Speaking of wine, not to mention over-imbibing, a group of us ladies was talking about our terrible experiences with youthful excesses. While I listened to one story after another about one drink too many in bawdy bars with all too alluring bad boys, I remembered back to my first drinking experience, and its aftermath.
One cold and rainy afternoon, Mom kicked us downstairs to the finished basement, or rec room, as it was called in tonier neighborhoods. I was eight; my brother was nine. We played board games for a while then decided to do a bit of exploring at the other side of the basement. As was common on the east coast, in addition to a play room, there was the laundry room, the utility room and the cold storage room that contained pinwheels of cheeses, hanging dried meats, stored soft drinks, sacks of potatoes and two casks of home made wine that were now aging. We were fascinated by all the hanging meats, big bags of onions, the smell of the wine must and the long thin rubber hose that sat atop one of the casks.
My brother, competitive spirit that he was, proclaimed that he could drink more wine than I could; I demurred -- no way. He unplugged the cork, thrust the rubber hose into the barrel and sucked on the hose. Then he pinched the tube and handed it to me. The wine still had a certain piquant grape sweetness so I drank without hesitation. It was good. He drank, I drank, he drank, I drank. This to and fro went on for quite some time, in fact, until mom called and asked that we wash our hands before dinner.
The trip upstairs was uneventful, as was the evening washing of the hands ceremony. However, when mom placed the plate of red spaghetti in front of me, things got weird. I stared down at the plate and noticed that the spaghetti strings were moving. Apparently when one is especially inebriated, strange things happen; spaghetti moving on a plate is a common event. I stared, unblinking, fascinated by the movement of this plate of worms. Mom finally admonished me to start eating before the food got cold. I picked up my fork and then things got more weird.
Dad finally noticed that while my fork occasionally made contact with the spaghetti, it wasn’t quite making it into my mouth. Or the fork made it into my mouth, but it was bare. Being dad, he turned to mom and said “what’s wrong with this kid”. I looked up, hoping my big brown eyes would stop further conversation, but my brother chose that particular moment to stand and claim that “I drank more wine than she did”. I disagreed and chose to argue the point by tossing my cookies all over the plate, the table, the floor and whatever other surface happened to be available.
Who drank more became a moot point. While it was obviously apparent what had transpired, the moment could not go unpunished. While mom professed innocence to this catastrophe, Dad spanked us both and immediately sent us to bed. I slept like a baby. The next morning he was quite impressed that neither one of us displayed any signs of a hangover. Damn, kids are resilient. In fact, he was so impressed that on one or two occasions he actually bragged about his kids’ drinking abilities -- mom, not so much. She attempted to mitigate the damage by humorously chuckling that dad was exaggerating for the sake of the story. Of course her children were not drunkards. I knew my girlfriends couldn’t compete with this story. I won.
And then I had another story of another time; another moment in life. All grown up now and with it came memories of the California wine country’s harvest. One late fall we were spending a few days at the Sonoma Mission Inn, an exquisite spa-hotel that was known for its wondrous chef and its stellar cellar. We had just finished an excellent dinner and were walking back to our room at a separate building from the main house, commenting on the crisp clearness of the night, allowing us to see the hundreds of millions of stars and the full moon, shining brightly against the inky darkness. We likewise felt the slight chill in the breeze, a breeze that brought with it the aroma of the deep grape must, coupled with the rich odor of fresh earth. We stood quietly, musing on the ambience, then lay down on the grass, inhaling the moment, the stars, the breeze. It could only have been more perfect if the air was filled with the voice of Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma.
