The Wine Dump

There comes a point in one’s life when you mature from storing wine in cardboard boxes in your basement or built in lattice shelving in your kitchen to finally buying a fancy wine fridge. Now that’s adult-ing. My husband, The Rum Drinker, and I bought our first wine cooler several years after we built our forever home. (It was our third home and that was five homes ago…but I digress.)
 
The night we installed our wine cooler into the outdated kitchen desk nook, we hauled two cases of our ‘good wine’ from the basement and spread them out on the kitchen counter. Deciding it was a night to celebrate, we opened a 1993 Opus One. We let it breathe as we dug out, and rinsed off, our finest wine glasses (hand blown glass with pewter bases, made in Germany). I lit some candles as Hubby poured the wine. Sitting at our kitchen table we clinked glasses and let the aroma of florals and black currant penetrate our nostrils. I quickly pulled my glass away from my face as I watched my hubby’s face slowly sour as he braved a sip. 
 
With high hopes, we dumped the wine from our glasses and the rest of the Opus One down the kitchen drain, knowing that we had a ’92 Silver Oak cab waiting for us. This time we decanted the wine. The toasted oak and spicy aroma of the wine as it was poured it into our glasses was encouraging. We took a sip at the same time, and both of us ran straight to the kitchen sink and spit it out. Smelled ok, but tasted like vinegar. Down the drain went bottle number two. Thank god it was just the two of us and we weren’t entertaining our wine drinking friends during our Wine Dump.  We would have been voted off the island.
 
If you are an avid cabernet drinker and you aren’t crying yet, you will be soon. As the night grew later and later, Hubby and I ended up sitting on our counter, one of us on either side of the kitchen sink, taking turns opening bottles and pouring a glass to smell, or if we had the guts, to taste. The kitchen sink imbibed a lot of wine that night, more ’92 Silver Oak cab, a couple of bottles of ’94 Joseph Phelps Insignia, a bottle of ’93 Jordan Alexander Valley cab, and sad to say, a whole case of ’88 Franciscan Estate Magnificant. Cue the tears.
 
Let this be a lesson to you young’uns… invest in a wine cooler right after your 21st birthday. Even if you don’t drink wine. Wait… especially if you don’t drink wine. Your guests that do will appreciate it.