And what about here on the valley floor? Aside from the smoke, which has made itself comfortable in the towns and on the highway, it's business as usal. Ten pm on a Monday night, and the big machines are out tossing sulfur over the vines. There's comfort in that. As for me, I am revisiting my past week, wondering how I am going to fit every road trip and restaurant experience and wine tasting into one column.

Well, tonight I'm not. Tonight, I'm plumping up your vocabularly rather than your spare tire. Here, a few of my favorite adjectives for drunkeness (there are so many ways to say it) and other delicious finds as well as one sober reminder:

1. bosky: adj. Tipsy on the point of becoming drunk (also known as the stopping point, or the stage where Brooke becomes an excellent pool player)

2. crapulent/crapulous: adj. drunk; suffering from sickness caused by overdrinking

3. nasute: adj. having a keen or discerning  sense of smell (what all wine writers hope can be said about them)

4. pyrophoric: adj. igniting on exposure to air (not exactly wine-related, except at the present moment, when the hills and valleys around us are embraced by fire)

And now, the serious stuff. Unfortunately, this only applies to women. Ladies, did you realize that our size is not the only deterrant from consuming the same quantities of liquor as men? Our livers, it seems, also lack a certain enzyme that helps our bodies process alcohol. Ladies, repeat after me: Bosky, gooodd. Crapulent, baaadd. Ok?

*Similar phrases and definitions can be found in Foyle's Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words.

A few more folks on wine and nutrition for all those doubting Thomas' out there:

I have enjoyed great health at a great age because everyday since I can remember I have consumed a bottle of wine except when I have not felt well. Then I have consumed two bottles. -A Bishop of Seville Baron

If penicillin can cure those that are ill, Spanish sherry can bring the dead back to life. - Sir Alexander Fleming

I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens.  - Thomas Jefferson

Wine had such ill effects on Noah’s health that it was all he could do to live 950 years. Show me a total abstainer that ever lived that long.  - Will Rogers

Still, even Noah sometimes didn't know when to say when. When he was good and pickled, his kids had to cover his nakedness while he slept.  And, with a two bottle-minimum when sick, I imagine the Bishop of Seville also had one or two sodden slips. Reminder: No one wants to invite guests over only to find Drunk Dad curled up in the BarcaLounger in his birthday suit.

- Acolaust (n): A person who enjoys indulging in sensual pleasures; a sensualist. Have I met any acolausts in the Napa Valley? Only one or two…hundred! It’s hard to make wine if you don’t have an affection for texture. And taste. And touch.

- Afflatus (n): Inspiration, especially a divinely inspired creative impulse. The word comes from the Latin ‘afflare,’ which means ‘to breathe on.’ Ever had any wines that made you think of Heaven’s breath? Here are 2 divinely inspired wines with equally divine – ie, great bang for the buck - prices (in this gal’s opinion and in no particular order):

1.  
   1. Boheme Wines 2004 Que Syrah Vineyard Syrah. A Syrah that tastes of smoke and minerals? Yes, please! $50/bottle does not a table-wine make, but for a great Syrah from a phenomenal vineyard – one of the coldest along the Sonoma Coast – it qualifies as a superior value for one of my favorite special occasion wines.
   2. Chateau Coufran, Haut-Medoc, 2003. Here we have a Merlot-based Bordeaux from the LEFT Bank that combines the lean, mineral-y quality I so love about Medoc and Haut-Medoc wines with the chewable, blackberry compote quality of Merlot. I do so love anomalies, especially when they cost less than $25. This wine’s getting increasingly hard to find, but I did find a few bottles left on BlackTie wines’ site.

Both wines make me think of bouquets of wild violets and just-sharpened pencils. That graphite quality certainly sends me over the moon (I have a thing for school supplies). BUT, it's the combo that makes these wines - for me - more than a passing crush. "Love?" Robert James Waller wrote in Slow Waltz for Georgia Ann. "I cannot analyze that. It is of a piece. Taken apart, it becomes something else, and the gull-like melody that is ours disappears."

Who's to judge what sings to our hearts?

