The Humanity!
There is no use in denying it – autumn has descended upon Boston. The leaves have changed color and are swirling down to the ground into messy piles, the squirrels have gone crazy and spastic getting ready for the next nine months of winter… and the nutjobs have come out to dine. That is not necessarily an indicator of a change in seasons, but it has come to my attention.
There I was, sitting in a perfectly cozy subterranean Italian restaurant in Beacon Hill (for an NNB review) when I happened to glance over at the next table… and gasped. Loudly. I then proceeded to stare and shoot threatening looks at the woman at that table, trying to make her aware of her incredibly inappropriate and disturbing behavior.
What was she doing? Dancing on the table? No, but that would have been cool. Flossing her teeth with her hair? Nope. Completely revolting, but not unheard of. You know what she did? Get ready for this. She poured ice water into her glass of RED WINE. She really did. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried. I was floored. I may have been the only one at my table to have such a violent reaction, but that's beside the point.
Look, you don’t have to like red wine, or wine at all for that matter. I mean, I probably won’t have much respect for you, but it’s still ok not to like it. You don’t have to order red wine with dinner. Have a beer, a vodka martini (or four), a Shirley Temple, anything!, but do not order a glass of red wine and proceed to defile it by adding water (especially ice water). I can’t imagine a more perfect way to ruin something complex, alive and breathing, beautiful and warming than by diluting and chilling it with ice water.
You know what the lesson here is? Embrace your tastes, your likes and dislikes. At dinner, order a drink you will enjoy, one that will enhance your meal and your evening, no matter what that drink is. But don’t, for the love of all that is holy, order a glass of red wine simply because you think that you should, because it’s the grown-up thing to do, or because everyone else is doing it and then humiliate that wine in front of ardent and emotional fans such as myself. That’s just wrong.
Rant over. Thank you for your attention.
8 comments:
Eww. I've never seen such a thing in all my born days. You're totally right - people should get something they enjoy, no matter what it is. Maybe she had never had red wine before and she was trying to broaden her horizons, but if she didn't like it she should have given it to someone else.
Sadly, I have seen this happen myself. I've seen just the cubes added. Weird. It is possibly the scariest thing ever. Followed closely by white wine spritzers. Just order a wine cooler for goodess sake!
Haha, I love your little rant Anna. I do think that sounds unappetizing but if someone wants to add ice water to their wine...let them be. It wasn't YOUR wine.
JC - So glad you agree with me! I would be terribly surprised that the woman got to be a grown up never having tried red wine. It's not outside the realm of possibility, especially since she had a British accent. You never know with those funny Brits. Hi Aimee :)
Link - What exactly is a white wine spritzer? For that matter, what is a wine cooler? I never figured that out. I know people who prefer their red wine chilled. I think those people simply do not enjoy the taste of red wine. Chilling it slaughters the flavor. Completely kills it till there is nothing left. Ice cubes in red wine?? I shudder to think.
Hillary - First off, my rant takes offense at being called little. It isn't little. It's a decent sized rant, I'll have you know. Secondly, no it wasn't my wine. If she had done that to my wine, I would likely be in jail for assault right now (only a slight exaggeration here). There is no fun and no blog post in letting her and her bad taste be. I can skewer that poor woman all I want. It's not like I actually went up to her and said "What it wrong with you??" Although I did want to...
Wine spritzer -- white wine with sprite. ugh.
Wine cooler -- wine cooler is to wine as Zima is to beer. double ugh.
Quoth Anna:
"It's not like I actually went up to her and said 'What it wrong with you??' Although I did want to..."
I can vouch for this.
As link mentioned, the spritzer basically consists of mildly alcoholic Sprite, though I've never heard of one with white wine before. It's the only even moderately viable use of boxed red wine, but a total waste of anything worth more than $4 a bottle. The wine cooler is basically the same thing except the vineyard actually conceded that you wouldn't want to drink it straight up and made a sprite shake out of it up front.
She was British?! Of course she was British. We are hopeless with wine. Fact. White wine spritzers are really quite common, so common that I don't bat an eyelid about them. But chilled red wine? Never, never have I heard such madness.
An old flatmate of mine used to pour wine in a big bowl and then microwave it. I thought that was pretty weird. Funny Brits, indeed! Take it back! :)
Haha Anna! I want to apologize to your rant for calling it little! I'm sorry I offended him/her. As for you, I do commend you for taking out your aggression on the blog rather than in any form of physical violence. Way to be! But it still is...her wine...:)
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