Hurry Hard Hollywood - Pac Rim Cup

Having pulled the corks on some pretty special bottles over the recent holidays, this post is definitely more about where I drank the next wine and who I drank it with than it will ever be about the wine itself.

Funny but our curling rink doesn't exactly have an extensive selection of wine at the bar. The beer is plentiful and liquor flows but I guess there aren't too many curlers that cry out for a glass of wine after the last rock has been thrown.

Indeed, our team at this year's Pac Rim Cup must have polished off a good dozen pitchers over the weekend but I made sure that there was at least one bottle of wine on the table so that I'd have some reason to blog about the weekend.

This year's theme was Hurry Hard Hollywood and there were some Oscar-worthy team names and costumes, the top dogs being "My Favourite Things." The A-List foursome not only won top prize with their playing on the ice but they also wowed the red carpet crowd and paparazzi with their outfits. They showed up in drag (it is a gay bonspiel after all) on the Friday night and had people guessing until it became apparent that one of their favourite things was "girls in white dresses with blue sating sashes." I particularly liked how their blue martinis matched their blue satin sashes. Julie Andrews would have been proud.

They were equally surprising the next day when they showed up with jock straps, wrapped in brown kraft paper, outside of their curling pants. Those girls in white dresses had been followed up by "brown paper packages tied up with string." Not even the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Booze Brothers could keep up with them.

Given the Hollywood theme to our little bonspiel, the event just played naturally into our regular team name of "50 Sheets of Gay." For the few of you unfamiliar with curling, the games are played on "sheets." I'm not so sure that our team was anything more than vanilla in its appropriation of the 50 Shades allusions but, hey, I hear the movie isn't so steamy either.

1847.  2012 Louis Bernard Côtes du Rhône (AOC Côtes du Rhône - France)

I think there were three red wines and three whites to choose from at the club bar and I picked the Rhône thinking it might have the biggest body of those limited choices. Not so much. I'm afraid I found the wine rather thin and insipid.  Maybe it was a palate sullied by beer but it seemed that there was little in the way of body or fruit to grab a hold of. We finished the bottle off but there was a general consensus that we'd return to the draft rather than order another bottle.

I suppose I should at least give the club some props for having any wine at all - after all, I think there's little argument that most curlers will readily agree that beer rules.

With the bonspiel continuing from Friday night all through the weekend, there was plenty of entertainment off the ice as well as on.

Friday night featured karaoke - some of which had us using an early game the next morning as an excuse to head out before the evening's crowd had fully dispersed. I heard more than a couple comments hoping that the singers curled better than they sang. Glad I didn't get up on stage. Those were some catty bitches in the bar.

Saturday night's entertainment is traditionally more involved - to pair with the banquet buffet that's also offered up - and this year's was no exception. Local diva, Mandy Kamp, gave us her best Bette and Liza and we were also regaled with a new fangled approach to "drag-in-a-bag," two victims were chosen (because of their prowess in Hollywood trivia) to re-enact a number from Chicago. That took some good sportsmanship.

All-in-all, it was another grand bonspiel - even if the wine was unmemorable and our team played like it was definitely destined for a life on the D-List. Now for some recovery time.