Until then, a quote to tide you over:

"If you offer a man bacon, you can get him to do anything."       - As said by a Kentucky bacon curer to Pete Wells; "Animal Farm," Oxford American Magazine Spring 2005

I blame Sicily, because lately I've been craving Zibibbo (a Sicillian varietal used in the dessert wines of Pantelleria -a tiny Sicilian island I'm desperate to visit), spaghetti con ricci (mmm, sea urchin juice!), cuttlefish and....

  the Italian language? What can I say? Sometimes words are more satiating than any food or drink, especially if that word can be applied to food and drink! 

I'd like to present you with mollare, and - dun-da-da-dun! (those would be the sounding trumpets, for anyone confused) - mollare's many siblings. Technically, these aren't "culinary" words. In my opinion, they should be.

Mollare (vb): to slacken, which is something that can happen to any wine, but especially aged wine, once it has peaked and begun its flavor and texture decline.

Molle (adj): "Molle means not only soft and limber, but flabby, pliant, even wanton," says Helen Barolini in an essay titled "How I Learned to Speak Italian" in a 1998 issue of The Southwest Review. Wanton on a good day; flabby on a bad? Sounds like a few Chardonnays I know.

Mollezza (n): Barolini calls it, "That intriguing word meaning effiminancy." Some might call this sissy-ish; but I think that only qualifies if the subject at hand - a rustic Right-Bank St. Emillion, perhaps - is supposed to be full of manly-ness. I have met a few effeminate wines that were plenty appealing. Like a man in a ruffled apron; it's about inherent character, not clothes. If it's there, it's there.

Molletone (n): Literally, Bartoloni says, "a swanskin." Or a soft skin. The skin of swans (sigh). Sounds like aged red Burgundy to me. With such loveliness, of course, comes hyper-sensitivity and/or thin skin and volatility.  

      "For the sea is not always as calm as when it was planting kisses on your gloves." - Giovanni Verga, Picturesque Lives.

Too often, Verga, a 19th century Sicilian writer, would say, we only want to clap our hands in wonder at those giant rocks, set in the deep blue sea, without suffering any of the hardships that goes along with such beauty. Loving and loathing really are such similar creatures...

"Another day, another dollar;

fourteen hours on snowshoes and wish I had pie."

-- From a Maine Trapper's Diary.

About once a week, I pick up Annie Dillard's The Writing Life, turn to the cover page for Chapter Three, and read this quote. It makes me giggle, grin, and, sometimes, nod my head in total understanding....because, at the end of the day, sugar makes everything better.

I leave you with my Nanny's (that's my grandmother, not an au pair) recipe for Lemon Sponge Pudding:

2 T butter (or margerine)                  5 T lemon juice
1 cup sugar                                         Lemon zest  (about a teaspoon)
4 T flour                                                3 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt                               1 1/2 cups milk

Separate eggs.  Beat the whites until stiff.
Cream butter; add sugar, flour, salt , and lemon juice;
Add well beaten yolks mixed with milk;  Last fold in the egg whites.
Pour into a buttered caserole.  Bake in a pan of hot water at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

"Let he who hath no secret junk food drawer cast the first stone."

I thought about waiting until Sunday, but I need to get something off my chest:

Sometimes, I drink Diet Coke. Also, I have been known to swallow a Sour Skittle. Or two. And, when I go to the movies, I like to order a.) nachos - in all their partially hydrogenated corn syrup and high sodium nacho sauce glory, b.) popcorn - upon which I dump as much of that orange cheese powder as possible, or c.) nachos AND popcorn.

And a diet coke.

For the past few months I've been worrying that if this "got out," it  might destroy all my credibility as a food and wine writer. Then, I found out other "culinary experts," people with far more food years under their belts than myself, have their own guilty cravings. Former Food Network host and cookbook author David Rosengarten (yes, the one I'm hangin' around with all the time) feels a bit partial toward Doritos. And Chef Thomas Keller isn't ashamed to announce his love for In-N-Out Burger.  As for Diana Ross (yea, I know. She's not exactly a foodie...but it's her song I'm about to be sellin'!), well, she may not have a 'thang for Buttered Popcorn (click on the link for a sticky, gooey, salty treat) but her Baby sure does.  More butter, more butter, more butter, more!

**Got your own food craving? Feel free to share!

"I gaze at olive trees hundreds of years old, loving the silver-headed shimmer of their wind-tossed branches, and think to myself, what is more beautiful or useful than an olive tree? What is prettier than a bowl of green olives or the molten green of the first pressing of extra-virgin olive oil looking, in cut-glass cruets, like watered-down jade?"