Published Mar 19, 2007
I’ve been drinking a lot more wine lately — about a bottle a week. I’ve always enjoyed wine, and it was finally time to learn about it, which means trying a lot. I have little storage room, so there’s not much space for me to keep around bottles that I don’t plan to drink soon; but there are two bottles that have been taking up precious wine rack space for a while now.
The first is actually the reason I joined wine site Cork’d. Somehow, I thought this red — which is practically undrinkable — was spiffy enough that I bought three bottles in three different places at three different times before I realized I’d already had it. Now, of course, one bottle just sits there, and I have no idea how I’ll ever manage to drink it. That level of tannin requires some real fortitude to brave.
The other has been around much longer — since 2003, I think. In January of that year the Wonderful Girlfriend and I went to Santa Barbara to kick off our new relationship. Now, in retrospect, although she was significantly W, I might have chosen a different nickname for this individual, because I don’t mean to imply that other Gs can’t be W too; but at the time it seemed like a good idea. It also seemed like a good idea to take home a bottle of wine with us. We didn’t buy a good bottle of wine, but we had been wine tasting all day long and it was sort of the end of the day and a good time to buy the bottle; and besides, who cares? It wasn’t the wine, it was the two of us buying it.
Then the bottle came home, and I didn’t open it for us to drink because, frankly, I didn’t remember it being any good. Then I didn’t open it because it had been around for long enough that I should save it for a special occasion. Then I didn’t open it because we were having trouble, as they say in the relationship business, and I wanted to save it for a happy time. Then I didn’t open it because she was gone.
And so it sat, unopened, reminding me every time I looked at my wine selection. After a while, I hoped for a special enough moment with someone else to open it. But, this weekend, two things occurred to me:
- If I open me and the WG’s wine at me and someone else’s special time, well, there’s a third person in the room
- I get 10% off if I buy 6 bottles of wine and I don’t have enough space for 6 unless I drink that bottle
So I opened the cork, and I poured myself a glass. Thanks to one of those vacuum-pump stoppers, the bottle will last all week. And you know what? It’s a perfectly fine bottle of wine.
i love this. i love the way you write. its funny and smart and true and it always makes me smile :)
xxoo