The research chemists among you know something I, too, have had a handle on all along (yeah, right)— that sulfites are trigonal pyramidal compounds composing the conjugate base of sulfurous acid, containing the ion SO2-3 and taxonomized under the additive IUPAC name trioxidosulfate(2-).

The name “Fu-Ki Sake” looks just enough like an off-color phrase to get your attention, which, of course, leads your filthy mind to think the manufacturers deliberately slapped it across the bottle.

I usually tell you to run out and buy a bottle of this or that or the other thing from your favoritest wine store, and that’s part of the point of this column. I mean, if you can’t actually score the product I’m pitching, what’s the point? It’s kinda like ending a letter with “P.S.: Guess who’s pregnant!” I’ve got you crazy for the details, but you got nothin’ to prove ’em by. You’re thus consigned to the side of the road on the rainiest night of the year, windblown and friendless, left only to ponder the empty possibilities within.

For better or worse, Thousand Oaks is the de facto starting point for northwestern L.A.’s social and cultural influence as you’re heading southeast from Ventura County—but as a former nearby resident, I just think of it as another city that wasted too much time and money making way for too many new buildings with too little thought to reclaiming those that already existed.

Besides the neo-punk-inspired illustration on the front, Chronic Cellars’ 2008 LaMuneca has an interesting little marketing tool at the top of the bottle.

Besides being my favorite Shakespeare play, The Tempest features a very cool spirit named Ariel, rescued at one point from a tree in which the poopface Sycorax was holding it. A 19th-century production featured Ariel’s descent from the hoosegow in a literal ball of fire—it took 140 stagehands to get the scene right, but not before a mishap or two claimed its share of hair and skin. As you can imagine, no drinking was allowed on the set, lest another misstep close the show before it opened.

As much as I like my wine, I have to confess that the industry vocabulary can be just as much fun. For example, I’ve professed my profound admiration for the versatility behind the term Gewürztraminer, which, of course, describes a popular grape family. The name sounds like part of a police report one minute (“The victim declined to place a monetary value on his prized Gewürztraminer timepiece”); in the next, it’s featured in a legal brief (“His Honor found in favor of the plaintiff in Westlin vs. Gewürztraminer”). Now, I come to find that the item’s reddened outer skin makes it part of the white grape clan. Man, that word is all over the map and back again, at least in my cockeyed world; about the only place you won’t find it is in an algebraic equation.

Clairemont Mesa's Nazca Grill fries it right and piles on the rice

I'm not kidding: Pour port on top of your ice cream

Drinking Seven Daughters is better than having seven daughters, no matter what one Chinese dude thinks