(co-authored with Peter Earle) My sister-in-law and I have a running joke when we want to take a last-minute “sick day” so we can play hooky, and it involves the code words explosive diarrhea. “Yo, can you get explosive diarrhea today?” And before you know it, we’re somewhere in Key Largo, taking down an unholy amount of smoked fish dip, local beer, and key lime pie—leaving absolutely zero room in our stomachs for even the slightest crumb of remorse.

The first time I tried “white tuna” at a sushi restaurant, I’d never heard of such a thing, so I ordered a couple of nigiri pieces and absolutely loved the buttery, rich texture. I had no idea that what I was eating was almost definitely escolar—a species that’s infamous for causing massive digestive issues for folks who eat more than a few ounces. Digestive issues otherwise known as keriorrhea, a condition characterized by the discharge of oily, yellowish substances, often described as explosive, uncontrollable diarrhea. Fortunately, I seem to have an iron-clad stomach that’s resistant to any such issues, likely because I was raised on White Castle “murder burgers”. My explosive diarrhea is only ever purely fictional.

As it happens, there is a metric shit-ton of mislabeled fish being sold in the US, and that skullduggery can occur anywhere throughout the supply chain, not just at restaurants. The seafood industry has been running the longest con this side of a presidential campaign, and that con happens to include over 80% of “white tuna” samples tested turning out to be escolar. In fact, in recent studies, nearly 60% of the 46 fish types tested in US markets and restaurants had been mislabeled, so chances are better than good that when you buy or order seafood, you’re being duped at the expense of both your wallet and (quite possibly) your gut. We are watching the greatest aquatic shell game in the history of American eating, and repeatedly ponying up the cash to bet again and again, deluding ourselves that we know where the real fish is.

Economists have a name for this kind of seafood shell-game: information asymmetry. That’s the polite, academic way of saying one side knows a hell of a lot more than the other and reaps the proceeds deriving from it. In markets where buyers can’t verify quality—think used cars—sellers eventually learn they can swap in cheaper stuff, charge higher prices, and nobody’s the wiser…at least until the bathroom turns into an active crime scene.

Walk into any restaurant in America—from the greasiest diner in Newark to the most pretentious bistro in Beverly Hills—and order the red snapper. What arrives at your table, nine times out of ten, is tilapia. That “wild Alaskan halibut” you just dropped $40 on? Pangasius from the Mekong Delta, raised in waters so polluted they glow in the dark. Staring into the glassy eyes of what the menu proclaimed to be “Fresh Atlantic Salmon”? It’s likely the hollow gaze of something that never saw the Atlantic, never felt the rush of cold northern waters, and never experienced anything more authentic than the concrete walls of a Vietnamese fish farm and a long, strange trip in the belly of a refrigerated cargo plane.

The beauty of this scam is its elegant simplicity. Once you skin and fillet a fish, remove its head, and freeze it solid, even marine biologists need DNA testing to tell you what species they’re looking at. Low-valued species get substituted for a more expensive one, origin documents are falsified, and sometimes, hygiene standards get ignored. It’s the perfect crime—nobody bothers to verify what they’re eating because nobody expects to get hustled. And why the hustle? Because the real stuff is difficult to source and even harder to keep fresh. We’re talking about fish caught in deep, cold waters, flown in from halfway across the globe. That’s not sustainable. Hell, it’s not even profitable for most places.

And here’s the kicker: when quality can’t be credibly identified, economists warn that markets gradually devolve into dumping grounds for the lowest-quality products. It’s called adverse selection, and it explains perfectly why genuine red snapper is rarer than bipartisan cooperation. Why keep catching expensive fish if everyone else is getting away with selling tilapia in drag? Eventually the good stuff disappears because the market rewards the fake stuff.

The two most mislabeled species are sea bass and snapper, with 7 of 120 red snapper samples (SIX percent!) collected nationwide actually being red snapper. If you’re ordering it, you’re likely get tilapia; if you’re ordering hogfish, you may get grouper; and, if you’re ordering grouper, you may get catfish, sole, or cod. And you won’t even know that what you just ate wasn’t real grouper. You just eat it, because, well, it tastes good enough, doesn’t it? If you take a nebulous filet of white fish and top it with a generous helping of that heavily spiced stuff that the tattooed, Spanglish-speaking saucier concocted, chances are you won’t ever notice the bait and switch—and they’re hedging their bets on that. You’re complicit without even knowing it.

This is systematic, industrial-scale fraud that runs from the docks of Vietnam to the plates of South Beach. When you can buy tilapia for $2 a pound and sell it as red snapper for $18, you’re not running a business—you’re running a money-printing operation that would make the Federal Reserve Viagra-hard. Farm-raised salmon sold as wild Alaskan: 400% markup. Vietnamese swai passed off as sole: 800% markup. A fish by any other name would smell as fresh.

Economists call those margins “rent extraction,” but honestly, let’s just call it robbery with chopsticks. And the incentives are obvious: if I can turn a $2 fish into an $18 entrée with a menu typo, I’d need a moral compass forged of tungsten to resist. Markets don’t magically align with ethics; they align with incentives.

Restaurants will often plead ignorance to the charade, and they’re sometimes in the right. With provenance being harder and harder to prove, overfished and vulnerable species are often substituted with a more sustainable catch (black cod masquerading as Chilean sea bass), and cheaper farmed fish gets sold to restaurants as wild-caught (salmon being the biggest offender). In fact, farmed salmon that was mislabeled as wild made up over 30% of samples taken from sushi restaurants across the US. And don’t forget the tuna because the bigeye you ordered might be yellowfin and that “bluefin” that cost you a month’s rent? It could be anything with fins and a decent publicist. The sushi industry has become a high-stakes game of ichthyological Russian roulette.

And where the hell is the FDA in all this? Off inspecting hand sanitizer factories while the seafood industry runs through our markets and eateries like Vikings pillaging monasteries. Less than 2% of imported seafood gets inspected. The agency inspects more ass implants than it does fish filets.

The USDA won’t touch seafood—that’s the FDA’s turf. The FDA stumbles to enforce seafood labeling—they’re too busy letting slaughterhouses call anything with a pedigree “American Wagyu”. The Commerce Department tracks the economics but not the ethics. It’s a bureaucratic circle jerk of epic proportions and we’re standing in the middle, wondering if anything we put in our mouths is what it claims to be.

And the buzzkill is that regulation can’t magically fix an information problem this deep. Agencies and agents can chase fraud, but they can’t sit at every dock, snoop around restaurants, or oversee each menu rewrite. When the entire incentive structure rewards deception, enforcement just turns into whack-a-mole with a government badge and a clipboard.

This country has been lulled and conditioned to accept mediocrity, so long as it’s dressed up in gold leaf and served with a side of bullshit authenticity. The fraud isn’t just about the fish, it’s about what we’ve come to expect from the industry—from longliner to lineman. The only solution is radical transparency and aggressive skepticism but what the hell are we to do? Demand to see the whole fish? Ask for documentation? Proof of provenance? Because in the end, when the last honest fishmonger has been driven out of business by rancid margins, when every piece of seafood in America is some form of gastronomical theater, we’ll look back on this era as the time when we traded our taste buds for the illusion of abundance. And the seafood Houdinis will be sitting on their trawlers, getting a good chuckle at us while they watch the sunset paint the sky the color of farm-raised salmon.

And that’s the real tragedy: once consumers stop trusting labels, genuine producers lose out. Good fish leaves the market because mediocre fish comes disguised as premium, and eventually everyone gets the same product at a higher price. That’s the textbook definition of market collapse, only with more soy sauce in this case.

“Smarties???” I’ve got two Canarians looking at me with furrowed brows as I take another sip of an enthralling white wine. They lean closer, tilt their heads sideways a bit like dogs do when they don’t know whether to lick you or bite your face off, and repeat with even more inflection, “Smarties?? Really??” 

