Steve Cropper and Matt "Guitar" Murphy will not be there with me.

However, I'm taking a few days off (and a few days w/ JUST the wife... first time since June of last year) to head up to the city of many of my roots; yet, a place I haven't visited in 22 years. That is to say, visited as an adult.

I'll be pretty busy getting the band back together, high-fiving Andre Dawson, eating Italian beef sammiches, singing "Danke Schoen" in a flash mob-like German parade, foiling the Wet Bandits, designated-driving Jay Cutler, eating beef in non-sammich form, and having a drink... or more than one (sorry Jay Cutler... I'm sure you can intercept another designated driver).

Because of all this, there will be no blogging for the rest of the week. However, I'll be banging around the Twitters a bit, I'm sure. Will probably scare up some Windy City wine geeky folks as well.

If there's a place I need to go while up there ('til Sunday), drop it in the comments. If you drop it like it's hot, make sure to give me fair warning.

Just a few shots from a recent burger grind. I simply bought a ribeye steak and made it into hamburger. Some would say this is a waste of a good steak, but I argue it's the makings of a tasty grind... if only I hadn't overcooked the damn thing. Luckily, it was only slightly, and the ample fat kept it moist.

Paired that sucker up with the 2008 Tribute to Grace Grenache. Yowza. Hard to get, but try to get some.

...provided one doesn't reside in an Amish community. In which case, "drinking locally" would involve a taste of Goody Smythe's freshly-churned buttermilk. 'Tis a fortifying buttermilk that puts a good start to a day of hand-crafting rocking chairs and those dancing wooden puppets on sticks.

Fortunately, Atlanta is not very Amish, and there's plenty of good local beer. Terrapin, Sweetwater, and Red Brick get most of the accolade, with smaller operations like 5 Seasons Brewing and Wild Heaven more-than-nobly filling in the gaps.

Whenever I hear of a new Atlanta brewing operation, I get geeked up, and I kick wine to the curb (Don't worry, wine. I'm a fickle bitch). Furthermore, when I find out the guy behind the new local beer was just a home brewer making some great suds, I decide I need to meet that person. Or at least take a picture of him to paste creepily on the mirror of my personal home brewing dungeon:

Randy Dempsey is the mad genius behind O'Dempsey's beer. Okay, he's not very mad at all. Rather, a quite friendly chap who loves talking about beer and hockey (clearly, not originally from Atlanta). Basically, the guy had been home brewing forever, and someone finally convinced him to go pro. I'd much rather you read the story here than allow me to skewer it with obscure tangents, as is my modus operandi.

I got to taste a couple of Randy's beers a week ago along with some cheese at Muss & Turner's. My doctor told me specifically to stay away from 1. Beer and 2. Cheese. But he's probably an idiot.

O'Dempsey's Big Red Ale was a far cry from what one usually gets from fledgling brewers- that is to say, Pale Ale. I was pleased to discover that it smelled similar to a batch of beer I made once. While most brewers should take offense to this comment, it was a pretty good batch. Deus ex machina, I suppose. But I'm sure Randy knew what he was doing. The Big Red- as I said, unlike a Pale Ale- was more malty than hoppy, and ready for a burger. Went well with some of the cheeses, too. If you took a burger and put blue cheese on it, then drank some of Randy's Big Red Ale, you'd be in a situation commonly known as "flavor country'. It's a country that has no rules, smells wonderful, and makes you fat. Like the Netherlands without all the patchouli.

Yet, it was this delightful tipple that really got me excited about O'Dempsey's. The Inukshuk IPA (meaning "India Pale Ale", a style popularized by the Brits in the 1800's) delivered the piney, citrusy nose that welcomes all IPA lovers, but it was smooth and totally balanced in the mouth- belying its 7% alcohol content. Sometimes, higher-gravity beers can come off as too sweet or too thick or too alcoholic on the palate. But, like the carefully balanced stones that construct the Inuit statue bearing this beer's namesake, this one was in harmony. If I hadn't had to drive home, I probably would've sipped on these until I was way out of harmony.

The wine bloggers (present company included) like to go all apey about wine and food and the edict that they belong together. I'd defend that notion to the death (actually, I'd probably concede if it came to that), but there's no rule saying beer should only be slugged with nachos and hot dogs and hot dogs with nacho cheese on them. Beer was meant for the dinner table, and Randy Dempsey's offerings fit the menu. Seek them out when you're in Georgia. And you should be in Georgia, because we have good beer.

