All Will Be Well

And all manner of things will be well. And appropriately heated. At some point.

You know what? It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter that there’s another excessive heat warning for almost the entire mid-Atlantic, threatening to turn my neighborhood into the equivalent of one big drippy wool sock.

It doesn’t matter that the guys were here installing my new boiler/hot water heater unit and setting up its direct vent. Which requires holes. To be drilled. In your walls. Through drywall and brick. And it’s really loud. And I had to flee upstairs to my home office.

My home office which was about 89 degrees F (for Fahrenheit and… something else) because I hadn’t had the air conditioning on.

(No, I don’t have central air. My house is almost 70 years old and the previous owners have apparently survived without it. And survived without spending the at minimum $30,000 it would take to install it.)

It doesn’t matter that I couldn’t turn on the air until after my afternoon conference call, which I had to talk and actually be heard on.

It doesn’t matter. You know why it doesn’t matter?

Two words.

Pre-season. Football.

Is that two or three words? Do we count the hyphen?

And I hear grumblings from across the pond. God, fine, okay.

Pre-season American football.

(Three words. Four words. Oh goddammit. Did I mention it was frickin hot out?)

Anyway!

There is football! On my television! From Philadelphia! The land of my birth.

With a broadcast sponsored by Acme (pronounced “ack-a-mee”).

This is cause for celebration.

While watching a Philadelphia Eagles game, gotta go with South Jersey, which of course was long ago annexed by the city of Philadelphia, by, um, Benjamin Franklin. With a lightning rod. Sure. We’ll go with that.

Back to my pals at William Heritage in Mullica Hill. And for this hot night with half the air conditioning units doing their best, going with the new 2020 Steel Aged Red.

According to the notes provided by the winery:

A challenging 2020 vintage allows our winemaker to get creative and produce wines that are more unique to our normal red wine portfolio. We experienced record setting rainfall during some of the crucial ripening months for our red grapes….

…Instead of attempting to overmanipulate some of the 2020 red wines, the winemaker embraced what Mother Nature provided.

Doing the best with what you got seems like a good theme for the 2021 Eagles to embrace, especially after last season.

This is a fun unique red blend, that puts me in mind of their carbonic red of a couple years ago, but lighter and with much better acidity. It’s a blend of five grapes, primarily their cab sauv and cab franc. It needs to be chilled to really appreciate.

It’s a drink-it-as-soon-as-you-get-it-home wine. Keep it chilled with all the devices you have handy. I used an ice sleeve and a Corkcicle to bring it to the right temperature. If you’re sipping this on the surface of the sun, also known as New Jersey, you might even want an ice bucket handy. Chow down with some shrimp cocktail. Something cold. I didn’t expect to like this wine very much, but I’m definitely getting some more to enjoy before the weather turns cool (in January).

God, I love preseason. Everything is potential. Every touchdown or QB sack or Jake Elliott not stinking up the joint is a good sign. And every fumble or missed catch, “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s just the preseason, doesn’t count, they’re just warming up, and Jesus it’s like 4 million degrees out there.”

Stay inside. Keep cool. Eye of the Tiger, baby.