so i mentioned the other day we'd been waiting to watch the pittsburgh pirates officially clinch a winning season after 20 years of putridity. i'd forgotten (in the way i seem to do so much more often now) that i'd long ago paid for a subscription to mlb's online distribution of all of its games and that we could use that service to watch the pirates' big game. so we did tonight. and they finally did it, in the process beating one of the best pitchers in the american league (yu darvish) (it was an interleague game against the rangers).

so we broke out the wine i'd picked up especially to toast this moment. it's called palermo and i picked it up last week for the portrait of the skeletal pirate on the label. it's not actually a pirate, but a sicilian's corpse (never go against a sicilian when death is on the line!) from an article in national geographic. and, as it turns out, the photographer, vincent musi, was born in raised in sewickley, pennsylvania, a suburb of ... pittsburgh. he was a staff photographer with the pittsburgh press until it ceased publishing in .... 1992, the last year the pirates had a winning season.

and because today is purple, it turns out the wine has an inky purple color which several people mention in the reviews at cellar tracker. the wine itself is quite good, helped in part i think because of the addition of 5% malbec (we're biased because we've been enjoying so much malbec ever since c.'s mom turned us on to it).

so, again i toast to perseverance, progress, putting the past in its proper place, and the pittsburgh pirates.