Entry # 1- FAUribe

Well, it’s July 5^th and that means it’s time to start putting up our entries in my little contest.  I’m thinking that I’ll space out the entries a bit rather than just doing them all on back to back days.  I wrote some stuff this weekend and I still want to be a writer on this blog so I think I’ll post some of my stuff in between each entry.  This first entry is from my roommate, FAUribe.  He has a nice little story for us about his intro into the world of wine.  Hope you guys enjoy.  Remember, if you like his entry, be sure to write comments, telling us that, join the site, and tell your friends to check his post out.  Hope you like it!

Merlot – My Father’s Stepping Stone by FAUribe

Quick: name a varietal!  It’s probably your favorite that you immediately think of, and I can almost guarantee you it’s one of the first wine varietals you ever tried.  It might be Chardonnay,  Syrah, Zinfandel, or Cab Sauv, but I generally not surprised when the answer to the question is not Merlot.  It’s a simple, relatively inexpensive, and, most importantly, a polarizing wine.  It can be bitter, dry, and unsophisticated – traits which hopefully do not also describe Merlot aficionados.

But for me, the answer has always been Merlot.  And when I say always, I mean ALWAYS.  I come from a Latin family – a culture famous for its love of alcohol and drunkenness.  When people think of Mexican drinking, they think of tequila (and sombreros thanks to “brilliant” advertizing in the 80s) or Corona, but rarely do they think of them as a wine-drinking peoples.  My great-grandfather had his own vineyard in Spain that produced Rioja good enough to be served at all my aunts’ and my parents’ weddings, but at the end of the day, all my immediate family members would say that Merlot is their favorite.  This has 100% to do with my father.

My parents came to the US in 1984 (legally), with nothing but the American Dream in their pocket.  Sure, they came from well-to-do families in Mexico, but thankfully, no one in America cares what your father’s last name is.  For my parents, it’s been an upstream swim for the last 27 years, but I know that they would not have it any other way. 

My father, always the classy man, is a wine snob, but of a different kind.  He bets everyone he knows that he can pick out a bottle for $25 or less that would taste better than any $100+ bottle you can throw his way – a bold claim to be sure.  So what kind of wine does a man of such bravado drink?  Merlot.  And not just any Merlot, Chilean Merlot.

Who would have the nerve to drink Merlot on a NIGHTLY basis, and let alone from a non-established wine country like Chile?  That guy.  Whenever I ask him why he likes Merlot, he always starts with some story about how in the 80s Chilean Merlot got a bad rap because of pesticides or something (probably similar to the reputation of Gewürztraminer in the US after that whole anti-freeze (yes, that anti-freeze) fiasco) and that special restrictions are placed on Chilean Merlot that keep prices deflated.  I don’t have the time or the interest to find out if that’s true, but I’ll take him at his word.  But, since as far back as I can remember (and I have a great memory), he has drank Chilean Merlot almost exclusively.  And, as I mentioned before, Mexican families are more “liberal” with drinking ages for their children.  I won’t tell you that I got drunk at 11 years old, but I definitely recall having one of those mini (maybe 2 oz.) cups with just enough wine in it to get some good sips when I was still a young teenager.  That is where my viticulture started.  With a glass of simple, unsophisticated, underrated, cheap Merlot.  For me, that will always be the perfect foundation, one that I hope to repeat with my own children someday.

From there, it was easy.  Chianti was the next step (for some reason), then going down to lighter wines, up to more full bodied wines, over to whites, up to champagnes – all possible thanks to the strong foundation as a kid with Merlot.  I don’t want to get all cheesy, but almost all of my childhood memories involve Merlot in some way, shape, or form.  Whether it was watching my dad drink a glass of wine while playing songs that he wrote for movies and cartoons on the piano, watching soccer or baseball games together, going to the Hollywood Bowl to see John Williams, or the Looney Tunes, or Amy Grant (still not a Country fan), or family events, Merlot was there.  And so was my father.  And in 3 weeks, when we go to the Hollywood Bowl once more to see Lang Lang and Dudamel, my father, my mother, my older sister, my younger sister, my younger brother who just turned 21 last week, and I will pass around the bottle of Merlot to each other, pouring from the same proverbial bottle.