“Yes, Smarties. That’s what this wine reminds me of.” But, apparently their version of Smarties candies is completely different from mine, so I start frantically searching for a picture of them on my iPhone to avoid the oenological equivalent of taking a shit on someone’s family heirloom Persian rug. I show them the little tablets in their clear cellophane wrapping and they say, “Ohhhhhh! Here, Smarties are a chocolate-coated candy. That’s why we were confused! We call these little candies aspirina.” The furrowed brows relax and a Cheshire smile washes over Jesus’ face.

“It makes complete sense! When you bite them, there is chalkiness. And there’s a sense of both acidity and fruitiness. I have never had anyone make that connection before!” He nods with equal parts approval and understanding, and I’m pretty sure I’ve just succeeded in not only averting an international snafu but simultaneously impressing the dude who made the wine I’m so enamored with. 

Being enamored was what found me on the north shore of Tenerife to begin with. I had been visiting a wine shop in Delray Beach and the owner turned me on to Envinate’s Migan, a sensuous, earthy, funky, seductive red from Valle de La Orotava—the exact region I was currently sitting in while jostling to avoid the snafu. I’d always had a thing for volcanic wines but when that Migan passed my lips, all it took was a text to my friend, Thea: I wanna go to the Canary Islands and taste through some wines. It was as simple as that. She was all in. A couple of flights later, we were traipsing through an island that immediately, intrinsically felt like a second home to me. 

Looking downward from Jesus’ steep vineyards, you can see the wide, crystal blue of the Atlantic Ocean with a lace of haze hovering just over it. Looking upward, you can see the impressively high crown of El Teide, the volcano that graces the island and whose eruptions and landslides created Atlante’s vineyards. The wine in my glass—made from albillo criollo and listan blanco—has a salinity and minerality that taste of both the ocean to my left and the volcano to my right. Its 13% ABV gives it these long, sexy legs that go for days and I find myself wishing my legs could do the same, but the damn 40° climb up his vineyards had completely betrayed mine. They weren’t long or sexy. Not so much. They were old and tired. But it was the most glorious sort of tired they could aspire to be. Tenerife is dizzying. Roads wind like sinew, and its terrain makes the slopes of San Francisco look like ant hills.

Atlante’s pre-phylloxera vines, gnarled and braided, are at least 150 years old (but likely much more) and run parallel to the ground, stretched out over the arduous slopes like the arthritic fingers of some ancient, volcanic diety. What the islanders call cordon trenzado is a training system that plaits vines together, trellises them, and lets them grow anywhere from 10 to 50 feet in length. And while this system was originally designed as a space saver that left the ground below free for planting food, it also makes mechanical grape harvesting laughably impossible. Every last grape is collected by hand. 

I continue sinking softly into his wines and Jesus beams as he discusses finally being able to live solely off of his wines and not have to work a second job. The Canary Islands aren’t exactly a place that trips off the tongue when discussing wines. Sun-soaked, beachfront vacations, sure. Wines, not so much. There are no shelves for them in the Spain section of Total Wine. Nobody’s holding free tastings of them from 12 – 2 at your local wine shop with some cute chick pouring listan negro into a plastic cup for you while she flashes you a smile and some cleavage. And they ain’t showing up in any wine-of-the-month clubs, either. In fact, the only way I can feed my monkey is by tolerating one insufferable shit show of a wine merchant in Miami that carries more than a handful of Canary bottles. So, Jesus being able to ditch the second job and rely only on his winery is a victory not easily understood by many outside these islands. 

Atlante’s vineyards are organically farmed, its wines are fermented using only indigenous wild yeasts, and the final product is neither filtered nor fined. But you don’t once hear the words “natural wine” spill out of Jesus’ mouth or see it on his labels. The nebulous term gets trampled under his boot heels and kicked off later for some slick marketing agency to lap up. There is plenty of chest pounding in this industry from winemakers who boast about their insistence that human intervention be minimal, but we all know what they say about good intentions and that road to hell. It’s not paved, folks. It’s riddled with potholes and it will dent your rims if you taste “natural wines” made by people more concerned with an ideology than they are with the final beverage. Jesus is making wines that taste of fruit, and sand, and clay, and sea salt. His listan negro has an almost indescribable nose and the only sensible notes I manage to scribble down are iron/red meat. It isn’t until days later that I realize that those vines grow in iron- and aluminum-rich basalts and then it all makes complete sense. He’s making wines that are an homage…a love song…a veritable sonnet…to his island.

The Canaries are so far removed from mainland Spain that most people don’t even know where the hell to find them on a map. They sit in the Atlantic, just west of Morocco, at 28° latitude N which is pretty much on par with Tampa, FL. Compare that to Madrid, which sits in the center of Spain and is even with central Jersey, and you’ll understand why Tenerife has as much in common with Rioja as Florida oranges have with Jersey tomatoes. These aren’t Spanish wines. Their identity is completely divorced from the ones made by the lispers up north. Go ahead and fight me—you’ll lose. Being called Spanish wines is a technicality at best. Much the same way that Don Q rum is Puerto Rican rum and not American rum, Tenerife’s wines (and that of the other islands) is Canary wine, not Spanish wine. Jesus didn’t say that, but his wines did.

We leave Atlante, but as excited as I may be to hit whatever’s next, I’m bummed. I want to sit at the sun-lit table and shoot the shit with Jesus for a few more hours. Taste through more of his wines. Ask incessant questions about the island’s winemaking history. Fold him up and pack him in my suitcase. But I resist the folding part, hop into Olga’s minivan, and watch Atlante disappear in the rear window, in a cloud of sand and volcanic dust. 

I once read an article that quoted Jonatan Garçia Lima of Suertes del Marqués winery as saying, “I would like to get to a point where people don’t think, ‘I’m ordering a volcanic wine’, but ‘I want to drink a Suertes del Marqués wine’. I’m taking a long-term view…looking at the bigger picture. I don’t just want to be a cellar of fashion, I want to be a classic. I want people to say, ‘This is a great wine’.” And I can’t help but call bullshit. It’s a false dichotomy. There are days when I say, “I want to drink an Atlante wine” and in those moments I am hyper-aware of the fact that what I want is a volcanic wine and that it is, without question, a great wine. These ideas aren’t mutually exclusive. They can coexist, assuming of course that the volcanic wine is, in fact, a great wine—which Atlante is. A great wine is many things, but ideally, it speaks of place—of terroir—and for Canary wines, that place is inarguably volcanic. To hope for that identity to eventually be stripped away is to hope for wines that get lost in the din of every other bottle out there. And that is a fool’s hope, to be sure.

*NOTE: Atlante’s wines are just beginning to be imported into the US by Rosenthal Wine Merchant. 

“Joe!” I called over and over, half expecting a neighbor to come crashing through the door at any moment, thinking I was in some sort of peril. “JOE!” He was showering.

It took seven screams to be heard. “Come!” I couldn’t manage more than one syllable at a time. I was getting tired of clawing the kitchen counter for stability, and had decided to attempt the five steps from there to the couch. It may as well have been the run from Marathon to Athens.

“I’m coming, mom!” I threw myself down on the couch to wait for him, staring at the screen saver cityscape that my AppleTV had thrown up, listening to what I’m pretty sure was the White Buffalo, and wishing I could remove the 10-gallon water cooler in my head that someone had just knocked into. What the fuck was taking this kid so long? Did he not understand the gravity—or lack thereof—of the situation? Waiting those 45 seconds for him felt like an hour.

Turning 50 was a cake walk. The number had no affect on me. I was feeling great, was completely at peace with my life, and didn’t want for anything. I was living in the tropics, I was off all my fibromyalgia medications, and was fixing to make an appointment for my next bit of ink. The birthday fell on a Thursday so I wasn’t about to make any grand plans, but my brother had invited me out for dinner at a new rooftop eatery that opened nearby. I was all in. “Be here by 5:30. Dinner is at 6.”

