I was wondering about the meaning behind the exotic brew name Sultana Solero.* It sounded Spanish to me so I brought the COMDB Translation department into the fray.
Me: Hey team translation, can you translate Sultana Solero for me?
COMDB Translation Department: Yes. (awkward pause)
Me: (At times they are as pedantic as the Editor) Will you translate it for me?
COMDB Translation Department: If you insist. The word “sultana” comes from a complicated and confusing language known as English. In English it means the wife of a Sultan, or a type of raisin. Maybe it’s your raisin d’etre.
(I could hear giggling in the background.)
Me: How about Solero.
COMDB Translation Department: Solero is Spanish and it could mean “a sundress” or “a millstone”, or some “wine sediment”. Sounds like you’re drinking raisin wine sediment these days. We all figured it would eventually come to this.
Dealing with the translation department always leaves me questioning my own better judgment. But Great Lakes tell us to expect a papaya peach nectarine mango tango with some white grapes thrown in for good measure.
A hazy OJ puree of a pour, with a bright white tiara for this Sultana of suds. An aroma of mango and grape, smells tropical paradise and varicose vineyard all in one. The initial taste is tropical fruit and grape with a bit of a fizz and a dry finish, not hoppy but a slight bitter aftertaste. I was cheering for the mango but the grape sure in persistent, distracting and downright unwelcome. The fruit is gone, that’s just grape. Grape to bitters and it’s not an attractive couple. I remember a Vineyard Theory in which the grapes confounded the equation.
This started out ok but the fun fruits left and the grumpy grape stayed and teamed up with some bad-tempered bitters for a frustrating finish.
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