Ah, gentle reader, there is no better time than the New Year for talking about the dark side of being a wine charlatan: addiction.The possibility of addiction is a demon that stalks everyone who enjoys the pleasure of a good drink—be it wine, scotch, light beer or cola.
Long before I became a wine charlatan, I had discovered my addictive tendencies. Even as a child, I was powerless to resist certain urges. I struggled with this financially crippling and socially debilitating problem well into college, and even now I occasionally overindulge myself. But it isn’t booze that I’m talking about—it’s Breyer horses.
I love my plastic ponies. And sometimes, when I’m feeling down, I’ll zip over to Bi-Mart or the feed store for a quick fix. Sometimes I just go to look at them. Sometimes I’ll drop some cash so I can take one out of its box and inhale the sweet scent of freshly molded cellulose acetate. The very sight of those yellow boxes transforms me into a hybrid of my current, socially acceptable grown-up self and the unibrowed, orthodontia-enhanced, horse-crazy, 12-year-old self I once was.
The thing about addiction is that even when you deny yourself the primary substance, you often have a “next-best thing” that you still allow. For a food addict, it might be a fat- and sugar-free version of her favorite snack. For the cigarette addict, it might be nicotine patches. For the Breyer horse addict, it is anything (ANYTHING!) with a picture of a horse on it.
And that, my friends, is how I happened to be drinking the Kick Ass Red on Tuesday night. I came home late from work, we had company over, there were three bottles of wine on the counter...and one of them had a picture of a horse on it. Ergo, I drank the horse wine.
No matter that the horse was a mule (shades of Fiddler on the Roof?). It was equine-ish, and therefore more desirable than any other available beverage. Which is not to say that it was good. In fact, drinking it while eating a brownie was my single worst wine experience ever. If you ever meet anyone who has never thrown up and they ask you what vomit tastes like, please direct them to take a bite of a Duncan Hines brownie and then a swallow of Kick Ass Red. I hope they will thank you for the vividly realistic experience (perhaps even followed by an even more realistic experience) before un-friending you on Facebook.
PRICE: $20-ish
DRINKABILITY: I don't think I really gave it a fair shake. For one, I'm one of those people who can't stand chocolate and fruit in the same bite. For another, I wasn't drinking this with a real meal (maybe good with something savory?) or by itself on a clean palate.
SNOB VALUE: Something about the label makes me associate this wine with redneck-ism. No offense to all you mule lovers out there.
WHERE TO FIND IT: Yellow Hawk Cellar
FAMOUS LAST WORDS: A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!
