Cooks Champagne

CockTale: There are unwritten rules when it comes to drinking on Sundays. You can just post up on your couch with a 12 pack on a Sunday afternoon and get loaded, you either need to drink sparingly or there needs to be a special occasion or event to justify your alcohol consumption on the sabbath. Having a mimosa or three at Easter brunch - fine, having a sixer of Bud and watching the Nascar race - fine, going to the store on Sunday to get a cheap ass bottle of Cooks Champagne to have 2pm bellinis just cause - frowned upon. I decided to ignore the rules of Sunday drinking and grabbed the cheapest bottle of champagne on Earth, Cooks, and get my Sunday afternoon drink on.....just like the baby Jesus intended.

Review:
Taste: Cooks is the Busch light of champagne, it is what it is. It tastes fine, it isn't good and it isn't terrible. If you are mixing it with orange juice or fruit puree then you just want the alcohol and bubbles anyways, what do you care what it tastes like? If you are drinking it straight on a special occasion, then I hate to tell you that you are probably at a white trash wedding or celebrating New Years Eve with my cheap ass. "2"
Novelty: If you bring a bottle of Cooks to a special occasion be prepared to be laughed out of the room or have a good sense of humor about your inability to buy a nice bottle of champagne. "1"
Price: $5.99 for a bottle is dynamite for what you are getting in return. Can you even buy a six pack for under $6 anymore? "4.5"
Hangover Factor: If you down two bottles of Cooks in a night you are going to feel like shit in the morning, sorry there isn't really anything else to say. Cheap champagne hangover is terrible. "1"
Drunk: Cheap ass drunk. "2.5"

Cooks Champagne does it's job, gets you good and loaded for a discounted price and lets you celebrate....nothing, on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Here's a big middle finger to the unwritten Sunday drinking rules. Overall score - 2.2

181 Merlot Wine

CockTale: I'm not a big fan of wine, I honestly have never opened a bottle of wine by myself. I'm that guy in the wine aisle at the grocery store that wrote the name of the wine my wife asked me to buy, then I have to navigate through the different sections because I have no clue whether it was a Merlot, Cabernet or white. I wouldn't know the first thing about selecting a bottle, so there was a large debate within the CockTales & Reviews staff about whether or not to even include wine in the reviews. But the main point of CockTales & Reviews was to stray from the monotony of my usual cocktail selections, so wine makes the cut on a limited basis. After my wife's birthday dinner at Pomegranate, and if you have never eaten there - run, don't walk to it right away, we stopped by the store to pick up a bottle of 181 Merlot. Mainly this was selected because it was a $20 bottle of wine on sale for $9.99. I strayed from my regular rum and coke and two glasses into 181 Merlot my body started to experience a far different sort of drunk than it regularly does.

Review:
Taste: A little on the sweet side, some of that peppery burn on your tongue that red wine puts off but not as dry as I am used to. Based on my limited experience with wines, I would say it was above average for those that I have tried. - "3.5"
Drunk: Warm, touchy, tingly - body drunk is how I would call it. Very nice. - "4"
Hangover Factor: Dry mouth was a large factor, unquenchable thirst. - "2"
Price: I only paid $9.99, but it is regularly $20.00. At $9.99 it is a decent deal, I can't imagine paying $20 for a bottle of wine. I'm more in the $6-$7 dollar region, so low marks here - "2"
Novelty: If you were to bring this bottle to a party, I think that would probably go over well if the people there knew that this was an above average bottle. "3.5"

I enjoyed wine night, not sure it is going to be a frequent event at our house but fun to mix it up from time to time. Overall, 181 Merlot grades out at a "3"

Trader Joes Champagne

Its a celebration bitches! Or at least that is what I told my wife when I arrived at home after purchasing a fine champagne from Trader Joes, called "Trader Joes Champagne" and announced my idea for this blog.

I will be chronicling different experiences in drinking or "CockTales" along with my reviews of different forms of alcohol that are off the beaten path from my usual selections (Bud Light/Ron Rio Rum).

My alcohol rating system will be based on 5 key factors, on a scale of 1 - 5. 1 being garbage, 5 being perfection.

1. Taste: does it taste good or does it taste like rubbing alcohol?
2. Price: not just is it reasonably priced but does the quality and volume match the pricetag?
3. Novelty: is this drink special, would I bring it to a party or tell my friends about it?
4. Hangover Factor: how bad is the hangover?
5. Drunk: happy drunk, sleepy drunk, fun drunk, sexy time drunk?
Warning, CockTales and Reviews is a freeflowing narative that sometimes touches on mature subjects.

CockTale:
Fine, it is actually called sparkling wine and if you are that big of a champagne snob then go someplace else and stop reading this because it isn't for you. I decided to kick off this blog with champagne because it is 180 degrees away from my normal drinking habits and brings a festive atmosphere to this debut. Upon arriving at home I quickly donned my bathrobe and summoned my inner Hugh Heffner while I picked out the right gobblets to drink my champagne from. A champagne flute didn't see appropriate, so I opted for the glass gobblet. I had to get my wife to open the bottle of champagne as I don't know how and quickly poured myself a large gobblet of foam. Quick note, pour champagne sideways and slowly as you would a beer or else you end up with a glass of foam. The bottle went fast and I had to dispatch the wife to the store to pick up reinforcements to continue the merriment.

Review:
Taste: I found the champagne to be a little dry, but much better flavor than those I tried in the past. I wouldn't recommend mixing it with juice or anything like that, just drink it straight.  "3"

Price: The $9.99 price tag seemed decent to me at the time, but when my wife brought home a bottle of Cooks champagne for less than 4 bucks, I had to adjust that thinking. Plus, the one bottle went pretty fast, we needed reinforcements pretty quickly. "1.5"

Novelty: Other than being able to call it Trader Joes Champagne, there isn't really much novelty to this. I doubt I would give this as a gift, or not feel like a dork bringing it to someone's house for a party. Though, my Mother in law did serve it with Christmas Eve dinner....  "1"

Hangover Factor: Yeah, had a pretty nice headache which is pretty common for champagne. Around glass #5 I started to feel the headache coming, but kept on going. Wasn't hurting too bad in the morning though. "3"

Drunk: Talk about a happy drunk, this champagne provided a nice spark to my Wednesday night and put me in a celebratory mood, very enjoyable. "4"

Overall Trader Joes Champagne ends up with a rating of "2.5" which seems appropriate.