Bambus or Kalimotxo

In yesterday’s post about situation puzzles I mentioned Bambus and that I would explain today what Bambus is. Bambus is just basically red wine and Coca/Pepsi Cola mixed. Wouldn’t you believe that Wikipedia has an entry on this, here is what they have about the origin of the name.

Calimocho (from the Basque Kalimotxo) is a drink consisting of approximately 50% red wine and 50% cola-based soft drink. Alternative names include Rioja libre (from "Rioja", and "Cuba Libre"), kali, motxo. In Chile the drink is known as jote (Chilean Spanish for the Black Vulture), and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, the Republic of Macedonia, Croatia and other former Yugoslav republics of it is known as bambus (meaning bamboo) and musolini (as in Benito Mussolini). In the Czech Republic it is known as houba, and in Hungary as Vadász (meaning hunter) or vörösboros kóla or shortly VBK. In Mozambique and South Africa it is known as Catemba. In Germany it is called Korea.

Now I have never heard where the name came from or if it even comes from bamboo, I did hear of musolini and if I recall correctly then musolini is made with red wine and Fanta not Coke. The reason that people drink this is because it is relatively cheap; all you need is some crappy wine and some soda. You certainly would not use Opus One to make this drink. In the US I have made this drink several times for my friends and they are all surprised by the sweetness of the drink, I have yet to hear from a person who did not like this drink.

There is also a white wine version of this drink; instead of Coke you would use Ginger Ale or Sprite/7UP. This also taste pretty good….and again you would not use Grgich Hills Chardonay or Gavi de Gavi La Scolca for this but something much cheaper.
There are also these variations:
Diesel (Coca Cola + beer)
Submarine (drop a shot of whiskey in a beer)
Čiket (Brandy/Cognac with Coca Cola)

In Holland they have something similar but instead of wine they use beer. So beer with 7UP is called Sneeuwwitje (Snow White). There is also a drink named Kopstoot; this is beer with Jenever (Dutch gin). Usually you drink the gin first and then the beer; there is a version of this drink where you put the glass of gin inside the glass of beer. This version is called duikboot (U-boat)…you have to be careful with this because there is a possibility that the glass inside the beer glass will hit your teeth

Real Men Do NOT Use Fancy Bottle Openers

I have some family members who love to drink some good wine, some of them have these fancy openers. Take a look at this thing below

What the hell is that, you need a 10 page manual to understand what to pull or push with that thing. That opener looks like it will make Champagne out of white wine if you use it


Here is the only thing you need to open a bottle of wine

That opener did not cost me a single penny, I got it for free in 1993 and I am still using it. Before I worked in IT I was working in the restaurant business, my father had some restaurants and I just went along. I came to the United States in 1993 and worked for a couple of years as a waiter before getting into IT.
Back to the opener; you don't need these fancy openers at all, I have opened many bottles of wine with my simple opener. Here is a partial list, these wines will look familiar to some of you who like to collect and or drink fine wines
Opus One
Grgich Hills
Sassicaia
Ornellaia
Gaja Barbaresco
Gavi de gavi La Scolca black label
Tignanello (Villa Antinori)

Can you tell I worked in Italian restaurants? So where is the danger with opening wines? Take a bottle of Gaja Barbaresco for example, The cork is so long that you probably will break it into pieces if you are not careful. You need to screw the opener in as much as you can, pull out the cork a little, screw the opener all the way until it cannot go any deeper and then you need to carefully pull out the cork little by little. Some companies are switching to rubber corks and screwtops these days because there is less danger of the wine being spoiled that way. So remeber next time you are tempted to buy that 'fancy' opener, save your money, buy the cheap one and use the remainder of the money to buy a nice bottle of wine.

A nice podcast about wines is Wine Library TV hosted by Gary Vaynerchuk

So remember, real men do not:

• Use fancy wine openers
• Blow dry their hair
• Use a Macintosh Computer(Oh yes, I will get some hate comments for that one)

I worked for about 3 years in New York City in the restaurant business, I have some crazy/funny stories, leave me a comment if you want me to write something about that. If I get a couple of comments asking for it I will write about it. For example I can tell you that Billy Joel takes his leftovers home.