Today I’m going to whine about wine.
Early in my adult life, around the discovery of the New World, I developed an appreciation for good wine. Like most curmudgeons, I have champagne tastes on a beer budget. Along with my appreciation for wine, I also developed an appreciation for wine humor. In either Esquire, The New Yorker or Playboy magazine I saw a cartoon of two bums sitting beside each other in the gutter. One of the bums was holding up a brown paper bag that held a bottle of wine and proclaimed to his friend: “It’s a good wine, but not a great wine.” I know how he feels.
Shortly after I came to Washington, DC in search of my first job, I started to frequent the city’s wine shops. At the time, the District of Columbia was one of the few places where a retail shop could also be a direct distributor and, as a result, the District became known for its excellent selection of good and great wines at the lowest available prices. On one of these visits I stopped at the venerable wine shop Plain Old Pearson’s on Connecticut Avenue. As I browsed through the shelves, my eyes grew large when I spotted a bottle of 1973 vintage Chateau Petrus. For wine aficionados, Chateau Petrus is The Holy Grail of wine, a great French Bordeaux from the Pomerol region and one of the most sought after and exclusive bottles of wine in the world. Not only was it there in front of my eyes, it was there for the astounding price of $11 (USD)!
I was both shocked and crestfallen. I was shocked because the price was so low it had to be a mistake and crestfallen because, freshly minted job-seeker that I was, I didn’t have eleven dollars to my name. My shoulders slumped as I shuffled my way back to my dingy apartment to weep over the missed opportunity to buy a bottle of one of the great wines of the world.
Moving ahead to the present day, many of the wine shops in the District are gone – victims to mergers, changing liquor laws and real estate development. Plain Old Pearson’s is still there however at the same spot on Connecticut Avenue. Even though I had not been there in decades, I decided to make a visit when happenstance brought me past its door. Shopping the shelves, I got to the section dedicated to Bordeaux and what should face me but a newer vintage of the self-same Chateau Petrus, now at the healthy price tag of $2,299 a bottle! One again, I was shocked and crestfallen. I still couldn’t afford to buy it.
Oh well, Two Buck Chuck isn’t that bad.
Just like this story, it’s a good whine but not a great whine.
Curmudgeon at Large 
Pingback: Crestfallen. Twice. | rsmithing
I drink beer. HF
Fewer problems with beer drinking.
Ouch on the $11 – and mega ouch on today’s price! Great read. The beginning reminded me of a card that cracked me up years ago – but I couldn’t find it online. … Two snowman sitting at a table, but one had a bottle stuck in his head to chill it.
The card sounds like my kind of humor.
It was a hoot … wish I could find it!
Here in Ontario, wine price and distribution are strictly controlled by the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario). It’s tough to find truly good ‘inexpensive’ wines and when you do find one you like, they often don’t carry it in quantity (small wineries have a tough time getting their product into the LCBO and are given very limited shelf space). I used to enjoy ‘hunting’ for enjoyable bottles at $5 a pop (back in the day); now it’s difficult to find a decent bottle for under $10 (and when I do, I buy a case!). Great post – I always enjoy a little whine with dinner!
Thank you. I provide a wide selection of whines at affordable prices.
I heard then nasty rumor that two buck chuck is going up from $2.00 a bottle to $2.50. Can a guy get a break?
So it becomes two and a half Buck Chuck and a half?
This was a magnificent, full-bodied whine, worthy of a true connoisseur. I shall store it respectfully in my cellar under carefully-controlled conditions, and bring it out to enjoy on my next special occasion.
Ha-ha. Keep it with the vintage whines.
What a story! I would whine about wine, too…if I were you.
I do and I am.
I hear the flatish kind o’wine bottles from behind the Circle K counter are worth the $4.99….
And there’s always wine in box!
I now have an image of going to a fancy restaurant and being presented with wine in a box by the sommelier.
Oh yes, classy stuff.
I found this an impertinent little whine with hints of blackberry and a whoosh of hollyhock … obviously a very good year.
For me, any year is a good whine year.
At least once in my life I hope to be fortunate enough to try a really ridiculously expensive bottle of wine… on someone else’s dime. Two buck chuck does the job on my budget.
I like the idea of tasting expensive wine on someone else’s dime.
Did you hear today that Two Buck Chuck is going up to $2.49? That is an outrage!
If it gets to three dollars, it becomes Three Dollar Charles.
Two buck chuck is $2.99 here in AZ, so it is called Three Buck Chuck, of course.
I, too, have wandered after nights of over-imbibing.
Your whine brought on a good belly laugh from me. I can’t drink wine. Why? It all started after a spectacular drunken evening brought on by cheap red wine, I was so ill, I’m fairly sure I relieved my body of food I’d eaten 6 years before and I had a headache that rivaled the hammers of Thor in it’s constant hammering on my temples. I envy you your ability to appreciate a good wine–to me, the smell alone brings back that night of horror.
I sorta wandered there, didn’t I?
Great story! I used to live around the corner from Plain Old Pearson’s!
It’s still there in all its faded glory.