, but you hear the roar of a leaf blower or a car commercial on the radio, and there is something fantastical about it. So while your senses feel realer than ever, the things you actually see seem absurd. Maybe I like being hungover because it simultaneously affirms and negates reality.

Wouldn’t it be clever of the universe if I got super drunk immediately after going into this sermon? Well, that’s what happened. I drank about 2/3^rds of a bottle of Redbreast 12, for classified reasons. I live around the corner, so I just stumbled back home, quickly realizing I overdid it, and I was about to get my ass handed to me.

In my romantic defense of drinking too much and being hungover, I forgot how unpleasant vomiting is (I’ve now puked 5 times in the past hour). At every point in life, I am trying to dig deeper and find something interesting. I’ve long since given up everything in my stomach except bile. Which leads me to the question: Why couldn’t bile taste good? Why does it have to be so foul? Then I realize making bile delicious would create a biological imperative for bulimia. Animals in the wild would be finding creative ways to trigger their gag reflexes to taste the ambrosia of their own bile.

Can you picture the forest? With all the adorable animals sticking their paws down their throats so they can puke their guts out and taste their yummy bile? Can you see it? CAN. YOU. SEE. IT.

Even worse, now I’m asking myself, isn’t there a beverage that actually tastes like this? Then I remember: gueuze. “Gastric acid” is a common tasting note on the funkier stuff. Then I remember: I need to go puke again. I’m way past the point where I can defend vomiting as some kind of catharsis: I drank way too much, too fast, and now I am weeping hydrochloric acid into a dirty toilet, for the 6^th time.

I will tell you this though, I still love gueuze, and I will not give up on it because it has a slightly barfy flavor. People who stop drinking something because they “had a bad experience with it” are the jerks who put a dog up for adoption because it craps on the carpet once. Did you burn out on Tequila shotz in college? Think of tequila as a sad puppy being put in a cage because you don’t love it any more. Look at those sad eyes- you are an asshole.

I’m wiping puke off my cellphone, which is telling me I have a chateau Musar lecture to be at tomorrow. Rad.

Now that I’ve reached the point where I can retain liquids, I am reminded of another thing I enjoy about being brutally hungover: nursing myself back to health.

Enter the Mexican coke. Apply one 500ml bottle to the affected area. Drink it slowly, and as cold as humanly possible. Coke will never look more pornographically cold and refreshing than when you just poisoned yourself with whiskey. Protip: put it in the freezer when you start puking, so when you’re done its perfectly cold, glistening with condensation. I am a hard skeptic when it comes to the superiority of Mexican (sugar cane) coke over normal (corn syrup) coke. I have seen many experts fail that pepsi challenge. But when I’m super hungover, I’m not above tricking myself with placebos.

More than anything, the act of getting drunk, having fun, and being hungover the next day is evidence of causality in the universe. I had too much fun, and now that the sun has risen, I must suffer. A hangover is an exhilarating and punishing mathematical constant. It is a helpful reminder that the universe is still governed by some form of rules.

Thank goodness. Going to try eating food. I love you, gang.

My Life in Sabers

Somehow, many years ago while studying at the UC underground at UofH, I came across an article, describing a certain type of knife. A knife that exist for the sole purpose of decapitating champagne bottles. A special knife didn't seem particularly crazy on first glance, we have knives for cutting all different kinds of things. But I thought about it again, and immediately forgot what I was studying because

This knife is for cutting open champagne bottles. Exclusively.

Enter that tingly feeling where your purpose, your calling can be faintly heard in the distance. I'm not talking about being a sommelier. I'm talking about making a giant scene with something that is burdened with too much pretension, having fun, and risking my life in the process. 

I took my Court of Master Sommeliers Level 1 introductory course at the University of Houston. During the service lecture, I raised my hand. 

"What kind of Champagne Saber do you recommend using during service? And is there an established protocol for sabering?"

The MS was very cordial, but was smirking slightly, as to imply I had asked a silly question.

"I do not recommend saberage in general. There is no protocol for it, because really you should never do it, especially in a dining room. It's a safety hazard, and really good champagne should be handled gently."

