We had our choice of of two major wine areas: Napa valley, an area known worldwide for its fine auto body parts, or Sonoma valley, whose official motto is, "Hey, c'mon, it's free wine. What else do you need?"
We decided to go to Sonoma valley, and were soon engaging in the fine and cultured art of wine tasting. Wine tasting, as you probably know, involves sitting around saying lots of pretentious things about wine, while the whole time you're really thinking to yourself, "Gee. This tastes just like wine."
But as the day went on, we found it easier and easier to participate in wine tasting. We also found it harder and harder to walk in a straight line. So for those of you plebians who aren't nearly as cultured as yours truly, I thought I'd share with you the knowledge I picked up along the way. Here is how to properly behave when wine tasting.
1) Comment on the color. To the untrained eye, wine may looks like it only comes in red, pink, and yellowish. But to the trained, cultured eye who regularly donates money to museums and has catered dinner parties with all its other eyeball friends, wine comes in red, pink, and yellowish. Except now you can't actually admit this. You have to make up colors. My advice would be to use names of women's lipstick for colors of red wine. Say stuff like, "Why, this is a rather burnt-brick color, with just a touch of sun burned strawberry." This will win you the respect of wine tasters and Avon women alike.
2) Swirl the wine around in your glass. Apparently, wine tastes much better when its dizzy. This is because dizzy wine tends to hyperventalate. This is what people mean when they talk about letting wine "breathe."
3) Taste the wine. At this point, you should be able to say something like, "Although the aroma is pretentious, the body is resilient and almost sarcastic in its oakenness," and it should sound completely natural. If it doesn't, try tasting more of the wine. You may to repeat this step 10 to 15 times before you get it right.
4) Mention PBS. This is not a required step, but it helps. "Why, this wine reminds me of a Nova special I saw about galaxies," is always a good thing to say.
5) If you're really cultured, you don't drink the rest of the wine. You pour it out. This is your way of saying, "Well, this wine was okay, but it's nothing compared to that '84 Chardonnay I once tasted that reminded me of an episode of Mystery!. You know, the once which featured Hercule Poirot." I poured my wine out a few times, until the winery staff kindly pointed out that I might want to try dumping my wine into the little jugs they provide. Incidentally, these jugs are where "blush" wines come from.
Of course, even better, you can drink the rest of the wine, which makes it much more fun spending a weekend with your parents. Pretty soon, you're getting all emotional, and saying stuff like, "I love you guys. I really really love yo... BLUUUUGRGRGHRRRHHHH!" At this point, the little jugs the wineries keep around also come in quite handy.
During our trip, being the socially responsible and caring family that we are, and also because none of us felt like getting killed that day, we had a designated driver. That happened to be my father, because he complained the least. (Also because if you give him one drink, he falls right asleep. My dad would make a cheap date, assuming your idea of a fun date is dragging around a sleeping grown man.) Unfortunately, none of us thought about the grave consequences of not having a designated navigator. So our trip had a little detour through some majestic mountain roads. Of course, when I say "Majestic," I really mean "Frightening as hell." I'm talking about those little mountain roads you see in movies where somebody cuts the brake fluid of the hero's car and the car goes hurtling off the side of the mountain and lands in a big firey explosion. These were the sort of thoughts that filled my mind as we hurtled through the mountains, surrounded by the beauty of nature. ("Nature" in this case meaning "certain death.")
Of course, we came out of it okay, and we were soon tasting wine again like nobody's business. It was a day trip that I'll never forget. Except for the periods where I blacked out.