But I wanna be a wino too! - Day 26 of 35 days to 35

To say that I have a very discriminating pallet would be a gross understatement. I am an obviously picky eater, completely and irritatingly finicky. I basically have the taste buds of a twelve year old: tacos with only meat and cheese, burger with only ketchup, mustard and pickles and, most importantly, anything and everything sweet. Cake rules my world, as does pretty much any fruit flavored candy. It is a bit embarrassing not to have sophisticated taste and I have really tried to rush the evolution process but to no avail. I have gotten better at trying things, but you can pretty much bet that if it isn't sweet, I'm probably gonna hate it.

This really didn't become an issue until I was introduced to alcohol (when I was of legal age, of course!). There is really nothing sweet about alcohol. Beer is skunky and stinky and so not passing these lips, and most liquor is just STRONG!! So while all of my friends were enjoying dollar draft nights I was ordering $5 amaretto sours.....you can see why I didn't drink very much in college! Oh I tried other drinks....we won't discuss my adventures with Mad Dog 20/20 or the short lived but intense relationship with Boones Farm (Strawberry Hill, of course), but nothing did it for me. I could never get past the burning in my chest, the intense taste, and the fact that alcohol just wasn't freakin sweet. So I spent years sipping the ultimate girly drink and being pissed that I was spending so much more than my friends every time we went out.

Through the years I have (thankfully) graduated from the ridiculously fruity drinks to the only somewhat ridiculous fruity drinks. But I really wanted to be a wine drinker. There is something so cool and grown up about sipping on a nice Chardonnay or Merlot. Very sophisticated, very classy, very un-amaretto sour! By my late twenties it was getting a little embarrassing to be the only one at the dinner table not sharing the bottle of wine and ordering the typical college girl drink. So I set out on a mission to find a wine that I could like, or at least grow to like. There had to be a sweet wine out there somewhere right?


It didn't take very long for me to veto red wine. I tried several but always ended up feeling like I had just licked a cat and the fur was now stuck to my tongue. I am not a red wine girl. So I moved on to the whites, and after several dinners of nursing one glass of Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio that I really didn't like but pretended to love, I finally stumbled on my wine soul mate: Riesling! Ah, reisling, my sweet, sweet reisling. Finally I would be able to have dinner and not whisper my drink order embarrassingly to the waiter and hope no one noticed. Finally I could join in conversations about this or that wine and when I talked about one I loved I wouldn't be lying. And finally I could have one of those nights with just me, a bottle of wine and a great chick flick. I WAS FINALLY IN THE WINE CLUB!


So I've spent the past few years happily enjoying my wine and not caring that most people I know don't like riesling for the very same reason that I love it: too sweet. But I don't care! It doesn't bother me that I'm still not cool enough to share a bottle of wine with my dinner mates because they all drink "real" wine and I drink the sweet stuff. Okay, it does bother me a little. I would like to be able to drink and enjoy more than one type of wine (because did you know some places don't have a riesling on the menu?? THE NERVE!), to broaden my horizons a little. I had eased my way into the world of wine with the sweet stuff and now it was time to move on....


I decided that a wine tasting class might be a good way to expose me to other wines and possibly find one that I did not find repulsive. I really wanted to find a red wine that I could at least tolerate and at best love, so that I could really say I am a wine drinker. There is a fabulous store across the river in Newport, KY called Party Source. It has just about every alcohol you can think of and probably some you can't. Anything, and I mean anything you might need for a party you can find here. They are even so fabulous that they host cooking and wine classes (I had no idea, yay!) and I found the perfect one for me: Girls Night Out: A Guide to Tasting, Ordering, Pairing (and Drinking!) Wine. So not only am I going to get to drink a bunch of different wines, but as a bonus I will learn what wine is supposed to go with what food. Fabulous! It's kind of like a gift with purchase. So hopefully I will leave the class learning enough to sound like a real wine drinker, or at least be able to fake it really well.


