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But even a sloth’s gotta eat, and eat I did. Christmas Eve dinner this year (quiche, salad, oyster stew) was bracketed by two beverages of note. The first was a Majella sparkling shiraz, produced in lieu of champagne. It was my introduction to fizzy red wine, though it’s old news in Australia and gaining ground over here, and it was delicious: fruity and full-bodied but still refreshingly dry. (Inspired, I picked up a couple bottles of a Loose End sparkling red blend for New Year’s.) Then after dinner my uncle uncorked a bottle of Moet & Chandon Petit Liqueur, which I guess is pretty rare. M&C discontinued production in the early 90s and he’d been sitting on it for more than ten years, since he picked it up in a liquor store in DC. It’s an aged champagne to which cognac’s been added . . . and beyond that I can’t tell you much, because deep googling turns up almost nothing. It was wild, though: champagne creamy, the teeniest bit bubbly, and dessert-wine sweet.
On my last day I made a pilgrimage to the Pike Place Market–which was, per usual, jammed with slow-moving tourists gawking at the salmon-tossing fishmongers. I love the market–one of the few year-round permanent farmer’s markets in the country–but lately more so in theory than reality. I did last long enough to fill the artisanal meat void with a sausage from Uli’s: a startlingly dusky South African Boerewors made with pork, beef, red wine vinegar, and coriander.
