To Wine or not to wine?

I’ve recently picked up a new hyperfixation, special interest, hobby, or whatever term floats your boat. I went on a trip to California a few weeks ago to Napa Valley. While in Napa, my best friend and I attended a wine tasting. I was skeptical from the outset because I’ve never really enjoyed wine. I’ve grown to enjoy an occasional beer once in a blue moon (i.e. every one or two months, and yes that pun was intended). I agreed to do the wine tasting because my best friend was very excited to do it and had wanted to visit this particular winery for a long time. This winery/vineyard had a 14th-century style castle built on it, where the tastings were hosted.

I was informed beforehand that I should dress up formally for our visit. I was also informed I should wear comfortable shoes to walk around the grounds. Always the image of high fashion, I arrived dressed in a wrap dress and my beat-up sneakers. There were quite a few dressed-up people in their twenties to late thirties. Most of them wore jeans with a nice top, while some opted for dresses with accompanying hats. If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you’ll recall that in my post about my aberration of shopping, I discussed that denim is something to which I have a particular aversion. For anyone noticing my vocabulary is a bit more high-brow than normal, I can only blame my fixation and fascination with Miss Marple.

We walked up to the check-in desk and let the host know we had arrived. Everyone who worked at the vineyard was dressed in business casual and had a walkie-talkie on their waist. Whenever a group of people were taken to a certain area of the castle, it was communicated on the walkie-talkies. We were finally seated in the tasting room and thus began our tasting of five wines of our choosing. Before anyone thought this was a super exclusive experience, my friend found the cheapest wine tasting in Napa. When they poured the first wine, I was fully expecting not to like it. In actuality, I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. The only wine I didn’t care for tremendously was the one red I had chosen to try. I ended up buying my boyfriend a bottle of one of the wines that I tried—getting it home in one piece involved checking my bag and wrapping the precious cargo in an obscene amount of bubble wrap. Now that I had realized there were wines that I actually could and would enjoy, this started me down the rabbit hole of wanting to sample the different kinds of wines that I could get at my grocery store. 

So far my boyfriend and I have tried a pinot grigio and a rosé. I don’t think we’re going to venture into the red wines too much since we both don’t enjoy those. The pinot has been our favorite so far, and I’m excited to see what other alcoholic beverages I’ll discover to like after all.