The Vintage & Handmade Market
If you know your mainstream musical instruments, you’re probably hip to the agenda for Thursday, Jan. 28. It’s been set aside as National Kazoo Day for almost a million years, and the holiday works because it doesn’t discriminate—just pick up a kazoo, hum a little tune into it, and you’re a pro. If you’d known such expertise was at your fingertips all along, you could’ve opted out of your 12 years’ classical piano lessons (which got you nowhere) for more leisurely pursuits, like BASE jumping and wine drinking.
This is gonna sound really, really weird—but the 2007 Riesling from A to Z Wineworks out of Newberg, Ore., tastes exactly like a kazoo sounds. Go on. Blow a couple measures from Beethoven’s Eroica symphony into that baby, then take a swig of your beverage (which, unlike lots of wines, is really good over ice). See? The buzz from both is peppy, cutesy and distinct, and the appeal of each is truly universal. Meanwhile, this wine is an extremely mild entry that everybody can enjoy either by itself or with equally light side dishes like white and yellow cheeses or fish pate. And don’t forget: Blowing into the top of the bottle produces its own pitch, deeper and more legato than the kazoo’s. You and a bunch of friends could get together and form, like, a little kazoo-wine-bottle band in honor of the big day. A place for everything, and everything in its place.
I’m being fairly flip here, but, honestly, I’m not grasping at straws, either. The kazoo is a joyous little affair, and now it has a wine companion ($14 at most places) with many of its characteristics. Yeah, the comparison takes pairing to extremes—but suck down a bottle or two of this, and you won’t care.
