Red Wine

Under the table I check the glow of my phone to see if Gaga has called me back but I'm thinking she has a show tonight in New York and missed my voicemail. We've racked up a $550 dinner and my mouth is burning from a sip of something that's supposed to taste like apple, but with a 20 year stint in an oak barrel it finishes like nail polish remover. Per glass it's $1 for every year since its birth. It's not whiskey but something close. Hot as it filters down to my insides. Fantastic. We've traded the pickup for a limo, added a few familiar faces, and meandered down the hilly roads to Ithaca for a late dinner at a hybrid-Thai restaurant. Seeing the half-grand bill makes me wish the waitress had been nicer, a bitterness uncommon to me, undoubtedly made more poignant by the lingering alcohol.

My head is still spinning a little bit from the tastings earlier and my lengthy conversations about 2007 being the best year for Pinot in the region. Vintners love that, wine talk with wine people. It triggers some cathartic response that turns pithy tastings into heartfelt dialogues from artist to habitué. The result of their over-zealous pours hangs in my head for hours after, shadows of encounters from each vineyard. It's a much needed escape from the city.

My cohort for the day is a man who deals in fruit which his company juices, packages, ships, and sells to yuppy Whole Foods patrons in New York City and DC. Unassuming, he drives a ford pickup maybe half my age along the two lane stretches of country road and puffs a hand-rolled cigarette. He's less "six-figure", more salt of the earth in that capacity. This trip for him is both a business transaction among rural orchards and the somewhat rare opportunity to enjoy the local wine of the men and women sharing his craft. The industry involvement is somewhat of a free pass for us, but it's not treated frivolously. It's something to be earned through hard work and humility. We've all been the ones out in the muddy orchards and vineyards, the ones on ladders picking the fruit, the ones creating something out of nothing.

My bitterness towards the waitress fades. Someone ran their mouth and a tinge of hurt boils up inside me. You don't know people's battles. And there was a time when I was her. It's something I hold onto and force myself to remember even among this group of self-starters after a perfect day of camaraderie. We all came from nothing. Subtle hints of that fact emerge from time to time. It's what you do with your nothing and how you remember it that makes you special.