My high school friends and I nodded carelessly as Jonathan offered us the dusty bottle of wine he had stolen from a neighbor’s house. After working for one week in a wine store, I recognized the label as a good one from France. All I remember is that it tasted kind of warm and had a lot of crap floating in it. It probably didn’t help that we chugged it from red Dixie cups as an Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick rolled in the background. It didn’t even give us a good buzz.
The next day I asked my dad how much a bottle of the stuff-hypothetically, of course-would cost.
“Oh I don’t know,” he said. “Thousands, maybe. You can’t even buy that anymore.” I shuddered in disbelief. How the hell could a dead ringer for battery acid cost so much?
I only had to look to my wine store’s customers for answers. A great variety of people come into the store, and there is indeed something that sets the red Bordeaux sippers apart from the Georgi vodka chuggers. The pool is limited, of course, because, as the bosses specify, we are a wine store, not a liquor store. No cigarettes, no lotto tickets, no condoms and absolutely no beef jerky. The only vice we deal in is booze, and we deal a lot of it.
The two owners, one Belgian and one French, had fashioned a wine store that offers many good bargains, selling both cheap liquor and some real top shelf items. Unlike the stereotypical American wine snob, they are from humble backgrounds. Charming greetings to customers are always followed by comments in French about their appearance and mannerisms the minute they turn their back. Their snobbery comes out only in very subtle ways, such as the quiet inward breath after a respected customer picks up a bottle of white zinfandel.
Wine snobs usually wear polos or nice sweaters, but they can be dressed in just about any fashion. Perhaps the most telltale sign of a true snob is his tendency to correct others’ attempts at French pronunciation with the correct pronunciation. One thing to keep in mind: when a person pronounces “Mo?t” without the “t,” he is trying to sound cultured, but if he pronounces it correctly with the “t,” he truly is a snob.
I regretfully admit that, after working in the store for two years, I now pronounce it in the latter style, the implications of which were made all too clear one Sunday during this past winter break.
Around noon an ancient, decrepit woman came up to the counter and demanded a quart of vodka. Hands shaking from withdrawal, she began to count out a series of dirty pennies and nickels to pay the $4.29.
My attention was not on the sadly familiar sight before me, however, but rather on the bottle of wine being poured across the store to customers for a wine tasting.
I noticed with interest that it was the same label, albeit 35 years younger, I had carelessly chugged with my friends two years earlier. My desire to taste it was great. However, the remaining wine was dwindling and the old woman had only counted out $ .73. As she reached back into her dirty pocket for more, I wanted to cry out, “Come on lady, I’ve gotta get down to drinking!”
With a grunt, she threw the last of the change on the counter just as I was reaching for my glass. Two years can make all the difference: I now tasted the most heavenly thing I had ever sipped, an explosion of flavors in my mouth.
The old woman, brown bag in hand, quietly hobbled out of the store.
In the end, I know it shouldn’t matter if someone doesn’t know the difference between a cabernet sauvignon and a sauvignon blanc or between a Gallo Rhine and a riesling from the Rhine Region. But, at least I won’t get boxed wine hangovers. Ah … that sweet nectar just tastes so damn good.
