I made wine with my friend Jimmy. I've been making beer for more than 20 years, but until about two months ago, I had never made wine. Jimmy asked if I wanted to go in on a batch with him and it sounded good to me, so we went to the wine store and bought the ingredients and the equipment and I made up a bitchin' project schedule and then over the course of about four nights...we ...vinted? I don't know what they call that. We made wine.
So the wine-making ended in late November, and it says to wait until it's been in the bottle AT LEAST a month before you try it, so I decided I'd crack it open at our traditional Christmas Eve dinner.
Every year on Christmas Eve we invite the immediate family over for a lobster/filet supper after church. Jimmy and I had made Pinot Noir, and Pinot Noir is a a pretty good...it's not quite red, it's not at all white sort of wine that straddles the surf and the turf. It's a wine they say you should serve if you're only serving one. And I wasn't confident enough of it that it was the only bottle on hand, we had cabernet and sauvignon blanc on hand as well, and the way I figured it was after dinner, when everyone had already had a couple glasses anyway...what better time to try it out.
That's when I uncorked "Jims' Enormous Pinot".
Oh, did I mention that I named the wine, "Jims' Enormous Pinot"? Because I did. And the way I figured it, the looks of discomfort or amusement made it worth it.
It was good, and I served it in a gigantic bottle, so the name was doubly apt.
Plus making people feel uncomfortable was just the gravy I was hoping for.
What I did NOT expect, however, was having the tables somehow turned on me, and the feelings of discomfort as my mother said, "Oh, Jim, your enormous pinot is delicious!" or my mother-in-law tell me she'd wanted just a little taste of my enormous pinot because she didn't want to get filled up. And somehow it wasn't as amusing as I'd anticipated...
But it was still pretty damned amusing.
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| The label... |