I had just finished putting on a pretty, new blouse, throwing some actual makeup on, and feeling pleased that for once my hair was on point, when the kid got home from work. He was looking to take a couple of hits off his bong before showering and getting ready for dinner, and asked if I wanted a birthday hit. At this point in my life—and given what weed has become in the last couple of decades—I only smoke once in a very blue moon, and usually only one hit. And so I had a “fuck it” moment as I am wont to have, and took a rip off the bong, listening to the gurgle, gurgle, gurgle of the water as the smoke disappeared into my lungs. A few minutes later I decided to head inside because I didn’t want the humidity to ruin my hair.

I remember looking at the clock on my DVR and thinking, cool, I’ve got about an hour before we need to head out…I think I’ll get some writing done. I threw myself down on the couch, cracked open the laptop and murmured under my breath, “Fuck me, I forgot how to write!” And that’s where the carnival ride began. A carnival ride that would leave me celebrating 50 with a Whopper, fries, and some sort of sweet crap in a triangular box they were trying to convince me was a slice of chocolate cream pie.

I didn’t want the kid to see me losing my shit, so I went into my bedroom and locked the door behind me, figuring I’d just go lay down and ride this thing out so my head would be clear by dinnertime. There was a tiny hole in my ceiling and it was trying to suck me into its vortex. Marcus King was blaring on my TV, being challenged by the hip-hop coming out of the kid’s room, and all the while I couldn’t find my fingers. He knocks on my door. I’m fucked. “Come hear a new beat I’m working on, Mom.” Gimme five minutes, kid. Five minutes. Just gotta find my fingers and I’ll be right with you.

I opened my eyes and the light blaze that is the Miami sun seared my corneas. Find your fingers, woman! I pulled my hands up toward my face and started counting them over and over and over, making sure that the count was 10 each time. This kid’s gonna wonder what’s taking me so long. It’s gotta be 15 minutes since he knocked. But it had barely been five. And just as I thought I was beginning to pull myself together, the desire to puke surges up from my toes, propelling me toward the only thing within reach—the garbage can by my desk, which happened to be in the corner of very white walls. Well, that’ll be fun to clean tomorrow. 

I head for the bathroom to wash my face, imagining that my perfect hair is now covered in vomit, but it’s actually holding up OK. I tap the face gently so as not to wreck the makeup and that’s when I make my move towards the kitchen to call for Joe. There was no way I was doing dinner on a rooftop when I could barely find my extremities. He came out of the bathroom to find me sitting in one corner of the couch. “Yo, you OK, Mom?” No, no, fruit of my loins. I am in no way OK. “Call…” I paused. Use your words, Katie. “Uncle.” That’s it. No more. You can’t get blood from a stone or words from the stoned. 

“Are you OK, mom? Mom, look at me.” That fucker was making me open my eyes. Again with the sun. His face scares me and I pull my head back a bit. “You don’t think you’ll be OK in 30 minutes?” I shook my head, closed my eyes again, and managed to lay my head back on the couch despite the complete lack of sensation or sense of place. “What are you feeling?” I could only manage the word hot. “You want me to put an ice cube on your forehead? Or a wet towel?” I grimace. “Will ruin makeup.” Three words strung together—a clear indicator that I could do it when it really mattered.

He disappears to call his aunt first. “Hey, we have a bit of a situation…” was all I heard before my mind trailed off. Blah, blah, blah, “…I swear, it was only ONE toke…” Then he calls the uncle. “Mom, can you talk to Tio Alex a sec?” Are you out of your goddamned mind? Head shakes aggressively from side to side and I swat my hand at my poor child who is trying to respectfully bail on dinner plans and manage his mother’s fade, all while resisting the urge to laugh his face off. I need to puke again. He helps me get to the bathroom because I can barely walk. I slam the door behind me so he doesn’t watch his mom at the feet of the porcelain god and somehow pull together the wherewithal to take off my new blouse so I don’t fuck it up. 

I purge everything but my spleen, hyper-aware of the tears that are streaming down my cheeks and the complete mess I have likely made of myself. But when I go to the sink to clean myself up for the second time, still somehow trying to keep from fucking up the makeup—for whose benefit I have no idea at this point—I look at myself in the mirror and am shocked that I still look really damn good. So let this be a lesson, ladies (or dudes who wear makeup)—primer and setting spray are worth every penny. I will never again look at the price tags on those things with doubt. I head back out toward the living room but not before grabbing a towel to throw over myself because I am now in my bra and have already done enough damage to my kid’s psyche for one day.

I lay myself down on the couch by first sitting and then slowly sliding sideways, and pull a blanket over me. I’m trying desperately to fall asleep but that weed paranoia that often creeps through the cracks? Yeah that’s now in high gear, giving me supersonic hearing that can detect every conversation that child is having in his bedroom. He’s got the girlfriend on speaker but she is either speaking a combination of three languages or speaking backwards. I can’t make out which, but I know they are fucking with me so that I don’t know it’s me they’re laughing about. Someone please shoot me. They shoot horses, don’t they?

I give up on trying to decipher the coded conversation and focus on sleeping, when I get peeled out of my skin by the sound of Rage Against the Machine being blasted only a few inches from my swimming head. You ever listen to Bombtrack? The beginning, just after the intro, where it kicks in? That’s my damn ringtone because I like to make sure I can always hear it. And of course it’s the ex-husband calling to wish me a happy 50th birthday. Of course it is. Yup. And instead of just letting it go to voicemail, the kid, in his infinite lack of discretion, answers the call and walks off with my phone to tell his dad all about how mom can’t take his call right now because she’s completely ripped and immobile on the couch.

At some point, I finally get near sleep. Just let me ride this out oh mother of Zeus, and I am done with the maryjane forever and ever. The kid emerges from the bedroom again, kneels besides me, and whispers in my ear, “Ma, can you hear me?” I nod. “I’m going to go get Alaniz now, will you be alright without me?” I nod. “You sure? Because it’s gonna take me a while before I get back.” I nod…do you not see me nodding for the love of all things? Go away so I can sleep. Go, go, go. You have seen enough for one day, child.

An hour later, I manage to pull my eyes open. The sun has graciously disappeared behind a wall of rain clouds and the kid had been kind enough to turn off my music before leaving. I grab my phone to call him and see a missed text from my brother. It’s a photo of my glorious niece sitting at the rooftop restaurant, wearing the Addidas sneakers I had bought her, with the caption, “Where’s Tia Katie?” Fucking guilt trip of all guilt trips. “Joe are you on your way back yet?” He was. And I was now starving. “I need you to grab me some food as you get near home.”

Being an April Fool baby never made for a joke more apropos than spending my 50th birthday dinner scarfing down a Whopper (no pickle, just like I taught him) and washing it down with a bottle of Champagne that the kid had bought me (and had remembered to chill), all from a plastic Starbuck’s cup. The “sundae pie” was shoveled to my mouth with my fingers—faux whipped cream repeatedly wiped from my still near-flawless makeup between bites—while I fumbled for the remote control to hunt for a movie. Getting old is not for pussies, and the thing is that I can’t decide whether what went down was pure gonzo for having bailed on a rooftop dinner because I was passed out on my couch after hitting a bong with my kid, or if it’s the saddest, most “welcome to the other side of the hill you fucking relic” sort of pathetic awakening ever. I settled on The Birdcage, and as the sounds of salsa music filled my darkened living room, I grabbed the phone to text Mike about what had gone down over the last four hours. “OK, are you ready for this?”

She called me one Sunday, wanting to go on a road trip up to Savannah…said she wanted to get away. The sooner, the better. And quite frankly, I’m at a place in my life where I’m pretty much game for just about any getaway, so I was all in, but with one caveat—I wanted to stop at breweries all along the east coast of Florida as we drove. She laughed. Apparently, it wasn’t much of a caveat. And it was that agreement that found us winding down a stretch of road in Port St. Lucie one late Friday morning, flanked by motorcycle mechanics and clock repair shops, on the hunt for our first stop.

