Want Some Cheese With That Whine?

i am not a wine aficionado..

When i was young, my only experience with wine was when, once a year, my parents would toast the New Year at home (they never went anywhere) with Mogan David brand wine (i.e., one of the very inexpensive wines that - along with Boone's Farm and Ripple - American teenagers in my day would procure for a cheap drunk!). i did have enough knowledge of wine to be embarrassed for my parents when we went out to a nice Italian restaurant one time on vacation - they looked at the wine list and asked the waiter if he had Mogan David! Arrgh.

                                                                 ...but it IS pretty....

 

Being part Italian and loving Italian food, you would think i would have naturally evolved into a wine drinker, but it was not to be. Every time i drink wine, i get tipsy VERY quickly, and it is accompanied by a queasy feeling followed by an unpleasant hangover the next day (if there's such a thing as a pleasant one!). Yes, i have tried "good" wines, and fairly expensive wines, and they all taste the same to me - bitter and unsatisfying. No, i have never tried the VERY expensive wines - i doubt if the experience would be any different, and would be wasted on me.

Even if i SUDDENLY became wealthy and decided to drink wine with my rich friends, i think i'd be afraid to! You have to know what wine goes with what food, and use the correct glass, can only fill it so far, should smell the "bouquet"...really? i WISH i only had things like that to worry about! It seems like a lot of rules that, in the broad scheme of things, mean absolutely nothing (eye roll).

 

With that background, i have difficulty understanding "wine collectors" and the large amounts of money being spent on this or that special bottle from a certain year. You either hang on to it - and God forbid if it is stored incorrectly and it goes bad - or drink it, and it's gone...i believe wine is about the only food or drink item that people will pay really exorbitant prices for.( i know there are countries wherein people will pay big money for some unicorn horn or Narwhal testicles or whatever they think is an aphrodisiac, but i'm talking about intelligent, civilized peoples in this post). i just don't get it, but i guess i really don't have anything against wine aficionados - if you have the money, you've gotta spend at least some of it on what makes you happy! But can wine really make you THAT happy?...

IMHO, beer could make me just as happy, AND it doesn't matter WHAT i drink it out of! :-)