I thanked him for being candid, and slumped back in my seat, feeling slightly defeated. It was then that Glenn Cordua leaned over and whispered, "A machete works just fine." He was grinning like the devil, and my faith in madness was renewed.

Before you go any further in this bleag post, it is imperative that you understand sabering champagne is an incredibly dangerous trick. Even if done "correctly", it still has the potential to blind people with flying shards of glass, and can severely damage your hand if the bottle blows up. I have had at least 5 bottles explode erratically, which would probably stop a normal person from ever doing the act again. I am not that person. I have little respect for my own safety or well being- which is why I work in restaurants heyooooo.

I'm not even going to explain how to saber here. Standby for detailed instruction at a later date.

Now seems like as good a time as any to talk about all the Champagne Sabers I've ever owned in my life and what they meant to me.

SABER #1: Lawnmower Blade

After doing a pinch of research, I settled on a lawnmower blade that I purchased from a Wal-Mart at about 5 in the morning. I was trying to study French, and decided I needed to start practicing Sabering. That my life could not possibly move forward if I didn't figure out how to reliably chop the top off of sparkling wine bottles. I was 21 at the time.

 

The advantages of a lawnmower blade are numerous. It's fairly heavy, which makes generating enough force to propagate a crack that much easier. It has a reliably hard edge, that comes to a 90 degree angle, perfect for sabering. It resists deformation on impact, as I often favored sabering with the cage on the bottle. The hole in the center of the blade was perfect for inserting an index finger and getting better control of the blade. The hole in the center also made it perfect for spinning. After smashing open a bottle of sparkling wine, spinning the lawnmower blade around is almost impossible to deny oneself. It just felt right.

One slight disadvantage of sabering with a lawnmower blade is that is scares people. Nobody expects much in the way of sanity from the guy shouting "GET BEHIND ME", waving a lawnmower blade and holding a bottle of bubbles. It still worked out in my favor most of the time.

I lost this saber in a move. It will always be an icon of my honest, slightly goofy and unprofessional obsession with wine. It represented something wholesome to me. Maybe because it made people interested in sparkling wine when they saw me gambling with my life just to open bubbles in a fancy way. Maybe I liked it because I paid 8 dollars for it, and I loved the notion of using such a crude, humble tool to do something so highfalutin'. I cannot recommend a lawnmower blade emphatically enough as one's first saber.

SABER #2: Laguiole Champagne Saber (pronounced lay-ull)

I asked for this saber from a wine distributor while I was working at Central Market. It haunts me to this day as the only time I have ever asked for and/or taken a kickback for buying a product I wouldn't otherwise buy. It was given to me for free, but it's retail value is approximately 200 dollars.

I think the way the conversation went was like this "Hey [wine rep], I think I'd like a champagne saber! I've been a wine buyer for a while, and I haven't used my influence to ask for so much as a keychain. What do I have to do to get one?"

His response was immediate. Buyers ask these questions, and he was well versed in the script.

"If you pick up ten more cases of [unremarkable champagne that I didn't want to buy ten *extra cases of] we can make that happen."

I agreed, and within 12 hours, I received the text from another rep "Hey Justin I have a saber for you!"

 

Immediately when I held the laguiole in my hands the first thing I missed about the lawnmower blade was the weight. By comparison this new saber was light as a feather. Although I had to admit, it was stunning.

Advantages: Pretty. Cost of zero dollars.

Disadvantages: shoddy construction. After moderate usage, the bolster came loose, and the "blade" dented significantly after each strike. Technically you're supposed to use the back side of the blade, even though a laguiole doesn't have a sharpened edge. Perhaps this is good practice, using the back of every knife to saber with (you will severly damage a sharpened edge of a "real" knife by using it to saber). Here I preferred my lawnmower blade again, because instead of using the back as is traditional, I struck with the "blade".

