This is Why You Don't Want the Wine You Loved on Vacation Ever Again
Memory counts more than money when it comes to wine.
by Erin Henderson
I’ve gotten tipsy on too much Soave in an ancient castle in the Veneto; I’ve tasted the finest Burgundy while visiting the world-renown Latour winery in prestigious region of Aloxe-Corton; I’ve sipped Krug with the famed champagne house’s sixth-generation director, Olivier Krug, at the tippy top of Toronto’s St Regis hotel (then called Trump International Hotel & Tower, but let’s not sully what was otherwise a lovely time.)
But my very best memory of drinking wine, was sharing a bottle of $10 Nederberg Cabernet on the banks of the muddy Speed River in Guelph, Ontario, on a balmy summer night in 1998.
I was on a first date with a ferociously sexy bartender I’d been coveting for most of the season. We were both working at Moose Winooski’s, a fine dining establishment on the grounds of a water park that serviced sun-burnt families and Toyota workers on shift-change from the assembly plant down the road.
Dave was South African, with dark, wavy hair that nearly reached his waist. He was an easy-going rapscallion, in Canada for a good time and not much else.
I was a waitress pulling doubles trying to make as much bank as possible before heading to Toronto to go to journalism school.
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It was hard to look sexy during those sweaty, 14-hour shifts shilling pints on the blazing patio. Moose Winooski’s, known for such esteemed fare as pork ribs (available by the full and half rack), baked beans, and stuffed potato skins, favoured a uniform akin to that of a park ranger, with hiking boots, navy shorts, and a shapeless logo’d t-shirt with erudite sayings like, “if you’re here for the beans, please sit next to the window,” emblazoned across the back.
So, I was thrilled, obviously, when Dave’s impish attentions turned to me.
We both had a rare night off. He took me to a Tex-Mex place for all-you-can-eat tacos for $5 and half-priced margaritas. After dinner, Dave suggested we stroll by the river to watch the sunset. He brought his favourite wine from “home,” and wanted me to try it. He forgot the glasses, so we passed the bottle back and forth. Sipping the tepid Cab, my mouth against the green glass opening where his lips just were… it was electrifying.
One of the vagrants living along the banks stumbled by asking for a sip, but Dave, in his good-natured, South African way, let him know, “sorry mate, this is private party.” The hobo watched idly for a while, mouth agape with longing, but Dave reassured me the “tramp” didn’t mean any harm and kept on chatting, unfazed, by the drifter’s stare.
That deliriously romantic evening was the start of a beautiful, hypnotic, all-consuming, entrancing relationship. Two of the best months of my life.
Students, still high on the nostalgia of a recent vacation always cry to me, asking why the wine they drank in Rome/Paris/Madrid/Santorini isn’t available in Canada. Their stories are always the same.
“Erin! I had the best wine in Rome/Paris/Madrid/Santorini. Why don’t we have it here!?! It was 2 Euros, Erin! TWO EUROS!!! My lover and I were running down a back alleyway in a rainstorm; we ducked into a little taverna, dark with candle light. The owner, who had a peg leg, hobbled up to our wobbly table and didn’t speak any English. But he had the best wine we ever had. EVER. He got it out of an open barrel behind the bar and poured it into a used bleach bottle, and served it to us with some pasta he found in the dumpster. And it was the BEST night, Erin. And the wine was only two Euros!!! WHY CAN’T WE GET IT HERE?!?!?”
Well, I’ll tell you why you can’t get that wine in Canada, right after I tell you why it will never taste as good as it did that fateful night during a rainstorm in Rome/Paris/Madrid/Santorini.
The reason you loved the wine – so, so much – is because you were on vacation, laughing with your lover, in a strange city, where the possibilities were endless. Except for the certainty that you were headed back to your hotel room after dinner to have the most savage sex of your life while still buzzed on two Euro wine.
If you were to go back to that back alley bistro in the harsh light of day, five years and two kids later, when you’re both sweaty with Europe’s crazy summer heat, and frustrated by the crush of over-tourism, I’m willing to bet that the shine will have dulled for the restaurant, its dumpster pasta, its peg-legged owner, and, maybe most especially, the barrel wine stored behind the bar.
And that’s because wine, and its glory, is all about time, place, and feeling.
It works the other way, too.
Years ago, I worked at the busy, millennial-era restaurant, Al Frisco’s, with a guy named Chico. Hand on heart, that’s his name.
Chico, only about 25 years old and already divorced, was bone-skinny, with a gravelly voice from way too many smokes, and pock-marked cheeks, but was so fun and exuberant, he had no trouble picking up the ladies by the bucket-full.
He also had fantastic taste in food and wine. One day, as we were cashing out, drinking a carafe of house white while counting our tips, he told me about the worst wine he ever had.
I blinked first.
“My wife and I were really struggling. Had been for months,” Chico told me, carefully dividing his bills into their denomination piles. “I decided enough is enough, and I pulled out all the stops to really get the motor running again, you know what I mean? I cooked all day, and we had this bottle of Margaux in the closet. We really splashed out when we went on our honeymoon to Bordeaux with the idea we would have it on our 20th anniversary. But I thought, fuck it, let’s open ’er up now.”
Chico paused for dramatic effect, or maybe just by coincidence, to take a long drag of his cigarette and glug of the cheap house wine.
“So, there we were, romantic dinner, legendary wine, talking again. And she looked at me, so pretty in the candlelight, and said, ‘I want a divorce.’ And that was the worst bottle of wine I’ve ever had.”
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