The Friday of the wine tasting arrives, and as it happens, none of my friends are able to join me. Uh oh. Now we've already discussed my well established policy of not really doing things by myself, so my first inclination was to stay my ass right at home. But then I wouldn't have a "thing" for Friday....and I really kinda wanted to go. I hear this voice in my head (I think it might have been Charlene) saying "Come on Darlene, it's not that big of a deal. Put on your big girl panties, suck it up and go! It's free wine you idiot, GO, GO GO!" The voice wins. On the drive over, I talk myself into believing that there will HAVE to be another woman there alone so I will just sit by her and make friends. I'm a good talker, I can pull even the most bashful people out of their shells, so I am fairly confident that if I can just find a fellow loser-with-no-friends-so-I-had-to-come-solo, , I'll be just fine.


I arrive at Party Source and I am not really sure where to go. I see what looks like a really nice kitchen area and some high bar tables so I head that way. I am not sure I am going the right way but as I approach the woman standing behind a podium says "Are you here for Girls Night Out?"


"Yep".


As she is explaining the check in process, I look over her shoulder and am happy to see that I am one of the first people there. She gives me a nametag and says that since I am by myself, she wants me to sit at the counter, right in the front to save tables for groups. Thanks, lady, just keep pouring that salt in my wound.


I look at the counter and see that there is another woman who looks to be alone so I take a seat beside her. There is a place setting in front of me with grapes and cheeses and a big ol basket of yummy looking bread. Ooooooh, do you think we might get food too??? Also on the counter are a bunch of wine glasses filled with things like pears, berries, butter, chocolate and something that looks like sticks. This should be really interesting.


Okay, time to make a friend for the night. I turn to the woman next to me and start making small talk about the glasses with the food in them. We get caught up in conversation and soon the class is about to start. I realize that someone has taken a seat on the other side of me and she looks to be alone as well. I want to make sure she knows she is not alone in this whole solo thing so I turn to say hi and introduce myself. I look down at her name tag and her name is Darlene. I NEVER meet other Darlenes! How random is that? Must be a sign that this will be a good night.


The workshop gets started and our wine professional (whose name I forgot, of course), starts explaining to us that we will taste six different wines (not ONE riesling! Damn!) and have an appetizer to go with each so that we can experience each pairing. Fabulous! Wine AND food! He begins by talking about the difference between light and heavy wines and how to tell the difference. We get a groovy little chart that tells you which wine you should eat with which meats and then they begin passing around our first wine sample. He explains that the glasses with the random foods in them are to help us identify what flavors are in the wine and how to better tell if they are heavy or light. He passed out a glass of lemons and a glass of butter. Yes, butter. He talked about how the Chardonnay we would be drinking was buttery but with a hint of citrus. Okay.....


I smell the wine first and am not sure I am buying what he's selling but then I taste it and I think I can actually pick out the flavors he's talking about. I concede that it could have been the power of suggestion, but I felt like a real wine connoisseur! With every different wine, he passed around different glasses with different smells and, I gotta say, it was pretty cool. And even though I was not completely crazy about any of the first five wines, I drank my sample (that was definitely peer pressure! I didn't want to be the only one without an empty glass!). By the time we got to the fourth wine, I am thinking that we are all gonna be sloshed by the time this thing is over! I use this as an excuse not to finish my samples of the red wines we tasted. I have to admit, they were not as bad as I remembered and did not leave the filmy cat fur feeling in my mouth, but they were still not something I would order by choice (maybe the Pinot Noir if I was forced but I'd be bitter about it). I was proud of myself though; I took real tastes of the wine, not my usual baby sips that barely get your tongue wet.


Then we got to the best part of the night. The last wine was a Moscato Spumante. I was a little familiar with moscato because it is even sweeter than riesling, if you can believe that. And this particular wine was like heaven in a bottle: yummy moscato plus the bubbly goodness of champagne. It took a great deal of restraint not to guzzle my glass and dive across the counter to commandeer the rest of the bottle. All I could think was this little beauty will be the drink of the day on my birthday. It’s really like a party in a bottle so what could be more appropriate?! NOW I have a reason to look forward to turning 35!


As the class was ending, we were reminded that we would receive an extra 5% off of anything we wanted to buy tonight...so of course it was only right to get a bottle (or five) of the Moscato Spumante for my birthday. I mean, it was on sale, right? As I make my way out of my new favorite store with my case of wine (okay really, did you think I was gonna miss a chance to stock up?) I am so glad I followed the little voice in my head. Life's just too short not to put on your big girl panties and just go for it!