Owing to a misguided and unrealistic desire to build a little couth upstairs in the frontal lobes, and while living in Charleston, West-bygod-Virginia, I enrolled in a wine appreciation course in a classroom along the banks of the Kanawha River.
Some context: I don’t necessarily like wine. In fact, I dislike wine. But I am all about self-improvement.
I tried to make wine once. I was 15 and my father, Cap’n Dad, suggested I take up a hobby other than taping firecrackers to toads, sneaking mom’s car out at night, or stuffing the neighbor’s cat in the mailbox (a little surprise for the mailman the next day).
So, the logical alternative was to make some wine. How hard can that be? I had a few industrial-strength, five-gallon photography darkroom chemical glass jugs. I filled them with water, fruit, sugar, yeast and screwed tight the tops. I didn’t read the part about needing a fermentation airlock.
I put the bottles in the dark basement next to the furnace, whereupon, in short order, they exploded like heavy ordnance. So, my new hobby was picking glass shards out of the ceiling and scrubbing for the next three weeks wine scrum off the floor, walls and furnace.
Our house smelled like an abandoned Napa Valley vineyard for months, by which time I had been encouraged to explore out-of-state schools.
On to West-bygod-Virginia
That takes us post-college to Charleston West-bygod-Virginia, where beer flowed like creek water, the “Real Good Stuff” was served clear in Mason jars, and wine tasting was probably a punishment program for thieves and road-kill diners with mild head injuries.
Here’s what I learned in the three-week class. Men, real men, wouldn’t be caught dead in a wine-tasting class (unless absolutely MADE TO by girlfriends or wives), and those that (voluntarily) enroll seem to wear loafers without socks; that whatever is on the back label must be scripture, it is so studied; that wines are paired with imported cheeses and meats from cows raised in caves near Scotland, and the cork, godalmighty, the CORK!, is a goldmine of information encoded with sacred truths from the vineyard and fragrances from Ancient Greece.
Our instructor was so obsessed with The Cork he continuously sniffed it like it owed him money.
I have been handed corks by waiters at restaurants, even though it was The Beloved who wanted wine. Excuse me. I have been PRESENTED corks. One PRESENTS a wine cork for adornment, I have learned, as if it were King Tut’s golden mask requiring white gloves to touch. One doesn’t just toss a cork it across the picnic table, as in, “Here ya go. Take a look.”
I admit I sniffed the corks because that is what I was taught. They all smelled just like cork. I rolled them around in my fingers and pretended to decode the printed gibberish. I nodded my head appreciatively towards the waiter, a deep, slow, solemn bow, like it all meant something. And I handed it back the waiters as delicately as if it was laced with Cyanide.
The only use beer drinkers have for corks is as fishing bobbers. That’s because beer drinkers are salt-of-the-earth types. They pair beer with Pringles BBQ chips. They fix busted lawnmowers with duct tape. They know their way around a tailgate. They eat Slim Jims. They gun their engines at stoplights and peel rubber on green. They could care less about global warming. They can grill a hot dog in the rain with a Butane lighter. They write newspaper columns, and they can light M-80s while shotgunning a BPR.
I learned in class that wine likes to be stored at “cellar temperature.” It didn’t take much research to realize that this is nothing other than a pretentious way of saying 55 degrees, or just a tad colder than your in-law’s 1964 GE Americana refrigerator.
And Then There Was Mr. Corkface
I clearly recall the instructor, let’s call him Mr. Corkface, placing oh-so-worshipfully a cork under spotlight atop a leather desk pad and telling the class that corks need to stay moist because, and this stuck with me, “Air is wine’s mortal enemy, and a dry cork means air getting in.” Yet, he said, you need to allow the wine “to breathe its truth.”
I raised my hand. I got a Queen Elizabeth-like nod from Mr. Corkface. I took that has permission to speak, so I said, “So. Air’s bad but breathing is good? That what you are saying?”
“Yes,” he said, and looked at me like I was a Tequila worm.
“Okay,” I said, trying a polite approach. “Wine needs to breath, and I am assuming the wine is breathing air because that’s all we got around here, breathingwise. But air is, what’d you say? the Mortal Enemy of wine. Right? So if I don’t want to make a mortal enemy of my wine, I shouldn’t give it air, right? And if I don’t give it air it doesn’t breath, which pretty much ruins the whole intent. Did I get that right?
Mr. Corkface ignored that fine piece of logic. He pivoted to cautioning against storing wine next to anything mechanical because it likes peace, quiet and darkness. And, AND! wine prefers to be stored on its side.
Don’t we all.
I raised my hand. Mr. Corkface immediately rotated his head away from the class and toward the window overlooking the Kanawha River and pretended I didn’t exist. He didn’t like me much.
“I once made fruit wine and stored it in the cool darkness,” I said proudly. “When I was 15.”
He picked up the cork with the tips of his delicate fingers, held it to his nose holes, took a deep inhale, and said, as if it took all the effort in the world, “In a wine cellar?”
“No,” I said. “In the furnace room. It exploded. I either gave it too much air or too little. I suspect too little. I was grounded for three weeks.”
Mr. Corkface said, “Furnace room? You stored WINE in the FURNACE ROOM?”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “Shoulda been stored in the garage?”
“The GARAGE?” Mr. Corkface said. He seethed disgust. I could tell I was going to fail this class. “Where the car is? That garage?”
“Where the car was,” I said. “My mom’s car, actually. A Pontiac GTO. It’s in the shop because I kinda, well, wrecked it sneaking out one night making a little beer run.”
“You’re not from here, are you?” he said.
“Oh God no,” I said. “I’m just killing a little time before I move to Boston.”
Boston is a beer town, I told him. Sure, it has a few wine bars in the back of some modern minimalist Tofu restaurant where they serve food on reclaimed roof slate. But Boston is about a cold beer in hand, screaming at the TV and pretending the Bruins or the Sox still have a chance.
Not like in Charleston West-bygod-Virginia, where recreational sporting events start with, “Watch this.”
I received a Certificate of Completeness for attending wine tasting class, something akin to a B.S of the Fermented Arts.
Appropriate.
