This morning, I ate breakfast but—as is typical—didn't have enough time to savor a cup of coffee. So I stopped in at the only coffee shop near my work, a Starbucks. I don't dislike Starbucks, per se. As a massive corporation, they're pretty good. In fact, I would go as far as to be deeply appreciative of their existence, which has made it possible to get an okay cuppa joe almost anywhere in this once coffee abomination we call America. But Starbucks coffee is, well, okay. I've got a pair of really good coffee shops within a few short blocks of my apartment, and Metropolis is an easy bike ride away.

But, when not in Rome, … so while I'm waiting for the entire St. Vincent rowing team to place their orders, I was looking at the pastry case. The one containing the lemon tart Saturn Smith drools over. In this case, immediately adjacent to the lemon tart was a "Artisan Cinnamon Roll" (or something very close to that). Oh how I cringed. As anyone who has rigorously followed my posts (aka, me) would know, I am… amused by marketing language abuses. And if there ever was one, a tiny cinnamon roll with four cloves and a dollop of icing smacked all-food-designer-like in the center reveals the hollowness of artisan as a signifier of anything worthwhile.

This crushes me. I love my expensive, imported food items and the illusion that people with a great passion for creating their unique (and delicious) version of some commodity food product are out there, making something just for me. I am quite certain that nobody is making those Artisan Cinnamon Rolls with great artisanal joy. Nobody quit their lucrative job as an investment banker, management consultant or any other now disgraced captain of industrydom to make that roll. Hopefully, whomever made it enjoys their job, but artisan it ain't. 

So, now you can add artisan to the list of words that are entirely phony.

But, lest I let Starbucks crush my spirit, when my co-workers mentioned they were going to Whole Foods to get lunch stuffs, I volunteered myself as right side counter-weighting, lest the car topple over during high-speed corning. And By so positioning myself, I ended up with not only lunch, but artisanal goats milk cheese from Spain. You know, artisanal, that meaningless word. So if Cana de Cabra is mass-produced in a factory in San Sabastian, don't tell me I mislead you. Also, don't tell me if there should be a tilde over the n, because Whole Foods labels don't ever have eñes. I also bought a demi-baguet. This is important, later in the story. I had an unagi bowl for lunch. It was decent, although I was hungry all afternoon.

On my way home, I stopped at my local wine shop. I don't know how people who don't have wine shops, cheese stores and butchers in their neighborhoods survive. Really, I don't. Wake up people and move someplace better.

I fell in love with Spain when I was there two years ago and since then, I've been drinking a lot of vino tinto. I came very close to spending enough money on a case of rioja reserva that—had I done it—my relationship would have terminated due to my bad behavior.  In retrospect, I wish I had. I loved that wine. 

Today's wine is Baloíro 20004 Mencia (from DO Bierzo). I've never had a mencia before and it's distinctive. I have a lousy wine vocabulary, so I won't try to describe it, but it's both good and unlike any other red I've had. Definitely worth drinking by itself, although not the perfect wine to go with the very sharp cana de cabra, which was spread on that baguette to be my meal.

Now, nobody with a lick of sense grows mencia grapes (total plantings = 9.2k ha, according to The Oxford Companion to Wine) unless they love wine. Most people have never heard of mencia and people don't tend to buy things they've never heard of. Moreso, according to The Oxford Companion to Wine, it wasn't until young winemakers—in the late ’90s—"resurrected a moribund wine region" that you could make any claims to having a good mencia.

So, Starbucks, this wine I'm drinking: that's artisanal. Not your damn cinnamon rolls.

[The photos are of Madrid and Toledo and have nothing to do with anything else. Appropriately, my trip companion is pictured walking away from me.]