This real disadvantage to this saber was the blow it dealt to my integrity. I don't think less of my reps for carrying out my sleazy request- that's how a lot of business gets done. But my first boss in the wine industry - Dave at Vic & Anthony's - instilled a healthy disgust in me for taking favors or handouts from distributors in exchange for placements. Perhaps I backslid because I was bored, or because I wanted to say I did it at least once. As soon as it was in my hands, I knew I would have to pay a karmic price for this indiscretion.

6 months into Oxheart, my car was broken into. The thief stole ten drycleaned shirts, and my Laguiole saber. I was upset that I lost the shirts, but I couldn't help but feel relieved that fate took my "corporate saber" from me. I joke that I'm constantly stalking the streets for a hobo in a crisp shirt with a champagne saber. 

What really mattered was that the thief didn't get my current saber. The one I guard closely, usually within arms reach while I'm sleeping. He missed my Serenity Knives Saber. The one you see at the top of this blog instead of a title.

SABER #3: Serenity Knives Custom

I would tag along with Chef as he met with a lot of our people who made all our stuff. The one that caught my attention the most was Russell Montgomery. Chef came to Russell to have him make a set of custom steak knives for Oxheart. For over a year, an idea had been fermenting in my head. That I could combine everything I loved about sabering with a lawnmower blade, and make it slightly more formalized. That I could find the right person to forge me a saber that could smash the overwrought Laguiole saber into pieces. We visited Russell at his house, and I think we had made up our minds immediately when we saw the dirt floored workshop and forge he had made. Russell trained under Murray Carter, but definitely had his own distinct style.

I felt bad giving Russell such specific instructions, he had some pretty grandiose initial plans. Indeed, from a distance it might seem like a waste to have a skilled knifemaker craft a blade that essentially has no edge, but this was something I had wanted for a while. Even as I was unemployed waiting for Ox to open, I gladly forked over hundreds of dollars for this knife that somehow had come to define me. 

In the first few days of Oxheart, I didn't have an apartment. I was sleeping on David & Ecky's couch. On more than one occasion, during my allotted 6 hours of sleep a night, I woke up to find myself holding the saber the same way a child might hold a stuffed animal. Or I would use the blunted tip to push their pitbull, Rambo, away from me when he decided we needed to snuggle at 4am. 

Photo by Bethany Quillin

Advantages:

Where to begin?

Of the 3 listed, this saber is the heaviest, weighing in at about 4 pounds, easily generating enough force to cleanly lop off the top of a bottle of champagne.

Or cut down a tree.
Or smash through a car windshield.
Or cut a birthday cake for a supermodel.
Or crush the skull of a zombie.

Please take note of the hole for your index finger. Perfect for recklessly twirling all two feet of heat-treated, high carbon 1084 steel. I don't remember the type of wood he used for the handle. Whenever anyone asks, I say it's wood from the true cross of Christ, which would make this saber fit to destroy vampires, demons, and other supernatural enemies.

This metal is highly resistant to deformation, knicks and scratches, but has rapidly developed a patina that suggest constant, adventure-heavy use. I strike with the blade, because I refuse to saber with the back of a knife that wasn't designed for this singular, moderately insane purpose. Life is short, saber accordingly.

Of course I didn't stop there. I summoned our leatherworker Kyle Kubin (who made our kickass aprons) to make the sheath, and requested he add a small pocket to contain an Augustus Rag. Augustus Rag makes pocket squares out of classy fabrics in Houston. They are perfect for wiping champagne and / or blood off of the saber after a particularly rowdy bingo match.

The only disadvantage of this saber is that it was not cheap, and is irreplaceable. But that's the case with all legendary weapons I suppose. Beatrix Kiddo had her Hanzo Katana, Thor had Mjollnir, Aragorn had Andúril.

A saber without a name is simply bad luck. My saber is named Excelsior.

As I stare into the blinding sun of an uncertain future, I feel a sense of calm wash over me to feel the weight of my saber in my hands. It is my totem, my lodestone. The title of this blog is Battlesong, but I think a picture of my saber communicates the same message. 

Excelsior, and all of its accessories were made by actual craftsmen here in Houston Texas. And that is where it is going to stay.