“Are you sure this is right? Seems like a weird place for a brewery.” She wasn’t wrong.

“Yeah, the GPS says we’re just about there. Keep your eyes peeled.” This is how it all goes wrong, I thought. This is where I begin apologizing for that easily satisfied caveat. This is cheap fodder for tomorrow’s social media headlines: Two Missing Florida Women Ensnared by Fake Brewery/Slave Labor Ring. But then she spotted Side Door Brewing, nestled between All American Golf Cars and Village Green Tires. I slammed the brakes and chucked a right into a small strip of retail in a sleepy business park. Our expectations were immediately clipped at the knees.

I had set out to write about the meteoric trend in sour and flavored beers here in the US, and at that point I thought that my first stop was going to be one of many in a long line of disappointments—like, losing-your-virginity-type disappointments (ladies, I know you feel me)—but we rolled our dice at the bar, and Megan proceeded to pour me four flawless brews. And then Megan poured me two or three more, insisting I try others that weren’t on my list. Megan didn’t have a clue that she had been playing with a handicap from the moment I made that hard, right turn. And in that glorious oblivion, Megan managed to shut me the fuck up.

First up was a blood orange/chocolate porter that truly tasted of both while still being elegantly lightweight. Then, a guava sour that seemed to marry Belgium and the tropics; a coffee porter that had been brewed with cayenne peppers, giving it beautiful, warm, smoky notes; a stout brewed with cold brew coffee that tasted simultaneously like a stout and like espresso (sidekick’s favorite); and a mango-salsa hefeweizen brewed with habaneros that completely rocked my world, coating my entire mouth with hot, green pepper heat and chasing it with subtle fruit. Not one of them was a miss. I wanted to hurdle over the bar top and give Megan a bear hug for having unwittingly restored my faith, but I was afraid that being taken away in handcuffs might bring our road trip to a less-than-stellar, premature (albeit gonzo) end. Side Door set a bar that would only be met by the last brewery on the trip—the bookends of a beer-soaked journey.

Turn the clock back 10 years and you couldn’t get your average beer drinker to enjoy a Lambic. It used to be that at some point or another if you found yourself becoming a craft beer geek, you would inevitably wind up exploring sours as a rite of passage…a wake-up call when you’ve spent your formative years sucking at the teat of Anheuser-Busch. But most took a single sip, grimaced, and went back to their balls-to-the-wall, over-hopped IPA, clinging to it as if it were a long-lost, snot-stained teddy bear. They didn’t “get” sour beers. Didn’t think they even qualified as being beer. Those of us that scoured store shelves for Cantillon, Hanssens and Girardin were viewed with guarded skepticism. A Killian’s red was somehow more acceptable than a Flanders red.

The same was true for flavored beers. Other than Sam’s Cherry Wheat or a few chocolate stouts, added flavors were laughed at by beer drinkers. Kriek? Gose? What the fuck is THAT? Fast forward to 2019, and now virtually every brewery of note has at least one sour in its portfolio, and sours are quickly outselling pilsners, stouts, and lagers, playing second fiddle only to IPAs. Ice that cake with the fact that Florida’s year-round warm climate welcomes lower ABVs and tartness, and that its list of available fruits is longer than most, and you have a perfect storm for a spiking trend. Only 45,000 cases of sour beer were sold in the US in 2015, a figure that more than quintupled in just one year and rose by nearly 43% in 2018 alone. But just like every other good thing that catches a wave, trends have a tendency to separate the wheat from the chaff.

We left Side Door and pointed my convertible northward again, toward St. Augustine. Somewhere on the back seat, there were bags filled with beef jerky, cashews, chips, pork rinds, candy bars and apples, and a cooler with water, St. Croix, Red Bull, and iced coffee. By the time we found our way to I-95, the Stone Temple Pilots were coincidentally singing about an Interstate Love Song, my feet were hanging out the passenger window, and she was getting used to the pick-up on my gas pedal. “What are we hitting first when we get there?” she blared over the music. I looked back at the bags of food and answered, “The john.”

St. Augustine has 4 breweries, and for a city of less than 13 sq mi, that’s both impressive and indicative of the “brew boom” that’s overtaken the state. In fact, trying to whittle down my list of road trip breweries proved to be much harder than I expected, even after allowing for the fact that we’d be hitting them on the way up to Savannah, and on the way back home as well. Ancient City Brewing sits in the heart of town, a stone’s throw from the Bridge of Lions, and directly across from the plaza. And unlike Side Door, which given its remoteness was certainly a Mecca only for those in the know, Ancient City served more tourists than locals. Given that neither one of us had realized that it was both Bike Week and Celtic Weekend up there, the swell of tourists was even larger than we expected.

After managing to snag stools at the bar, we picked a flight of four and asked for waters, forgetting just how unpotably shitty St. Augustine water is. The first pour was a coffee blonde—a new one in my book since you usually find coffee in porters and stouts—and it was fantastic. The server noted that the second pour in my flight was their coconut porter, and mentioned that they often recommended a 50/50 pour of the coconut porter and the coffee blonde. She left a small glass on the bar for us to mix some ourselves and thankfully walked away because we dumped it after both taking only one sip. Imagine squeezing some suntan lotion into a beer laced with coffee and you’ll understand us taking a hard pass on that concoction. Third up was an orange amber that barely tasted of oranges. It wasn’t bad, but if you had simply told me it was an amber and handed it to me, I wouldn’t have detected notes of orange. The polar opposite of the amazing orange chocolate porter I had tried at Side Door. Thankfully, the fourth pour restored me—their Belgian Christmas Abbey. It was a beautiful, warm-tasting brew with hints of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. But overall, their flavored beers left me underwhelmed and pining for Port St. Lucie.

We crashed in St. Augustine that night and toured the sites the next day, clocking in over 10 miles of walking by the time we had hobbled over the bridge and found our way to Old Coast Ales, our tongues dangling out the sides of our mouths like 13-year-olds watching their first porn. But I’m not going to waste your time on Old Coast any more than I just did, because I was sorry enough that we wasted ours. It was safe and it was fine, but fine is all around us. Count them, Old Coast…not one but two tired, unsatiated, unsatisfied women in under an hour. You, quite simply, didn’t hit the spot.

The next day, I took the wheel back and headed up to Jacksonville. I had read through the current tap list at Aardwolf and this was one of the breweries I was most excited to hit. In fact, the overwhelming majority of their online beer list had me salivating. It was late Sunday morning when we rolled into town, so we stopped to get a quick bite first while we waited for Aardwolf to open. The city was a veritable ghost town. Shops boarded up, restaurants shut down, and nearly no one on the streets. We weren’t sure if the city was still sleeping or in an induced coma. By the time we got to Aardwolf we were having another “are you sure we’re safe here” moment. The parking lot was nearly deserted…only one other car in it…so I grabbed my OTF switchblade just in case. It wasn’t until I saw the pretty beer garden around the bend that I eased up on my grip.

Again, I focused my flight on sours and flavored beers, and again it was hit and miss. The Early Bird Special: An American Imperial Stout with coffee, vanilla, and cinnamon, was well balanced but simply wasn’t “coffee” enough for us while the spices were overdone. Barrel Aged San Marco: A sour blonde aged in tequila and scotch barrels, was powerful but had off, smoky aftertastes that I’m guessing were from the peat in the scotch barrels. Death By Face: A sour wheat that started out light, crisp and tart, but again broke down on the finish, which was nearly medicinal. Soulshine: A foeder-aged saison aged with blackberries, cherries and black currants. It was refreshing and fruity (though indiscernible) and had yet another strange, chemically aftertaste. Twin Blasphemies: A barrel-aged sour amber saison, which I ordered mostly as a sort of sadomasochistic experiment because the description sounded like a beer in an identity crisis. I wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t quite funky enough of a saison, not quite malty enough of an amber, and it had some hints of coffee that I couldn’t quite peg down. I wanted to love this brewery. I wanted to double down on my flights because I couldn’t choose just 4. I wanted to leave there with their damn logo tattooed on my ass cheek. But I did none of those things. Aardwolf was trying too hard to give me funk, not understanding that either you’re born with it or you’re not.

