The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Today on Nerve's TV blog: We got an idea for the L Word spinoff! Plus: Who Would You Rather? The Closer or Saving Grace?
Shortly after I turned twenty-eight, I was asked on a date to a wine bar. From what others have told me, the wine-bar date seems to be a modern rite of passage for those in their mid-to-late twenties. I know very little about wine. It's not that I don't like drinking wine. I buy bottles, four at a time, at Trader Joe's (total: $8.96). Wines with names like Rabbit Ridge and Ravenswood, Clay Station and Yellowtail. Wines with colorful logos on glossy black labels, from vintages like 2006 and vineyards in Lodi, California.
But I have little experience with wine as a thing, and I'm falling into the minority on this. Wine sales were up 3.4% over the past year — Americans consumed over 2.5 billion liters. Enrollment in wine schools has been rising at
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twenty-five percent per year, according to BusinessWeek. There's the Sideways effect, for sure, and Trader Joe's cheapies probably have something to do with it. But Sideways was targeted to people my parents' age, and Trader Joe's, at least for me, is more about getting buzzed at a premium price. I think it has more to do with this theory posited by Emily, a twenty-six-year-old writer from Brooklyn: "With internet dating, people are going on a lot more first dates and can't be bothered to be creative about them all the time. They become one-trick ponies. They become experts on wine and bring you to a wine bar. Chances are you're not the first person they've brought there."
That's exactly how I felt when I arrived for my date on the Lower East Side — the latest rapt audience for this guy's hit one-man show, Boy, Do I Know My Wine! But what I also felt was an unsettling combination of old and immature. Old because I was on a date at a wine bar — a more conservative venue than I saw myself dating in a year or two ago — and immature because I didn't have the appropriate skills, poise or factual knowledge to warrant my presence there.
A sommelier came over and handed me a leather-bound menu twenty-four inches high and three inches wide.
Urban courtship has always encompassed a degree of know-it-allness.
Inside, in six-point italics, was a list of hundreds of wines. Most were from regions of the world I'd never heard of. None were from California. They ranged in price from my monthly internet bill to well beyond my Brooklyn two-bedroom's monthly rent.
My date was wearing a small black T-shirt to match his dark hair and complex demeanor. He had stick-thin, eggshell-white arms. "What kind of wine do you like?" he asked. I squinted at the list. Charmes-Chambertin, Joseph Roty, Cuvée de Tres Vieilles Vignes, 1985. Chateau Latour Grand Vin Pauillac, 1988.
"Something . . . red?" I said.
He smiled understandingly: Oh, I see. "Do you like fruit overtones?" he asked in a baby voice, cocking his head sympathetically. "Or something with a more oaky feel?"
"I think oaky. Definitely oak," I said.
"And what about body?" he continued. "Thin, medium or full?"
"Mmmmmedium."
"Okay!" He ran his finger slowly down the list, putting his vast oenophile's analytical skills to work based on the data I'd provided. Finally, he called the sommelier over in triumph. The little man clicked his heels and came bounding over to our table, hands clasped in anticipation. With a grand flourish, in what sounded like perfect pronunciation, my date looked up and ordered . . . some kind of expensive red wine.
Urban courtship has always encompassed a degree of know-it-allness — a degree that I've noticed only increases the older I get. More and more often, I find myself in group conversations, waiting on my toes for a segue or an allusion that I feel I know enough about to jump in and add something, but just when I think I've caught one, the topic has already zipped past, and I find myself thinking, "Wait! Go back! I wanted to say something about that too!"
