For Christmas my friend
receives a gift certificate to a local wine shop. I have to be totally honest. I live a quarter mile from this wine shop,
pass it nearly every day, often park in the lot adjacent to the store, and I
never, ever knew it was there … for eight years.
Two weeks ago, we finally
venture into the shop. The place is
small, so there is no hiding us when we walk in. The proprietor and a gentleman are drinking
wine at the checkout counter. No one
acknowledges our presence, no one offers to help us, and we are blatantly
ignored (hard to do in a room the size of a hefty walk-in closet). We look around, gasp at the prices, and feel
lost at the lack of variety and selection.
A woman enters shortly
after we do. She is in search of a
burgundy to make Beef Bourguignon and is met with the words, “Our cheapest
burgundy is $45.”
It is at this point that
my friend and I kind of shit our pants just a little bit. We are used to the discount wine store with
the incredible prices, stellar selection, and unrivaled weekly tastings. Oh, and being acknowledged when we enter the
premises.
We decide right then and
there that the only way that gift certificate will be spent requires actually
tasting some of the wines in the shop.
We find a small sign for Thursday evening wine tastings, make an
uncomfortable exit, and plan to come back and hope for a better experience.
Thursday arrives, and we
brave the slippery, icy flurries to go to the tasting. Now, even at the most hole-in-the-wall
stores, the wine tastings have a decent attendance. Instead, awkwardly, we are the only two
people at the tasting. Well, there are
two men and the proprietor, but it turns out that the two men are somehow
connected to the store, part-time employees of some kind. We mill around stiffly, wishing to just melt
into the walls, waiting for someone, anyone, to open a bottle.
While we are trying to
make ourselves inconspicuous, we notice that the shelves are much better
stocked than the last time we were here, and we notice some of the wines are
more reasonably priced. Perhaps the
holiday rush left only the expensive stuff on the shelves two weeks ago.
Finally, my friend opens
up and starts some conversation.
Thankfully, I know enough about tasting wine not to look like an
idiot. Oh, I may still sound like an
idiot, but I know the basics – how to hold the glass, how to swirl the wine in
the glass, how to suck in air while sipping from the glass, and how to pretend
I know the whole chewing thingee. But I
can’t really say much more than, “Hmmmm, interesting … fruity … sharp
aftertaste … yummmmmmmmy.” That is the
bulk of my wine-tasting repartee. Thank
goodness my friend’s wine vocabulary is superior.
The conversation goes
slowly, almost eerily, until we drink a bit.
I introduce my friend to the wine people as my partner in crime. “I’m the troublemaker,” I say.
“And I’m your wingman,” she
adds.
“Yes,” I agree, “though
sometimes it’s a chicken-wing-man and sometimes it’s an eagle-wing-man,
depending on what we’re up to.”
Suddenly, I think this sounds ridiculous. I must be getting drunk. One of the employees claims it’s a great line
and asks to steal it. What the
hell. Why not? I’m not that attached to it.
Pretty soon we are all
exchanging hearty stories about kids applying to colleges, our jobs, bad dates,
and various states of matrimonial distress.
And bottles are opened. Not the
four we are expecting, but three, one custom chosen for my friend. We sip the same wine several times, buy some
bottles, and even get our hands on a few bottles of $36 red that’s a close-out
and marked down to $7.99 a bottle, and, no, it’s not shit wine. The stuff is freaking yummy. (See, I’m using my extensive wine-tasting
vocabulary here.)
After our first impression
two weeks ago, we initially approach this evening with trepidation, limited
expectations, and lined paper on which to immediately jot down notes about the
experience.
“It wasn’t entirely
unpleasant,” I tell my friend as we carry our box full of wine to her car
through the snowy parking lot.
She nods in
agreement. “As a matter of fact,” she
exclaims smiling, “it got better the more I drank.” At this, we laugh so hard we almost drop the
wine bottles. Aw, wine buzz. The best.
Sometimes we crack our bad
selves up. And to think people pay money
to go to comedy shows when they can hang around us for free. Tsk tsk.