I'm sitting (okay, I'm lying down for all you sitting snobs) in a hotel in Birmingham, AL, hoping to procure some super-tasty, tiny-production beers from Good People Brewing. Drink this beer if you're ever in North Alabama. And be glad. 'Cause it's very hard to find (perhaps impossible, as I only know of its existence in kegs). More importantly, it's good. But I will be smuggling some back to Atlanta.

I drank some Georgia wine from Blackstock last night. Reserve Merlot. '06, I think. Way better than I expected. And I know they're using 100% Georgia fruit. I was proud of the little guys up North.

Haven't written a "Booze in the News" in forever. I'm pretty sure I would've referenced some people who got drunk and did stupid stuff. Luckily, there's no shortage of nincompoops out there. Nor alcohol. "Booze in the News" will never go obsolete for lack of content, I assure you.

Anyway, hope I can get on the good foot next week. Until then, keep it safe, and keep it sexy.

In the aftermath of an incendiary tirade berating the awful deficit of wine color-blindness in our culture, I received the following comment from the fine blokes over at Sediment Blog (which you should check out):

I can understand their meekness. I was on fire. "A madman drunk on adrenaline," my old friend from Arkansas might say. But such a relevant question warranted no apprehension, as the post ignored pink wine: the proverbial pink elephant-in-the-room. And when one is seeing pink elephants, an explanation is often required. "Drunk on adrenaline" is rarely a satisfactory answer.

Pink wine- referred to as "blush" in the 80's and on Franzia boxes, and now going by the more sophisticated name of rosé (accents and italics make anything more cosmopolitan)- gets a real bad rap among folks getting into the fermented grape...

Blame it on a guy named Bob Trinchero. One of the owners of Sutter Home winery in Napa, Trinchero would start making a dry, red Zinfandel wine in 1972. In order to concentrate the must (crushed, fermenting grapes), he would "bleed off" some of the juice (a process known as saignée) , ferment it to dryness, and bottle the pink juice for sale. However, in 1975, Trichero ran into a stuck fermentation with his byproduct, and the sugar just wouldn't ferment out. The brass at Sutter Home decided that they preferred the sweet style, and the infamous "White Zinfandel", as we know it, was born.

Perhaps you're like me. When I was cutting my teeth as a "serious" wine drinker (that moniker has since derailed), I dismissed all pink wine as crap. I decried "sweet" wine as an elixir of the hillbilly. I dismissed anything not red or white as the garbage found in gas stations next to the St. Ides double-deuces.

Maybe you cursed Bob Trinchero for his scourge upon the civilized wine world. And though Trinchero was too busy banging a giant pile of money to hear your lamentations, his Frankenstein-wine set the tone for a rampage against everything that shared it's horrid hue.

All rosé was not only unpalatable, but also the color of a cocktail befitting a bachelorette party, never to be confidently quaffed with the boys. Drinking wine among the beer crowd draws ridicule enough; knocking back something presumably sweet and the color of a Hello Kitty baby backpack... well, there just wasn't swagger to it, right?

Wrong. Hey, I was wrong too. I been there, man (clearly, my new catch-phrase).

We'd gone through life thinking "pink is wimp", not realizing that pink is pimp. Much of it is NOTHING like White Zinfandel (which has its place, too). There are examples that are fresh, vibrant, and acidic. They can be incredible with food. And, when you spill these wines on your 3-piece cotton-candy suit with flamingo derby hat, they don't stain.

I live in the South. And people from the south eat a lot of pork. We especially like to smoke the tasty critters in the summer. So, let's say I'm sitting out on my back porch on a July afternoon, sweating like a hoarder at a garage sale. As good as Pinot Noir is with pulled pork, I'm not reaching for a perspiration-inducing red. I'd like a rosé wine with a slight chill on it. It's got just enough red fruit to sing with that pork, but retains a lightness that gives a good yard beer a run for its money.

Some of the best examples of pink wine come from the Southeastern corner of France. Seek out the wines of Provence, especially the Mourvédre-based wines of Bandol, and- my personal favorite- Grenache-based Tavel from the southern Rhône. These wines tend to be dry, and they promise an unexpected and mighty enjoyable experience, offering aromas that often bely the dryness within the glass. Still not convinced? You can look on the labels and view the alcohol content. If it's hovering around 12% or higher, there's a good chance you're not dealing with anything sweet...

Not that there's anything wrong with that. But- alas- that is another rant, and I don't want to get off-point, as is my M.O. Rather, the time has come to embrace your inner-Huggy Bear and give rosé- the pinkest, pimpest wine of all time- a shot. Sip it from a wine glass if you're really cool. The rest of you insecure jive turkeys can ease into your pink drinkin' with a transitional vessel if necessary:

Or, if you're really slick: