Entry # 2- e.r.a.

Here is the second entry in my guest post contest.  The author, e.r.a. has a blog of her own: twenty-something.  You can visit it at http://www.elizabethabend.blogspot.com/

Without further ado, here is her post...

twenty-something on wine by e.r.a.

I grew up in a sad, wine-less town. Thank goodness my dad is a wine hoarder. He has more wine in his wine cellar* than all of the stores** in Blackfoot, Idaho combined.

*After my older brother moved out, my dad took the furniture out of his room and started stacking cases of wine in there.

**Wal-Mart and Albertsons.

Last time we were all at home (probably drinking wine) my dad gathered my brothers, my mom, and me in the kitchen. I thought he was going to make a toast.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your piles of shit,” he said.

“Oh, Chris!” my mom scolded. The offspring laughed.

My dad was referring to the coats and purses and phone chargers and shoes and books and computers and mugs*** that we left haphazardly around the house. After my dad’s speech, we all went out of our way to keep our piles of shit contained to our rooms and out of my dad’s kingdom.

***I admit they were all mine.

One day, I went to the wine cellar (see first asterisk) to find myself a nicely aged beverage. What I found was a giant pile of shit. “Busted!” I thought as I gazed over the wreckage of half-opened case after case of wine, empty boxes, golf clubs, Mother’s Day wrapping paper, and a hunting rifle.**** Packing material densely populated the room and the whole place reeked of Tommy Bahama.

****No one hunts.

I walked into the kitchen with some mad swagger. “Dad, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your pile of shit,” I boasted triumphantly.

“That’s not shit, that’s good wine,” my dad said, which, to his credit, was entirely true. I know I must have broken him, though, because the next time I visited home there were homemade shelves in the wine cellar. The rifle was gone.

I’m not sure how my dad found the time to organize the pile of shit in the wine cellar because Blackfoot opened a new bar called The Wine Garden where he now apparently spends most of his evenings with his friends.

My friends like wine, too. Many of us drank our sophomore year of college through Italy where wine is cheaper***** than water. We weren’t technically of age according to our American university even though we were in Europe, so we learned how to hide bottles of wine in a free deposit box at an Italian bank and to drink wine from soda cans and to-go coffee cups when it needed to be concealed. Americans are classy that way.

*****And more delicious.

We continued the tradition when we got back home the next year and even spent Spring Break in a rented RV touring Napa Valley. Even though one friend****** wrecked the RV in a parking lot and another******* fell asleep on the counter at a tasting, I would venture to say that our outlook on wine is more sophisticated and complex because of that trip.

******Brenden. 

*******West.

Wine continues to be a part of everyday life for my friends and family. Last night my fiancé and I were home drinking a bottle of Cabernet. Every so often, I get kind of a sulfite reaction that makes my neck all red and blotchy. The wine made my teeth purple and gave me a dark stain across my lips. I also spilled on my white shirt.

“You look just terrible,” Alex said to me. “You probably shouldn’t drink red wine at our wedding.”

“Yum. Wine!” I said to him before passing out and snoring loudly.

And that, my friends, is the moral of the story:

Yum. Wine!