We honestly couldn’t get out of Jax fast enough. I’ve heard tell that it’s now a destination for beer geeks…that great breweries dot the cityscape. And I’m sure I’ll go back for a second round at some point. But in a matter of minutes we were back on the interstate (she was at the wheel again) and I was flipping the ghost town not one but two birds as we hit the on-ramp and cranked up Peace Frog. The next four days were spent eating and drinking our way around Savannah, and after a drool-worthy breakfast at Narobia’s Grits and Gravy, we pointed the car southward, our backseat stash now a mix of rare stouts, breakfast bars, flavored oils/vinegars, cookies, jalapeño-flavored M&Ms (don’t do it), popcorn, Lunchables, and several jars of honey.

When plans were first hatched, we had planned on hitting another Jacksonville brewery on the way back down, but we were so turned off by the first go-around that we nixed that choice, changed the itinerary, and decided to head inland toward Mt. Dora during the trip home. But something goes south, quite literally, on every road trip. Road trips wouldn’t be road trips if you didn’t bring back some crazy story for the history books. Otherwise, you’re doing it wrong. So, we were clawing our way through Jax rush hour traffic, when I decided on an impromptu stop at Moonrise Brewing in Palm Coast. The town was just before we’d have to start driving westward, and it seemed like it had a great selection, with several guest taps, and food for two hangry bitches. I had driven the first leg of the day, so she was at the helm once again and I was navigating. We wove our way through golf courses and residential streets, again wondering who the fuck would put a brewery there, but then it suddenly rose up on the horizon like an oasis: European Village. It was an early Thursday evening in Snoozeville, but you’d have thought it was Miami on a Friday night. Restaurants, bars, cafes, shops, all clamoring with life, and condos with their balconies overlooking the cacophonous piazza. Parking, needless to say, was a whore. And when you’re as hungry and thirsty as we were, it becomes a spiteful whore.

She spied a couple of open spots to park, off on some grass. It looked rather harmless since plenty of others were parked there, but in our excitement to get the hell out of the car and into a beer, she didn’t realize that she had veered onto a walkway with a drop off to grass on either side. So, when she put the car in reverse and cut the wheel to get into a spot, she dropped the left side of the car off the cement and into the grass. And just like that, the metaphoric spiteful whore could be heard chuckling. We were screwed. The left wheel couldn’t get traction in the dirt and the more we tried to rock the car the more likely we would be to damage the undercarriage. I was about to call AAA when a couple knocked on my window offering to help. The man had a 2×4 in one hand, so I thought about grabbing that switchblade again, but quickly shook off the paranoia you tend to acquire when you’re two ladies on an open road. He was miming to us, so my first thought was, oh, OK, the dude’s a foreigner and probably doesn’t speak English. But the wife proceeded to do the same and asked me if I had something to write on.  

Deaf. Both of them. He signaled for my jack. I got it. She put her arm around me, started writing in my notebook, and told me to save my money…that he’d help us. I was dubious. But 35 minutes and 5 or 6 pages later, he had lifted my car, dug under the tire enough to lay down the wood (with help from the sidekick), dropped my car back onto the plank, and signaled for me to throw it into reverse. By that point he was covered in both sweat and dirt, his knuckles raw and bleeding, and not despite that but BECAUSE of that, I hugged him so hard I had to choke back a tear. I assure you that you have never seen two women more in need of a beer.

Moonrise did not disappoint. They had no flights available so we were forced to drink full glasses…you can imagine the horror. Luna Draconis was a dragon fruit sour that was crisp, balanced, tart, and definitely fruit forward. I had grown tired of having to hunt for the fruit that brewers swore was in my glass, so the Luna was a welcomed change. The second was the Dark Prince…my knight in clear-glass armor…the one who swept me off my feet. Say what you will about nitro beers, this was a nitro milk stout done completely right. It was creamy, and chocolaty, and had a fabulous head. I was so delirious from the car fiasco that the only tasting notes I managed were, “really fucking yummy.” After a couple of hours of rejuvenation and recuperation, we were Mt. Dora bound.

The last stop on the trip was easily the one I was most excited about. Odd Breed Wild Ales sits in an unassuming stretch just off the interstate, in Pompano Beach. There are three churches within a three-block radius so it’s not exactly a hotbed of nightlife, but it’s a beacon if ever there was one for dorks like me. What I loved most about their story is that the two founders/brewers had long had a passion for wild beers. They weren’t making these beers because sours were suddenly wildly popular in the US (pun intended) but because it’s what they love. Their place focuses solely on wild ales and farmhouse ales. Their brews are inspired by the Belgian Lambics I love so much. Their respect for the craft sets them apart…that wheat being separated from the chaff I mentioned earlier.

I’d rather not regurgitate a bunch of tasting notes that were scrawled down rather incoherently because I didn’t want to lose focus of the beers. Suffice it to say that if I lived remotely close to these guys (I’m about 40 minutes away, which is close enough to be viable but not close enough to be financially dangerous), I’d be a regular. Forget knowing me by name…they’d know me by scent. I’d walk through their sanctified door and they’d know that Katie was coming to warm a barstool before they could even turn around to say hello. They’d know my favorites. They’d be putting aside limited-release bottles for me to pick up. They’d let me choose a playlist. And they’d ask to see pictures of my cat.

While there, we shared a gose with oranges and lemons aged in French oak, a wild Baltic porter aged in rye barrels, and a saison brewed with pilsner malt and jasmine rice, all infused with lemongrass, galangal root, and kaffir lime leaves. We were exhausted at this point, but I was head-over-heels in love, and in dire need of taking some of that love home with me, so I also grabbed bottles of Stabbing Elbows (ale aged in French oak puncheons, then refermented on organic sweet and tart cherries), and Counter Cultural Colorations (in the tradition of a Flemish Red, aged in Sangiovese puncheons; one bottle plain and one bottle refermented with red currants). Not one of those bottles was a letdown…not one was even “just ok.” I could easily have been fooled into believing that the Counter Cultural Colorations were from Flanders instead of Florida.

Like any trend in food/beverage, sour beers can serve either as a tool to expand the palate of limited drinkers or as a tool to completely misguide uneducated drinkers depending on who’s pouring. When I started seeing them show up on Total Wine’s shelves years ago, I was excited. But we have this amazing way of driving a really great thing squarely into the ground and pummeling its identity right the fuck out of it. It spun quickly out of control, from a few great breweries showing us their funky side (think Ommegang in NY and Lost Abbey in CA) to everyone with a fermenting tank and some yeast trying to cash in. Nowadays, the shelves at Total Wine are bowing from the weight of sour beers and flavored beers lining their shelves. But for every great bottle of Three Philosophers, there’s a bottle of Voodoo Doughnut Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Ale that I’d sooner bash over my head than crack open. Not everything done outside the box is creative, bub. Creativity can’t be the scapegoat for ideas that are “out there”, simply for the sake of being out there. Sometimes, the reason you color outside the lines is not because you’re creative but because you’re a shitty artist and should consider taking up basket weaving instead.

For as long as I lived in the Dirty Jerz, I always seemed to be the de facto voice for the entire Cuban American population, be it in school, or at work, or amongst friends. If Castro was on his feline, 9-lives deathbed, I would get asked what I thought would happen after he passed. When he finally did give up the ghost, I got asked how soon it would be before we could stop smuggling in rum and cigars in our kids’ diaper bags. Moving to Miami relieved me of that monstrosity of a burden, because everyone here has an opinion about Cuba, its politics, its people, its products and its cultural heritage—and most of them don’t give a shit about your opinion.

