A Quick Note about Pure White
The Pope-embraced Spanish Monsigneur, a personable but arrogant and diminutive octogenarian 3 doors down, became so stroke-impaired and creaky that he decided to return to his Andalusia homeland for his final years or days, as the case may be. He gave Maria all his opened and unopened bottles of fine distilled spirits, and she stuck them in our wine / whiskey rack. Oh, did he have fantastic and luxurious tastes. Too bad I didn't know him in his whoring days.
Tonight I swigged the very last hit of his Pure White Hennessy, an incomparable and remarkable experience I shall shortly reveal in minute detail. I had unwittingly primed myself for it after Maria poured me an after-dinner paper cup of her fabulous coffee. I don't know how she does it, but she turns out heavenly coffee with an aroma that seduces me from any undertaking and lures me by the mental nose straight to her table. She is a veritable witch in that way, and I think she knows it, and even witches herself. She does so love the brew.
The priming consisted of several petty and perverse indulgences. First of all, our nigh-unto-6-months-old Mini Schnauzer puppy, Dxtr, he without an E to his name, alternately propped his feet on the table to see what fare I enjoyed, and lay beside me on the floor. I ate a thrice heated plate of Maria's spaghetti that I had just enhanced with leftover refrigerator tomato sauce that had fermented into a piquant delight, and nuked. I had somehow made that bland plate sumptuously delectable . And I had started wolfing it down, with Dxtr pestering me for a bite which I would not deliver to him even behind Maria's back as she lay in the recliner watching ancient TMC Halloween reruns before me. This was a novel World Series Saturday night, but Maria and I cared naught for the contest or the score. Maria, Dxtr, and I lollygagged at our various pursuits together, but with our separate interests at heart, if you get my drift.
Yes, I eyed Maria as I nearly always must, with some kind of perverse and heathen sexual interest. She has sumptuous body parts, coupled with a fun spirit, that always comprise an irresistible allure. Doesn't matter what she wears or does, or how, I want to get into her, and I just cannot help it or explain it.
But... I digress. Forgive it if you can.
Behind and to my left, the wrought iron rack, on which bottles always seem clanky and wobbly, contained a Bacardi Anejo, unopened for God-knows how many years, screaming for my attention, my invasion, my embrace, my penetration to its depths. I acceded to its invitation, against better judgment, and THIS is the result, I feel partly certain... blathering on about a trivial experience better left unscribbled. But, scribble I must...
I gently maneuvered the Anejo from its nest, quietly cracked open its rip-off seal, and poured an ample and indeterminate measure of its amberness into my coffee. Maria apparently did not hear anything telltale of this nefarious activity. She lay languorously engrossed in the Tube's Halloween offering.
I sipped my spiked coffee with disregard as I read sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, and page after page of Jack Thompson's Out of Harm's Way. In due course Maria announced that she could not keep her eyes open another moment, and she trudged off to bed. She had long since ensconced Dxtr in his cage, or crate as she likes to call it. So, that departure left me alone with the coffee cup, the book, and the monster movie.
Well, naturally, I switched the TV to the World Series, turned the volume down, turned on the captions, and returned to the book. It got interesting as I hit page 61, with Thompson growing lachrymose over recognition that he must love his enemies before he can beat them in court. What a concept! I don't belittle it. I have used it to great effect ever since my daddy revealed it to me in a divorce admonishment.
And all of the resulting metaphysical turmoil, aided by a couple of ounces or more of the Anejo, caused me further to ponder the unwelcome emptiness of my coffee cup, and the last remaining swig of the Monsigneur's Pure White Hennessy. I grasped the neck of the bottle and read the label. The vintner distilled it from the wine of ugni blanc, folle blanche, and Colombard white grapes of the Cognac region of France. In other words, it is an 80 proof pure Cognac.
The taste sets it apart from other distilled wines. You can actually detect the delightful white grape flavors as the alcohol seeps into and titillates the brain. Oh, God! If I hadn't already been tipsy, I wouldn't have anticipated its subtle and magnificent flavor as I now lusted for it. I thought this as I screwed off the metal cap of the Pure White Hennessy bottle, tilted the flask to my lips, and allowed that liquor to pour into my open mouth, where I held it for the longest of moments, letting its grapes make themselves known to my taste buds.
I write all of this in order to report that I did in fact taste those grapes, a most heavenly and unearthly experience, in spite of the fact that those flavors did indeed come from our earth and the flowering plants surrounding the grape vines in the orchard harvested to make this magnificent beverage. And it added to my buzz, for which fact I feel grateful as I lumber to the conclusion of this monologue.
In the relaxed and mordant phase of post-Pure-White libation, I bid you a good evening. I thank you for the Anejo and Hennessy, for without it I wouldn't realize that I love you as much as I do at this very instant. You are a precious and darling gift from God, and I recognize that without you my life could not be complete.
Maria, my Love, next time you get a chance, try Hennessy Pure White. You'll love the grape. So will I. In other words, please go buy us a new bottle.
enough