Underpants On The Outside

 Wednesday night, Wonder Woman and I went to a wine tasting hosted by her alumni society.  I was pretty excited to go, because I’ve never been to an event like that before.  I went to school with 20,000 other people; needless to say, we don’t exactly get the gang back together very often.  I didn’t even go to my high school reunion, because I didn’t know when it was happening and none of my friends thought to let me know they were going.  (They did report back, however, to let me know that - and I quote - “only Asian chicks age well.” Thanks, fellas.) 

There were probably 25 people at the wine tasting.  They all had on name tags with their names followed by the year they graduated, except for me; I just had a blank space next to my name.  I arrived before Wonder Woman, and as I was standing about, trying to assume the stance of someone who attended a small east coast liberal arts school (feet at ninety degree angle to suggest fencing training; brow furrowed to suggest contemplation, reinforced by goatee rubbing) one guy came up to me and asked me if I was still in school.  To which I replied, “Nope!  Just here for the drankin’!”  (I really suck at small talk.)

Here is my impression of an alumni society gathering: no one knows each other, so people spend a lot of time talking about buildings.  That’s kinda it.  But that’s also how I heard that Wonder Woman’s professors would regularly invite students over to their houses for dinners, which I find fascinating, because I would not have been able to recognize my professors from less than three hundred feet away.  I bet that instead of A’s and B’s Wonder Woman’s grade was equal to the number of marshmallows her professor put in her cocoa. 

While I was excited to go to my first reunion, I was just as excited, if not more so, for the wine tasting.  No, not because I like drinking (though I do…immensely…) but because I don’t know dick about wine, and I appreciate any opportunity I have to learn how to be more condescending. I have good company: from what I gathered, the entire wine industry is based on people trying to sound smarter than everybody else.

The sommelier had laid out five different wines.  The first was a “sparkling,” which is what pretentious people call champagne that wasn’t made in Champagne.  Personally, I call it “Horny Fiancee Juice.” The second was a white wine. All I know about white wines is that when my friend John Law (who introduced me to the concept of a “sparkling”) drinks them, I get to make jokes about him being gay. The third was a rose’, which make white wines look like Ray Lewis, and the last two were reds of some sort. 

I asked the sommelier what the reasoning was behind the progression.  He looked confused.  I asked him what spectrum the wines covered.  More confusion.  I asked him what we were drinking these wines with each other, and he said, “Oh, I just thought they’d go well together.”  I mean, c’mon - TRY a little.  The least he could do is give me some long-winded explanation that involved the words “dry,” “full-bodied” and “tannins.”  I mean, shit, there had to have been an “oaky nose” or “hints of raspberry” somewhere, right?

Nope.  He told me that all of that was just meaningless fluff put out by wine makers; pure marketing.  Then he asked me what I did for a living; I told him I was in marketing.  He suddenly noticed two people with empty glasses at the other end of the table. (I really, really suck at small talk.)

It reminded me of the only other wine tasting I’ve to.  I wasn’t even twenty-one at the time, and my friend Big Game James was seeing (read: occasionally hotrailing) a hostess at a restaurant.  She and one of the waitresses had been invited to a tasting held by six or seven vineyards, and they invited Big Game, who in turn invited me. Then, at the first table, the girls thought it would be funny to introduce me as the owner of their place.  Here I am, twenty years old, in sneakers, and I’ve got a bunch of people giving me wine and kissing my ass.  I played the part, too: if I liked a wine, I’d ask the proprietor how much it would cost for a dozen cases, because I thought it would go great with the new lamb dish we were rolling out. 

By the last couple of tables I was hammered.  Each vineyard brought several wines with them; I am nothing if not thorough, and over the course of the afternoon my character had…evolved a bit.  I’d started out as a young, successful businessman, but by table four I was a significantly wealthy eccentric, a member of the nouveau riche with Silicon Valley millions.  My restaurant was merely one of my many expensive hobbies, and with my wealth I no longer felt the need to be constrained by societal norms.  To be clear: I wasn’t being an obnoxious dickhead because I was drunk; I was doing it because I’m a very good actor. 

That’s when one vintner told me that I had probably noticed his wine’s “chocolate aftertaste.”  Uh oh.  I looked at him and said, “Y’know, I gotta tell ya [one of the societal constraints my character rejected was proper English] I don’t know shit about wine.  I just know what I like, and my customers seem to like it too. [I was really on a roll.] Now a bunch a’ you [I gestured grandly, probably spilling wine] have mentioned some ‘chocolate aftertaste.’ But I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.  There’s nothin’ about this wine that tastes like chocolate.” 

The winemaker replied, “Do you notice that film that you get in your mouth after you eat chocolate?” I told him I did.  I did not mention that I find it disgusting. “Well, the wine leaves a similar film.”  I pointed out that it was quite a stretch to relate the flavor of chocolate to the nasty, sticky saliva feel it leaves in your mouth.  I did this by saying, “Really?  Wow.  That’s some bullshit right there.”  Big Game and the ladies suggested it was time to leave.  Good times, good times. 

Something tells me I’m not going to be invited to many more wine tastings…