Havana Club rum, much like a Cohiba cigar, is the holy grail of Cuban exports for most Americans, perhaps even more so because those who smoke can usually name a few other “big” Cuban cigar brands, while nearly no one can name another Cuban rum. And though there really is nothing like a Cuban cigar, the truth is that the country’s rum is just…good. Not amazing. Not life altering. Not even panty wetting. But for 50+ years it’s been contraband, and that’s allure enough for most citizens to hedge their bets against US Customs. What matters in those instances is generally not the spoils, but the war itself. Personally, I’ll take Nicaragua’s Flor de Caña over any bottle of Havana Club, but that’s neither here nor there. Literally.

The far more interesting war is the one now being waged between two rum Goliaths. Actually, the one that’s been being waged between them for well over 20 years. The original Havana Club was distilled by the Arechabala family, in Cuba, but Castro took control of the island on New Year’s Day in 1959, and within a year the Arechabalas found themselves forced into exile while their distillery was seized by the new regime. Bacardí’s distillery fell under the same control, but by then the company already had operations in both Puerto Rico and Mexico, and production of their rums continued. Havana Club also continued being produced, but it was no longer Arechabala’s recipe. He was busy selling cars in Miami with absolutely no money to continue distilling.

So when it came time to renew his US trademark for “Havana Club”, empty-pocketed Arechabala let it lapse and the Cuban government took that opportunity to file for it, in hopes that it would one day be able to sell its rum to the US again—a rum that was a distant cousin of its original. Then, the shitstorm began. Cuba partnered with Pernod Ricard and ramped up global distribution of Havana Club. “Global” sans the US, that is. Bacardí, circling over Cuba’s stateside carcass, contested the government’s trademark in the US, because our country didn’t recognize trademarks connected with confiscated Cuban property. Pernod, however, punched back, saying it was not distilling on confiscated property because a new distillery had been built in the 70s. Bacardí went to its corner as the bell rang, caught its breath, got its legs back, and came in swinging again.

In 1994, Bacardí filed for the US trademark of “Havana Club” and got it. In addition, it paid Arechabala $1.25M for whatever rights he had left, and for his original recipe. They began selling their version of the rum in a couple of states, not that you’d ever have known. Trust me, you didn’t know. You were way too busy gossiping about Nancy Kerrigan getting shafted by Tonya Harding. Bacardí continued to keep itself bathed in Benjamins with its original brand, while their version of Havana Club moped in the shadows of the original, which wasn’t even being sold in the US. Legacy is apparently not a horse that’s easily shot down.

Cuba made its valiant attempts to regain the trademark in 2006 but it was turned down like Farmer Ted at the senior dance because the US Treasury refused to accept a check for the renewal fee from the country. Why? Duh, the embargo. You know…the one that has been as effective at accomplishing its mission as a torn condom is at doing the same. So Bacardí continued selling a brand you never knew about, and a Communist government continued making bones from the contraband brand you always knew about. Meanwhile, round after round, I was drinking the Nicaraguan nectar. But I digress.

In 2016, just as Obama began hearing the presidential death knell, he opted to begin “normalizing relations” with the long-suffering country. So our State Department whispered into our Treasury Department’s ear and made a strong recommendation that it accept Cuba’s check to take back the trademark for “Havana Club”. After all, soon we’d be bathing in the shit…women dabbing it behind their ears and on their delicate wrists. So they did, renewing the trademark through 2026. And of course Bacardí’s retort was, “What the actual fuck?! WE hold the US trademark for that name!” Florida lawmakers begged Trump to reverse the decision, Raul Castro did a little happy salsa move, and Americans remained completely oblivious to the ongoing rum war.

But as I was driving home one night on the Dolphin Expressway, right before the holidays, I saw a billboard that actually made me divert my eyes from traffic—something I’m not wont to do on Miami’s roads. It was Bacardí shilling their version of Havana Club, and claiming it was “forever Cuban.” They’re making inroads, I thought. They’re finally finding their balls and attempting to win over American drinkers. But here’s the rub. Despite the fact that they purchased Arechabala’s recipe for the original Havana Club, they make ZERO claim that they have resurrected the exact rum. Certain ingredients are different. The technology is modern. A single recipe can yield a variety of flavors, they say. They will tell you that Ramón Arechabala personally transcribed the recipe and gave it to Bacardí as an agreement between the two families. They will tell you that it does not matter where Havana Club rum is produced. They will tell you that they will continue selling Havana Club rum using a recipe “based” on the original. Insert eye roll.

And not being ones to be silenced, the Cubans will tell you that if the rum is not made in Cuba by a master of Cuban rum, if it’s not made with Cuban sugar cane, you can’t make the same product. They will sell you their authenticity because of terroir, despite the fact that they don’t have the original recipe. They will sell you the nostalgia of a rum that hasn’t truly existed for nearly 60 years. They will sell you the thrill and bragging rights of getting a couple of mediocre bottles of 7-year-old rum past a customs officer. But just like the unknowing American tourist strolling the streets of Cancún, buying those coveted, yet fake, Cohibas because he can’t tell the real from the fraud, regardless of which Havana Club you let wet your lips, you, my friend, are being had.

The American Dream is dead. It is lying by the side of a winding stretch on the PCH, mangled, shattered and gasping for breath as it drowns in the blood that is beginning to fill its lungs. The American Dream has been pummeled, and every last one of us has taken a turn at it, wielding the sword by its back end and taking a swing. Skip the kangaroo court and the fucking finger pointing unless you’re looking in a mirror you flag wavers, because we’re all to blame. The American Dream got left behind, at the bottom of some Woodstock porta potty, steaming, rotting, and suffocated by the mounds of shit that got heaped on it. The flies are swarming. The sun is at high noon. And the second line continues dancing under the parasol of ignorant bliss.

It’s patriotic heresy, no doubt, to speak of such a death, but it’s pointless to discuss it in polite, soft whispers with some other partygoer you’ve managed to corner, while the host’s stereo speakers reverberate to the clichés of a Bon Jovi song. We’re not, after all, having some socially awkward chat about the new neighbors, using our hand to occult our mouths so our paranoid prejudices can’t be heard. This is Taps. This is two coins for the ferryman. This is bye-bye Miss American Pie. The levy is not only dry, it’s fucking cracked and blistered. This one needs to be heard from the proverbial mountaintop. Go tell it on the mountain. The American Dream is dead.

History is hard to know, because history is hired. Somewhere at some time, someone will decide to build a kingdom, be it religious, political, commercial or intellectual, and that kingdom will be built and breastfed by fear. It’s what we’re good at—building kingdoms of fear. We fear the wrath of God, we fear the turban-wearing foreigner, we fear the angry black man, we fear fats and carbs and sugars, we fear the wall-jumping Mexican, we fear that rock ‘n’ roll devil music, we fear retiring with more lint than money in our pocket, and we fear anything other than the two-party system that this country wears like old, comfortable, shit-stained pajamas, but damned if the right doesn’t make us fear the socialist, gun-hating bastards and the left doesn’t make us fear the warmongering, gay-hating tightasses.

But even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation can come to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time (and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened). Take enough educational debt, unaffordable healthcare, dead soldiers, intrusive legislation and economic skullfuckery, and then tickle that teetering mound with bathroom stall debates and a complete dirth of decent music on the radio waves and you’d think you would see that generational flash. But the Ego fell asleep somewhere during the road trip, the Id and Super-Ego are now fighting for the wheel, and there is no line to be found anywhere on the horizon. This is the generation of selfie-obsessed navel gazing. It’s the generation that’s so busy trying to decide whose lives matter that it’s sacrificing its own.

So how surprised are we, really, that it’s come down to a “my dick is bigger than yours” fight for the presidency of this shattered freakshow of a nation? How much shock and awe can you possibly feign at money grabs like the ENRON scandal if you whined for government deregulation? And I am no better. I have no duty to obey a system that lacks any moral legitimacy, yet here I am typing on a Macbook that was bought in promotion of capitalism, sharing my words over an internet being monitored by the NSA, sipping a glass of sparkling wine that was made possible by illegal immigrant labor under inhumane conditions that are all but sanctioned by a government that turns a blind eye to such corporate ass grinding. Cheers. Every budding politician believes they are entering the arena for the good of the people. Lofty ideals. Positive change. Upward mobility. Dare I say, freedom. But politics is a bit like fucking— it’s only fun for amateurs. Old whores don’t do much giggling.

