My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places

Grape Expectations

When Ed’s parents visit, we try to take them to someplace new and different. Since they don’t drink or even especially like wine, we felt confident a wine-tasting trip to Napa Valley would fit the bill.

Ed’s parents are in their 80s now, so pretty much any option that ends in “ing,” you can bet they would secretly prefer to skip. This includes paddle-boating, tandem bike-riding, and a host of other activities they have gamely submitted to, all the while dreaming of Scrabble or a nap in the sun. I don’t know why grown children do this to parents. When Bill and Jeanne aren’t visiting us, Ed and I are content to spend weekends lolling around reading the paper, napping in the sun, playing Scrabble. The outings, I suspect, are an attempt to convince them that our lives are fascinating and fulfilling.

Ed and I aren’t the kind of people who taste wines because they plan to actually buy some of them. But thank God for these people, because the money they spend helps wineries recover from the huge amounts they lose on people like us. We go wine tasting because it’s free.

Things started off swell, because the first winery we stopped at had food tasting too. There were cheeses, olives and pâtés everywhere you turned. Ed made straight for a roasted-garlic olive oil. Bread had been cut into slivers, to make it clear that you were tasting here, not having lunch. This did not deter Ed.

“Wow,” he said. “Taste this olive oil again and again and again.”

Here is one of the great things about America, possibly the best thing. No one cares if you take five free samples. This is not true in, say, Tokyo. Japan subscribes to a strict moral code regarding the sampling of wares. I didn’t realize this when I was there some years ago with a friend. We had figured out that an affordable early supper could be had by working a circuit of the food section of any major department store. By the third circuit, they were onto us. They’d see us coming and rush over to pull away the sample tray, like peasants scrambling to hide their daughters from marauding Huns.

In the next room, the wine staff was pouring tastes of five wines at the bar. Every few feet was a small bucket, and some fellow tasters were pouring out their samples into the bucket after the first sip.

“That seems rude,” said Jeanne.

“And wasteful,” said Bill. We all nodded and drained our glasses.

As we sampled the next wine, Bill divulged that he and Jeanne had once taken a class on wines. Ed was shocked. “Dad, the last time you were at our house, Mom put a red wine in the refrigerator.”

Jeanne stepped back in mock horror. “Oh, my God, what’s wrong with me!”

Bill defended her. “You want it to be cold. That way you can’t taste it as much.” I asked what they’d learned about wine. Bill thought a moment. “Some of it’s red, some white.”

Jeanne nodded thoughtfully. “And some of it is in between.” They were in fine spirits. We all were. We were on the fourth wine by now.

The last one was a Cabernet. “This one has more body,” the winery woman told Bill.

“That’s okay,” said Bill. “If you look at me, I have more body too.” Then he announced the Cabernet had “legs.” He was swirling his glass like a cowboy with a lasso. The liquid rose dangerously close to the rim, then receded. “See? When it sticks to the glass and hangs down like this, it means, ah…” He looked at Jeanne, who stepped right in: “It means that it hangs down more.”

They’re quite a team, Bill and Jeanne. I said the two of them, together, are like a fine French Bordeaux. What I meant is that their love continues to grow and mellow with age. I did not mean anything about preferring to lie down a lot in a darkened room. They knew what I meant. They gave me a hug, and we drank a toast to the day, to each other, to love, to free wine.