Guns and Tongues

Posted March 1st, 2010 11:03 by Brad Royale

Guns and Tongues

Chockalottafreakintaco!!!....Who Loves Guns?.....apparently I do. I really had no idea that firing off two hundred rounds of ammo would charge me up. It did. I'm still deathly afraid of guns, mainly for the obvious, but still even with this fear, they lure me in. It was with an evening with a friend that I discovered my love-slash-fear for explosive firepower. Excitement and fear, fighting lovers. One may recognize this reoccurring theme in other activities; such as roller coasters, dental hygienic procedures, mole removal, peaches and cream, systemic transferral of organic material via tubular vascularization, deep sea diving (especially the part where one moves from nitrogen narcosis to decompression sickness) and birthday parties with clowns. The sight of happiness looms from an annual celebration of life, only to be paralyzed to blindness with a dancing laughing painted maniac who for all intent purposes will soon kill everyone......clowns....moly, right, back to guns.

Who would have guessed that Gaston Glock had no real charm for hitting the bullseye and didn't favour peaches or cream or deep sea diving, but was enamoured with advanced synthetic polymers, leading him to become one of the great gun smiths of our time. Samuel Colt did not know Gaston Glock and as history tells he didn't have to, as his passion for putting holes in things is genuinely documented. Glock or Colt, either way, guns are fun.

What to do after firing serious ammo into a pin up named Chuck....you go for dinner of course. My charming trigger happy friend and I wound up at Divino for post-explosive dining. What to eat after an ear-shattering pre-dinner event? Meat of course! I do long for vegetables in most circumstances, however the boiling over of enthusiasm for fire power led to a lusciously fat Berkshire pork chop, monk fish and lambs tongue. Served with a gun friendly 2001 Conterno Fantino Monpra. A hard edge wine for most of its youth; only cracking the steel of its structure recently, allowing the nuances of the nebbiolo, barbera and cabernet sauvignon to have a little leg room. I thoroughly enjoy these blends. The grapes work well together; nebbiolo giving the sweet tar and black earth notes, barbera giving acidity and toothsome red fruits and Cabernet Sauvignon fleshing out the whole package with girthy black currents and weight. Anyone who's been drinking Paolo Scavino's 2007 Rosso lately will appreciate these traits. All of this being said the Conterno Fantino Monpra could really use another few years, best after 2013 and will sit well for another decade.

Also best with tongues, Burgundy. A delightful 1999 Marquis d'Angerville Volnay Fremiet 1er Cru was surprisingly open knit for a producer known for compressed, long lived wines. The 1999 vintage was super structured from producers such as d'Angerville and really require a long nap, not quite a dirt nap as the Colt delivers, just an easy one in a cold cellar. Starting to emerge this nippet of deliciousness was delightful with tongue, brandishing its cold cherry coated earthy notes against the soft meatyness of the tongue.

Everyone should eat tongue. It's delicious and tender and perfect with monkfish regardless of whether you've been shooting guns or not. One old marketing slogan from the Colt manufacturing Co. was, "God made man but Samuel colt made them equal" probably not a slogan for modern times, but listen, Sam wasn't about the future. My point here is that Sam had a point, pointed at you? Pun? I think his point, loosely translated of course, is that tongue really requires more respect and we should eat more of it. Not too much though, as granted, there is only one tongue per animal, so best this not become a fad or some weight loss trend. I do not know of any animal who possesses more than one tongue, although if we can take the breeding time of a chicken and cut it in half, surely we could find genetic code to promoting multiple tongue growth. Either way, eat some tongue, wine friendly and delicious with all sorts of things.

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