One look at the US birth rate right now (down to about 1/10^th of what it was 50 years ago) and you can’t help but believe that it’s one huge, collective “fuck you”. Americans in their 20s and 30s are looking around at each other, wondering how many, if any, children they want to bring into the world when the best advice they’ll be able to give them is, “Hope for the best but plan for the worst, kiddo.” We’re borrowing from our grandchildren and leaving them a legacy akin to Barnum & Bailey, but without the safety nets. We were given David Bowie, but we’re gonna leave them Kanye. In the end, the love you take is nearly never equal to the love you make.

The line between martyrdom and stupidity depends on a certain kind of tension in any kingdom, but that line disappeared, and there’s no longer a point in kidding ourselves. The only decision to be made right now, is do you float or do you swim? If you can’t control the circumstances—if the train is off the rails—do you shut your eyes to avert them from the disaster and simply go play a couple of matches of Wii tennis? Do you live the narrow life, moving vertically rather than horizontally? Hunter S. Thompson wrote, “…a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.” But the options suck, Doc. It may indeed be a decision to float or swim, but it is a decision made in a septic tank being sucked out by a sewer drain that leads to a leach field. If you believe you are living in the American Dream, you most assuredly are asleep and should probably wake the fuck up. That is of course unless you’re living in Japan or Taiwan. They’re living the shit out of the American Dream.

While unfortunately this blog has gone by way of the history books for the sake of my attention span being devoted to an upcoming line of Gonzo hot sauces (stay tuned), every once in a while something waltzes into my line of sight, lingers in my crosshairs and all but dares me to satisfy the itch on my trigger finger. It is at that point that I check the wind, hold my breath and let loose like a firing squad without the guilt-sparing mercy of blanks. I generally reserve my guilt for the things I haven’t written, not for what I have.

Despite having high levels of testosterone, a penchant for blue language and a deep-seated love of football, I am, last time I checked, a woman. A beer-dork-in-the-nicest-way-possible sort of woman, but a woman nonetheless. And if you do your job right as a PR newbie, that demographic should perhaps—and I’m just putting this out there—be a red flag when you are shilling an upcoming product called a ManCan. “Just pick it up. Hold it in your hand. It’s rugged. It’s steel. It’s manly. It’s a can. It’s a ManCan!” Oh. Oh. The fun that can be had with that bit of marketing horseshit. “Just pick it up. Hold it in your hand. It’s rugged. It’s steel. It’s for chicks. It’s shaped like a stick. It’s a ChickStick!” (Otherwise known as a dildo. Please do not handle near water. May cause unexpected verbal outbursts and seizure-like motions. If dependency develops, seek medical help immediately…not.) Newsflash: I have cans…and they’re nicer than yours.

Had you asked me yesterday what ManCans were, I would have figured it was the latest slang for man boobs. But hey, I’m a little slow on modern lingo at this age. Apparently the up-and-coming ManCan is a stainless steel “keg-style vessel, built to be indestructible, hold CO2 pressure and protect beer from the damaging effects of light.” A glorified mini-me of a keg. The new generation of beer balls for all intents and purposes. But smaller, and more portable…like a dildo. The smaller one holds about a 6-pack and the larger one holds nearly double. It’s a decent idea with an idiotic name that chooses to alienate approximately 52% of its US market (yes, we outnumber the men as of right now). And at a time when craft beer is trending in a way that is busting ceilings, and women are becoming ever more a part of that trend, an idiotic name will cost you.

If you’re hunting for the attention of the media and crowd sourcing for funding on kickstarter.com, your first thought should be money, not gender. If that becomes an afterthought, you know what that starts to look like? A fucking afterthought. Scene 2, enter the WoManCan. That would be when you partner with Pink Boots Society (a well-meaning organization created with the intention of helping women in the beer industry, which I can’t help but roll my eyes at as well—if you are good at what you do, you’ll succeed. Your vagina is not holding you back.). What you have to love most about the afterbirth called the WoManCan is the bastardized logo on it, that lets every woman know that she is, in fact, an afterbirth in this company’s eyes. Somewhere, in a damp, funk-riddled basement, there was a “marketing team” that had that oh-shit, slap-on-the-forehead moment, and being fully aware that they lacked both the funds and creativity to rethink their branding, decided to just add some pink script to their logo, call it a day, and go toss back a frothy one.

I’d love nothing more than to be test riding this puppy right now. I’d love nothing more than to be convincing all my friends to buy one. And I’d love nothing more than to whip it out with the pride of a braggart at my next party. In fact, that’s pretty much the bar I set for dildos as well. But there is no way in hell you will ever see this beer-loving WoMan within shooting range of one of these cans because…because…well, because they just don’t know how to hit the spot.

I remember sliding onto the operating table and the anesthesiologist bitching about something to a nurse, but then the world faded out to black softly, just like it does on the big screen. Probably one of the few things Hollywood manages to portray with any kind of reality. After it was over, I was in and out for an hour or so before finally coming around and realizing that I was so hungry, I was anxious to eat hospital food, fucking masochist that I am. Tasteless strawberry Jell-o and cranberry juice? Bring it on sister, just top it with a shot of bourbon so I know I’m alive. The plan was to be home by nightfall to celebrate the kid’s 17th birthday (and his brand-spanking-new driver’s license) and nobody was going to piddle on my plans—there was a Carvel ice-cream cake to be cut for the love of Pete.

1st on the checklist was keeping food down…a term loosely defined inside these walls. I laughed off the Jell-o and asked for substance. So I got chicken noodle soup from the café because the kitchen had finished lunch service already. Thank the fucking institution of health for small favors. Keep food down—check. Now pass the percocet please, because I think Ridley Scott has just unwittingly cast me in Aliens in Jersey and something’s about to come busting out of my chest. Pain begins to pass, humanity begins to find its way back into my body, and I’m ready for #2.

2nd on the checklist was walking with assistance. Seriously? Watch me salsa up and down the hallway, bitch. Even a hospital gown designed by a blind monkey and an IV unit being wheeled in front of me can’t hold me back. ONE, TWO, THREE, four. ONE, TWO, THREE, four. Tito Puente was looking down with pride. By the time I made it back to my bed I had a few singles tucked into the hospital gown and the hunger had returned. The nurse had been so happy with my rate of recovery that she ordered a “regular” meal for my dinner. Something solid? Really? Something on a bone perhaps? Something I can gnaw on and suck the marrow out of? In came food service. With a tray of…wait, what the fuck? Beef broth? They had screwed up my meal ticket. Two sips in I pushed it away, just to make sure I didn’t throw it against the faded white walls. Come on sweetcheeks, bring on #3.

Last on the checklist was peeing 100 mL all on my own. 100 mL keeping me from freedom, fresh air and my kid’s face. The nurse didn’t share my enthusiasm, though, and was reluctant to pull the catheter. “No way bubba, my doctor said I could go home if I met all your criteria, so clear it and pull it.” 5 minutes later she returned, phone in hand. “The doctor’s on the phone for you.” Yes, I’m fine. Yes, I ate food…if you can call it that. Yes I wanna go the hell home. “Here, he wants you back.” She hangs up. “OK let’s pull that catheter out. Doctor said if I didn’t, I’d probably come back in an hour to find an open window with bed sheets hanging out it.” Damn skippy. Bring the pitchers of water and keep them coming until I raise my hand or my eyeballs float back into my head.

It’s not water, I kept telling myself. It’s a deftly crafted, perfectly tempered pint of whiskey-barrel-aged stout. And I drank. And I drank. And I drank. You’ve probably had enough, Katie. No, screw that. I was not going to get up and go through the effort of walking to the bathroom only to be disappointed by the inability to meet that mark. If there’s a line in the sand, damned if I won’t cross it. So I drank. And I drank. And then I raised my hand. I, Katie, was ready to pee.

