Sep 09 2008
If You Drink It, It Has To Be Cold.
This is the 6th installment of this story. You can find the 1st one here
Growing up in a beer drinking culture, drinking meant “COLD” beer. We heard stories of the ‘old country’ where all the beer was consumed warm and we all agreed that we were glad to live in the modern world of refrigerators and ice chests. Living in rural Iowa in the late 70’s and early 80’s and you wanted a cool temperature wine to drink you ordered “a glass of white wine” or if your really wanted to sound worldly, a glass of Chablis. It was usually served cold (well, cool) and sweet enough to not taste like vinegar since the bottle had probably been open at the bar since last weekend when some one actually wanted a glass of wine. It was a socially acceptable alternative to beer or whiskey in a drinking group of friends.
I distinctly remember in 1974 starting to socially imbibe at gatherings by drinking pink Catawba wine in the community where I taught school. Talk about sweet! My wife really liked it and I tolerated a glass or two, but after the second glass you started to feel “sticky” if you got it on your lips or fingers. There are few foods in my life that can start a fire in my gut (heartburn) but this was on the top of the list. I didn’t last long with good old pink Catawba wine. For me it was back to beer and a few types of hard liquor. It only reinforced in my mind that “wine” was sweet, sugary and not fun to wake up to in the morning after having let caution go to the wind the evening before. I can remember those youthful days waking up to the worst of the “slimy belches” with near death heartburn and headache and vowing, as most drinkers do in that situation to never do that again, although that statement only seems to last until the “next time”!
The next chilled wine that we investigated years later was white zinfandel. In our early 40’s, we had both searched for a good tasting wine and this wine, being served cold, was our next venture. In the late 80’s and early 90’s in Iowa, more wines were on the market and obtaining them at a reasonable price was easy to do.
An unprecedented, monumental state government decision was set into motion by letting grocery stores carry not on beer but “WINE”! Holy Crap! This was like the most amazing thing that ever happened to the liquor business in Iowa! But, of course now with that granted, the restrictions and regulations were very stringent for those stores. If you ventured into a grocery store on Sunday, the clear plastic blinds were drawn over the few shelves of wine in the cooler case (wine has to be kept cold, you know)!
So entered the white zinfandel phase of wine consumption for us. Generally, we had at least one bottle in the “fridge” and a couple in reserve in the wine rack on top of the refrigerator (great storage place, huh?) My wife really did like it and I tolerated it but it was still too sweet for me, but over the years we enjoyed a lot of it.
Jim Albinger (Andrew’s dad) grew up in small-town northwest Iowa in the 1950’s. He has been writing down his experiences looking back at all that has shaped his current wine tasting hobby. Expect to see more of Jim’s writings here at offthecork.com.
[...] You can find the next installment of this story here [...]