I don’t get it.

I see why drinking a nice glass of wine is viewed as more civilized than pounding back a slippery nipple shot with a Jack and Coke chaser.

I also see why sipping something slowly is more socially acceptable than performing a keg stand or being crowned beer pong champion of the world (or at least of America…the world champ probably resides in China. Let’s be honest.)

What I do not get is the whole production behind the wine drinking/tasting/etc. First there are travels to various vineyards that all boast of special grape growing technologies and fertile soils. Then there are trips into elaborate cellars where  ceremonious uncorkings of “rare vintages” take place. Then the wine needs to breathe as if it’s a living organism. You can tell me all you want about special grape growing technology, but no modern science has developed a strain of grapes with lungs and capillaries and crap. No. Way.

So the wine “breathes” courtesy of a really fancy and expensive decanter of some kind. Then it’s poured very gingerly into the special goblet/globe glass/stemless crystal made from the tears of baby seahorses/etc. Oh yeah, and don’t even THINK about filling it past where the widest part of the glass is. You heathen.

Then there’s the swirling and the wafting. Or is it the wafting and then the swirling? Oh crap I forgot and now I’m going to have to start over!

So riddle me this: does the swirling really aid in the intake of oxygen that your tiny grape lungs get? Also, how far does one stick their schnoz into the stemware in order to really smell the grapes/woody accents/chocolate hints/ambrosia and nectars from the teet of the gods?

That leads me to another point. Does any normal alcohol-drinking, non-wine connoisseur really taste all of those things? I’ll tell you what, I have sipped a two-buck chuck from good ol’ Trader Joe’s as well as a $200 bottle of something that my uncle will be disappointed in me forgetting the name of, and you know what? It all tastes the same. (GASP!)

I know everyone is different, but to me, red wine tastes like the drinking fountains in the Rock. If you ever sipped from the faucets of the Knute Rockne Memorial Gymnasium at ND, you know what I’m talking about. The water tastes like Iron (or blood). I should drive to South Bend right now, fill up some bottles, dye it red, slap a label on that shit, and start a business.

Back to being real here, there is no nutty accent, no chocolately remnants, and no scent of the live oaks whose roots shared the same soil as your precious grapes. Is a complex state-of-the-art irrigation/filtration/sprinking system  really that much better than a big garden hose? Do they fertilize with the toenail clippings of mere babes, or do they dump a little MiracleGro on those bitches? Who’s to say?

I’m not trying to be a hater, but while all of you winos sniff and swirl, I’m quite content over here unattractively sucking mint leaves up the straw of my mojito and throwing back a couple redheaded sluts.

Cheers!

Fic D