By the time I hit that call button and the nurse arrived to measure my throw, I had (of course) exceeded all expectation. 200 mL bee-atch! Give me my walking papers please, because there is a slice of chocolate ice cream cake and a devilishly handsome kid waiting at home for me. “Are you sure you want to go through the trouble of signing out now? Why not just stay the night,” she asked as my neighbor proceeded to shit herself and the stench of Hell’s fifth circle began to overtake the room like a thick fog. I stared her down. “I’ll get that paperwork, ma’am.” And ten minutes later the “transportation department” was wheeling me down a maze of corridors, to the revolving doors. A spring night’s air never smelled so fresh. A slice of mass-produced ice cream never tasted so delicious. Freedom never tasted so sweet.

Things that are often described as difficult, high risk, and overly sensitive are nearly always worth both the wait and the trouble–yeah, damn right that includes me. So, I tend to have a weak spot for a really well-made pinot noir because I know that both the grower and the winemaker didn’t take the easy way out…by planting some cabernet instead, or by making shitty pinot because they just didn’t get the grape. The famous CA winemaker André Tchelistcheff once said that, “God made cabernet sauvignon whereas the devil made pinot noir.” A friend of the devil is always a friend of mine.

It isn’t as simple as old world vs. new world, because Burgundy manages to churn out plenty of subpar pinot nowadays, too. Just because it’s where the heartbreak grape has historically made some of the most seductive wines this world has known, doesn’t mean it’s without greed, stupidity and laziness. Plenty of pinots coming from France are either too fat, too thin, too ripe, too green or too high octane. And the wineries making them blame either a bad year, a finicky grape or a foreign market (that would be us) that wants a pinot that tastes like a fucking zinfandel. And to that end they either throw their hands up, not knowing how to properly coax the best of a grape that is, no doubt, a pain in the ass to grow, or they make wines that no longer resemble anything close a classic red Burgundy, in hopes to boost sales in the US market. You are far more likely to find a wide audience in those who suck at the teat of Coca-Cola and enjoy overly fruity, full-bodied wines than you are in those who appreciate the lithe earthiness of pinot at its best. Pinot never wanted to placate the masses. Pinot is the grape that flips the bird at the masses. But there are always plenty of idiots who won’t let it do what it wants to do.

The pendulum is thankfully swinging the other way in California winemaking now, and many winemakers are returning to a more natural approach to the juice they stick in their bottles. And no, this ain’t about organic winemaking. This is about making a merlot that has the classic (natural) characteristics of a merlot…not of a shiraz. The last couple of decades, California spent a lot of time whoring itself to the public’s cry for homogenized wines. And though I’ve seen plenty of CA finally putting its foot down, making wines that are distinctive, true to their nature and individual in style, pinot noirs are not, overall, being nurtured back to a world of normalcy. Pinots are still the black sheep in most of California. The ones that are forced into becoming something they aren’t…something that tastes like everything else. The ones that should be the embodiment of sexuality, and instead become the embodiment of that size 18 woman at the beach walking around in a size 8 bikini.

But this is how I know that California pinot is not dead yet. La Pitchoune. Somewhere in Sonoma there are some pinot grapes that are being painstakingly grown, patiently cared for and allowed to do their thing in what can only be described as a sort of subservience to the magic of the grape. Andrew Berge isn’t making wine as much as he is growing grapes. And more importantly, he is allowing them to become some of the best pinot noir being made on the west coast. Not because it closely resembles a classic red Burgundy (although it does), but because it DOESN’T resemble anything else but a pinot noir. There is no jam. There is no oak tree. There is no nose-hair-singeing ABV. There is only sexy, earthy, softly curved but beautifully edged pinot. Charles Bukowski wrote, “She may be mad but she’s magic. There’s no lie in her fire.” That woman that comes along once in your lifetime, if you’re lucky, and drives you absolutely batshit crazy at times but also exudes more intoxicating character and beauty than you’ve ever experienced before in one person before? That’s pinot. More specifically, that’s the pinot being made at La Pitchoune.

Those that have been watching the growth of the craft beer/microbrewery movement this last decade with a diligent eye know that Big Brewing has done its best to steal back at least a portion of what it’s lost to the little guys—mostly by screwing with the less-than-diligent consumer. The A-B family of brands now includes lines like Green Valley Brewing Company (the name Anheuser-Bush makes no appearance on those bottle labels), Stella Artois and Kirin Ichiban (no, Kirin is not an import if you are American), as well as having their hands stuck in the cookie jars of Red Hook Brewing, Goose Island Brewery and Alexander Keith’s “Nova Scotia Style”. 

With about 3000 breweries in the US now producing tens of thousands of beers, fighting successfully for tap space in bars is about as easy as luring an order of nuns into a gang bang. Of course, there will always be bars that prefer stocking the piss-water that non-demanding customers can chug on the cheap. The places where Shock Top and Blue Moon are viewed as craft offerings. The places where the beer is served ice cold so you can’t tell how shitty it actually tastes. The places where, if forced to patronize, I order a bourbon. And while we’d like to believe that other, more discriminating “craft beer bars” opt for local, seasonal and small-scale brews whenever possible, the reality isn’t always as romantic as the fairytale. 

A couple of weeks ago Dann Paquette, co-founder and brewer for Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project in Massachusetts, became a Tweeting whistleblower. Under the brewery’s handle, Paquette pulled the wizard’s curtain back and told Twitterville that Boston is a “pay to play town and we’re often shut out for draft lines along with many beers you may love.” Much like the payola that ruled our radio airwaves in the 50s, Paquette called out the industry for some very illegal “pay to play” hustling—breweries and distributors bribing bars to stock their beers and squeeze out the competition. Paquette railed, “Since I’ve started as a brewer in 1992 it has been a given in Boston that beer lines were for sale.” It certainly isn’t new, and it certainly doesn’t end in Beantown. In 2010, a Crain’s investigation found that a trendy Chicago hotel bar had been taking payouts and other bribes from a powerful MillerCoors distributor. Deb Carey of New Glarus Brewing went so far as to call the city of Chicago “a whores’ market,” noting, “Everyone has a hand out and everyone wants some cash, (free) beer or a discount.”

And sometimes it isn’t cash, but merchandise, that entices a pub. Glassware, grills, coasters, signage, tickets to next week’s big game, etc. that boxes out the small brewery. The pathetic truth, however, is that what was regarded as illegal and reprehensible in the industry back in the 70s is now a fucking business model. The laws may remain in place to “protect free trade” but feds are busy fighting much larger crimes…like keeping absinthe out of US consumers’ hands for nearly a century. And lest you look at Paquette as a whiner who didn’t get his beer on someone’s tap and decided to point tantrum-aimed fingers at innocents that simply didn’t like his beer, others like Greg Koch of Stone Brewing Company have been fighting the same bullshit: “We were supposed to have our event there [undisclosed locale in Chicago] and at the last minute they said, here’s what you need to do. You need to give us X, Y and Z free and discounted in order to come here. Not only were we not able to comply because that’s against our standards (and against IL law, which we respect and follow), we were kicked out of their bar altogether, off all their taps.”

Put aside the fact that it’s illegal (particularly since I know that none of my readership is beyond fracturing a law or two). Even if microbreweries were willing to throw legality and morality aside to gain access to a handle, they simply can’t afford to out-spend Big Brewing, so they continue to be what punk and heavy metal have always been to mainstream music—a craft seldom appreciated by the lulled, complacent masses who just want some background noise, be it in their ears or on their palate. Do your beer-drinking soul a favor and simply stop giving your business to bars that serve swill. Buy a six pack or two of some local quality suds, take them home, crack one open, put on some Black Flag and raise a middle finger in the general direction of St. Louis, MO.