Oct 03 2008
The Move Out of Iowa
This is the 9th installment find the 1st one here
In the year 2000, my job moved us to Fort Myers Beach, Florida and for once in our life the closest McDonald’s was not a 30 mile trip to the nearest “big town”. Shopping was amazing and even the basic necessities were at our fingertips. The grocery stores are huge and have everything you need and a lot that you don’t! Among the completely stocked shelves we found a complete isle, 200’ long, full of wine! Holy Crap! We not only couldn’t figure out what it all was, but we couldn’t begin to pronounce most of the names.
This was the complete opposite of the stores in rural area of the Midwest we’d lived in, to this “there’s so much to pick from where the heck do you start” type of wine department. So, we didn’t really start buying anything different, reflecting back to our past with wine. We did agree to buy a couple bottles of chardonnay that we seemed to recognize and a bottle of “red” to have on hand. We chose a California (cheap) cabernet as it was the most prevalent on the shelves. We took them home to be placed in the refrigerator to get them “cold”! We had also moved our four wine glasses with us to Florida and placed them in their allocated spot in the back of the cupboard just in case we needed to pour a glass of wine for “company”. They were stemmed, narrow and cute. A glass is a glass, right?
Our first visitors arrived on a Saturday night about 3 weeks after we’d moved to Florida. We met them at a gathering of condo owners in our building and as we talked, we found so many mutual topics and had so much fun that we invited them up for a drink to finish off the wonderful evening. When I asked what they’d like to drink, they both answered “red wine, please.” Good thing I’d bought that bottle of cabernet that was in the back of the refrigerator!
I found the corkscrew, popped out the cork and picked out the bits of cork from the first glass that I poured since I’d drilled through the entire cork like I was drilling for crude oil. I poured them both the red in our “wine glasses” and my wife and I opted for the chardonnay.
I handed them the wine and settled down for more pleasant conversation. As nicely as she could, our lady guest told me that red wine should “never” be served cold. I guess I should have guessed from the pucker on her lips! Oh Crap! My first faux’ pas’ of the evening and the relationship! Red faced, we moved on in the conversation and the gentleman asked, “Do you have any red wine glasses?” OK! That’s the second mistake of the evening. I’m sure by now I had “Midwest Hick” stamped across my forehead. The evening progressed in a great mood, they were very gracious and we got along famously. (We still do!) My wife and I immediately agreed after they left to get out and buy red and white wine glasses ASAP! It was a hard lesson from really nice people. Red has to be served warm, hmmmm!
Since our first visit with that couple, and that initial embarrassing evening that proved that I didn’t know anything about wine, we have become rather close friends. We soon joked about that night and I started to learn as much as I could as fast as was possible about red wine. This new friend’s heritage stemmed from a Portuguese father and an Italian mother and I quickly realized that he had a really good set of taste buds. (I guess I should say, “a very refined pallet.”)
I came right out and asked him for advice and help in shopping and selecting some good, moderately priced red wines. He certainly was not biased and jumped at the chance to help us explore all kinds of wine from all over the planet. He did have a very soft spot in his heart for Italian wines, so Chianti, Sangiovese and Pinot Grigio were the ones that we explored to the greatest extent. He was right! I found many good wines from around $10 - $15 and soon found myself and my wife enjoying drinking red wines at room temperature more that the chilled white wines that we used to drink exclusively.
I liked Chianti but my wife and his both preferred cabernet, so she would usually have a bottle or two if lesser expensive California or Italian cabernet when we would visit them. I really developed a sense of adventure in trying to sort out all the differences between the different grape types, the styles and the vintages of all of the ones we experienced. We did not like the taste of all of them but it was still fun exploring them. We were actually training ourselves to recognize the wines we liked and didn’t like and then committing them to memory if for no other reason than to aid in selecting wines to buy the next time out. We were “refining our palates” and it was fun!
Jim Albinger (Andrew’s dad) grew up in smalltown 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.
