Cream Sherry, la secunda parte

continued from la primera parte...

While shopping for necessities like bread and ice cream, Will and Aaron stumbled across Romate Cream Sherry. They had been drawn to its shiny golden wrapping, which held their attention by shining like a shiny beacon. Excited as schoolgirls, they were downright giddy when they got back to the apartment.

Their delight quickly waned when Aaron opened the bottle. The Sherry didn't smell bad, per se, but it certainly didn't smell "right". It just wasn't what we were expecting.

A quick taste revealed that the Sherry was in fact disgusting, and possibly cursed. We vowed never to drink it again. Aaron put it in the kitchen fridge, thus decreasing the average Deliciousness Index of the fridge so low that the taste-ometer broke.

You may be wondering, "why in the hell would they put the foul beverage in the fridge, instead of the garbage (or the recycling bin, hippies)?" Good f'in question. It haunts me to this day, as does the aftertaste of the Sherry.

Fast forward to last Saturday.

When we returned from New Brunswick, Heidi was the sober driver. I was a bit buzzed, because when I'm interacting with new people, I subconsciously sip with high frequency, and I spent most of the night with drinks in hand. Besides, Heidi was the designated driver!

Will was as close to drunk as he'd ever been, and he was quick to announce this fact in a combination of pride and fascination. Perhaps to demonstrate how uninhibited and wild he'd become in this inebriated state, he said "I'm as close to drunk as I've ever been" and took the Cream Sherry from the fridge.

I laughed a nervous laugh, sure that Will couldn't muster the masochism needed to revisit the Sherry tasting of a few weeks prior. I was wrong.

So we passed the bottle back and forth, challenging each other to take longer and longer sips. The sips became swigs, and the swigs became chugs. Our insides were on fire.

Each person's reaction was different. Heidi was the most controlled, and her poker-face was belied by the goosebumps she got with each sip.

Will was pretty good at stalling. For example, rather than take his turn, he tested the portability of Romate Cream Sherry.
Why in a world anyone would want to take the Sherry on a trail ride is beyond me, but it certainly did fit nicely in my Unit. Maybe next year at Granogue...

The reason Will was so reluctant to imbibe the Sherry was that it had a particularly strong effect on him. Even drunk, he was so repulsed by the burning taste that he had to resort to a chaser after each drink. For lack of a better or more convenient chaser, he used something unconventional:

As for me, I had a whole-body reaction. Every muscle on the front of my body contracted in unison, as if flinching from a punch to the stomach. This violent convulsion racked me after each sip, but still I soldiered on. At least I was able to amuse Heidi and Will!
And just in case you are wondering, yes, Will and I had our shirts off. Yes, Heidi kept her shirt on. No, the donning and doffing of our shirts has no correlation to Heidi or any other house guest. Yes, we have two coffee makers.

It's hard to describe the taste of the Cream Sherry. Will, being blunt as a bowling pin, named it "Satan's Urine". I prefer to be more illustrative and far wordier, though, so I considered how exactly to explain what the Sherry reminded me of.

Imagine a large log in the woods. Now imagine rolling that log over to examine the wet, moldy, rotted underside. Now imagine scraping off that rottenness and putting it in a blender with some wine and some battery acid. Blend on "High" for 30 seconds, then refrigerate.

In the end, there was only one way for me to dull the Sherry's aftertaste.
So if you are shopping in a supermarket or liquor store and stumble across a gilded bottle of Romate's Cream Sherry, take my advice: run away. Run away, screaming bloody murder, and don't look back.