The Unthinkable

It's been years since this last happened, but it happened again on Saturday night. In fact, this is only the third time in history it's EVER happened.

We opened a bottle of wine and hated it so much that we didn't drink it.

I KNOW!!!

Sure, we've opened a bottle with dinner and realized it didn't pair well with whatever we were eating. Usually in that case it's a white wine that's a little sweeter than we want with the meal so we just set it aside and drink it later. We call those "porch wines" and they are nice for sipping after dinner or in the afternoon.

But this time, undrinkable. We thought it was a poor pairing with the burgers we had made, even though the recipe book recommended Merlot. Or perhaps our palettes were a bit compromised by the pre-dinner gin and tonic. Either way, the wine tasted like grape cough syrup. We poured our glasses back into the bottle and put it aside to try again later.

Later came. It STILL tasted like grape cough syrup.

And now this bottle of Merlot is mocking me from its perch on the kitchen counter. What to do with it? We can't serve it to guests or give it away now that we've poured our tasted glasses back into the mix. I hate to just pour it down the sink (which is what we did with the LAST two bad bottles). I'm going to try to use it in a recipe of some sort. I know they say to only cook with a wine you'd drink but I tend to think that's rubbish. And at this point, I'm running out of other options.

Unless you'd like to come over and join me on my porch for a glass of slightly-used Merlot!