The Big Green House

Thursday, July 17, 2003

 

Red Red Wine

I moved to Sacramento from Monterey at the tender age of 21, chasing a relationship that collapsed within about three months of my arrival. (I�m not gonna bore you with that story, so relax. Instead, I�m gonna bore you with something completely different.) A friend from Salinas who�d made a similar move a few months before I did (with similar results, if memory serves � where would we be without cheap coincidence?) got me a job bussing and washing dishes in this great little caf�/wine bar/wine shop where she was waiting tables. Until I started working there, my exposure to wine had pretty much been limited to the occasional glass of Mateus Ros� my parents had let me have as a teenager & the odd bottle of jug wine here and there. And I do mean odd; jug wine has vastly improved since then. It used to be that you could drink it or use it to strip paint, depending on your mood.

The caf� was small enough that everybody did a little bit of everything there, so it wasn�t long before I was making espresso, assembling fruit and cheese plates (including one for the current, if somewhat tenuous, Governor of California), and pouring wine. Since the list of wines available by the glass changed every Thursday, we had employee tastings every Wednesday so we�d know what we were pouring and could therefore (theoretically, at least) answer any questions from the customers. It was a chance for us to compare notes, learn about wine from the owner (a great source of knowledge, and a swell guy to boot), and get a little loopy before work.

This was my introduction to wine in bottles that didn�t have screw tops.

The great thing was that everybody�s opinion was given equal time, whether it was someone as inexperienced as myself or one of the staff who actually had something of a clue. There really wasn�t much in the way of snobbery, at the tastings or in the day-to-day running of the place. We were encouraged to have fun. The atmosphere was always loose, and I think that�s one of the reasons why the place was as successful as it was. We were always packed, and we had a hell of a lot of dedicated regulars. And while we carried some pricey wines (this was the only place I�ve ever worked where I was able to taste a wine that cost more per bottle than my rent was at the time � a 1953 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, if I recall correctly; it was pretty fucking amazing, but no wine is worth that much), no one was looked down upon because they were buying a bottle of plonk.

So when the place finally closed* and I went out into the world again, I took away a sense of wine being about fun and enjoyment, rather than something to be squirreled away as an investment or used as a status symbol.

*I heard many different theories as to why this happened, and since I frankly don�t remember what the official reason was I�m not going to repeat any of them here. If you lived in Sac in the early Eighties you probably know where and what I�m talking about.
bmarkey 7/17/2003 08:40:00 PM