CURSE YOU CUISINART!!!

We have a little wine cellar where we keep our older, more expensive wines. You know, the ones you want to put in a safe place so that you can enjoy them as they get better with age. It's a way to protect your investment in over-priced grape juice.

We had a nice, but small collection of wines that we have been acquiring and saving to drink on future occasions: some beautiful '95 cabs, pinots, and some awesome blends... all just waiting to be popped open and enjoyed. Notice I used the word "had" at the start of this paragraph. Because this little guy that you see below...

You can trust me, honest!

...betrayed us. Oh sure, it promised to preserve our wine and keep it in peak drinking condition until that right moment when we were ready to grab a bottle, chase the raccoons and possums off the porch and fill our Dixie cups; guzzling the devil's sweat like back-alley Baptists at a pot-luck hog roast. But that was not to be. Oh no. The Cuisinart had plans of its own. Evil plans.

The other night I decided it was time to partake of one of the '95 Beauliu Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon's I'd been saving for close to 10 years. I was confident that it was safely stored inside our little cellar. Reaching into the cellar, I expected to feel a nice cool 55º temp that the wine was to be stored at, instead I felt this:

Did you want that '97 meritage baked or broiled?

It was like an OVEN! That's not an exaggeration. The bottles were nearly as warm as a hot cup of coffee. One bottle even had the wine bubble out through the cork. I pulled all the bottles out, each one seemed hotter than the next. Needless to say all the wine was destroyed. We would have been better off sticking them in the cupboard instead of keeping them in this hellmouth. But we wanted the security of putting them someplace made to store wine... except, the Cuisinart did the OPPOSITE! It's like hiring a babysitter to watch your children, only when you return home after the movie you find out that she cooked and ate your kids--- and there's not even any leftovers. Damn!

Well, it looks like we're back to drinking ink until we can get more wine.

Conservatively I'd say that about $700 worth of wine was destroyed... possibly closer to a grand. Dunno what happened. The thermostat must have broke or something because the unit's not designed to go much over 65º. Probably an example of great Chinese craftsmanship at work.

Oh, there is a warranty. But it only covers repairs to the wine cellar, nothing for the contents. Like we're going get this easy-bake vino-roaster repaired. It's goin' in the trash with all the wine it ruined.

So sad... so very, very sad...