December 17, 2009 - Whining About Wine

First off, let me get the public service announcement out of the way. From December 1989 until April 2008, I was a hearing officer with the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles. Most of the cases I heard were DUI license suspension hearings. Since April 2008 I have been the Department’s case presenter for DUI cases (kind of like a prosecutor but not quite). As a result, I take a rather dim view of drinking and driving and some of my perceptions of drinking have been shaped by the past twenty years. So don’t drink and drive. Seriously. Don’t do it. Okay. The PSA is over.

Thanks to my initial contact with wine, my relationship with it has been fraught with false starts and blind alleys. My initial contact with wine originates with Friday night meals with my mother’s parents and the Passover seders with them. Some of you may know exactly where this is headed and it is right to Manischewitz. If you have ever been subjected to the heavy, dark, almost sickly sweet Manischewitz wines from the 50s and 60s, you will wince along with me. Bad as it was, it was made worse at the Passover seders where four glasses of wine are downed throughout the ritual meal. Can’t have little Markie or his cousins getting cocked on wine can we? Answer? Wine spritzers. Yes, Manischewitz wine diluted with seltzer. Yum! As a result of this childhood trauma, wine, to me, was something to be avoided like the plague. (Of which, by the way, the Passover seder commemorates ten of them inflicted on Pharaoh and the Egyptians, which also sounds like a great name for a band although Sam the Sham might have something to say about that.)

Fast forward to high school age. My mother has dear friends who are married. He was born in Germany and she was born in Austria. After my father died, they went out of their way to include us whenever they could. They introduced me to Rhine wines. I had never heard the names Zellerschwarzekatz or Liebfraumilch before nor had I ever tasted anything like them. My ignorant palette liked the taste of the dry white and for a while, they were what I would want, partly because the names just sounded cool.

My first drunk was induced by champagne. The morning in question, I had a track meet, and as was my habit, I didn’t eat before I ran. I then had to leave the meet and go directly to a Bat Mitzvah party where I proceeded to consume more champagne than was prudent. And as I recall it was kosher champagne and was…well, kosher champagne. But I don’t remember much of that morning.

By the time I reached university (at the time 18 was the legal drinking age so I could buy my own), I was influenced by the commercials for Mateus rosé, a semi-sweet Portuguese wine. And, besides, the bottle was really, really cool looking and made a very cool candle holder when the wine was gone. Mateus was my freshman year wine of choice. But it could not hold a candle to Boone’s Farm Apple Wine and Strawberry Hill. We used to buy that stuff by the case. Talk about a sweet, cheap (and really bad) drunk. And that’s to say nothing about the André champagne and cold duck we would buy every year for Homecoming Weekend. There’s a quality beverage. On the other hand for the sophisticated palettes possessed by my fraternity brothers and me, this was quality stuff. (You don’t even want to know some of the stuff we drank nor the quantities. Honestly, I don’t have much memory of some of those days/nights. What I do remember isn’t pretty.)

As I moved through my post-college days, wine tended to recede into the background. I mean, in the Air Force who needed wine when you had five cent Blood Marys every Saturday from 7 AM to 1 PM at the Officer’s Club Stag Bar? And if I really wanted to drink there was bourbon. (That’s a whole other track of my drinking life.) I recall at some point thinking that drinking sherry from a goblet in the evening was very sophisticated. That lasted a couple months. My wife, who is less of a drinker than I am and I am only an occasional social drinker (unless I’m driving when I’m then known as the designated driver), likes White Zinfandel. My Irish step dance partner had a long, happy relationship with Pinot Grigio although she has switched to Chardonnay. Many of the other ladies in our Irish dance school/family like various whites. I tended to stick with whiskey (bourbon then Irish) as it takes less to generate that pleasant buzz. So I never paid much attention to wine. And besides, wine was for effete intellectuals who…oh, wait, I’ve been characterized as an effete intellectual, too, so strike that.

And then we went to San Francisco a few weeks ago for a week-long holiday. Among the many things we did was a tour of California wine country with tastings. Now, if you have seen the movie “Sideways” you will be familiar with California wine country. Even in chilly December, it is beautiful and chock full of wineries. I had little expectation other than it sounding like a fun experience. That all changed at Madonna Estates, the first winery we visited. The last two wines they offered for tasting were a Riseling and a Gewürtztraminer. I was psyched about trying the latter because Spenser (the detective created by Robert B. Parker, not the poet) likes it. The Riesling hit my mouth and to my surprise…I was in love. This was reinforced by our next stop at Sutter Home Winery. I found their Riesling to be a bit too sweet and full-flavored. Yes. I actually tasted the difference! But I was still in love.

Well, we flew home on a Saturday, landing in the snow on Saturday night which means that the next day was Sunday. (See, if you were following along yesterday about calendars you’d understand how I came up with that.) That means the liquor stores in Connecticut are closed. And we had no Rieslings among our meager wine collection. Fortunately, my daughter asked us to bring over some Christmas decorations for her tree. While there I looked through her wine rack and (ring the bells, blow the trumpets) she had a Columbia Valley Riesling. I summarily informed her that I was taking the bottle home with me. And I did. And through the day I sampled glass after glass until, alas, the bottle was empty and I was gently buzzed but still firmly in love with MY wine. It’s a relationship to be pursued…in moderation. So much wine, so little time. After all I am OC/PR.