Well clench my pearls, my wonderful friend A informed me I never posted about a wine tasting we attended earlier this year. Why haven’t I written about this? Maybe it was the sheer ridiculousness of the whole event and me trying to block it out of my memory?
I am always on time with the exception of parties in which I like to be right on time or a few minutes late. I don’t like to be the ass hole that shows up 20 minutes early then your host feels as if they need to entertain you. My next door neighbor has a friend that coaches a girls softball team in our town. The coach was hosting a wine tasting party where a percentage of the proceeds went towards the team. It was essentially a Tupperware party, minus the plastic but add the wine. Game on friends.
I was happy to see another couple that I absolutely adore came for the event. I’m also glad we would know someone. I was already feeling awkward as we came to realize this was being held at someone’s apartment clubhouse. As I walked in, something didn’t feel right. Sure, they were sending all kids to the screening room and that was pretty cool that the apartments had a screening room but again, something was off.
I looked around the room and in my quick rain man calculations deduced there was roughly 45-50 people. I then looked at the front of the room to see 5 bottles of wine. This equated to 2.54 ounces per person….for the entire night….are you fucking kidding me?
Do I run away?
Do I stay?
I don’t know.
I decided to stay and to see how things played out. After all, there was comfort food on the bar, including little meatballs! Lil’ meatballs! The kind that has marinated in jelly and ketchup all day. I’m like a fucking chihuahua here; give me semi-palatable food and I will kiss your ass. I was so hangry that I anticipated eating no less than 8 Pete Sweddy balls on my plate.
Unfortunately, like a POW camp, the food was rationed. I shit you not when we got to the buffet line, I peered at the paper plate to find it was divided into 3 sections & the number of allotted food was hand written on the plate. We were then expected to take our ration and wait until the whole fucking clubhouse had received their 1 meatball, 2 shrimp and a slice of cheese.
By now I’m receiving the following text:
Mom, these girls are so mean. They told us to sit down and shut up!
“These girls” he was referring to were who we were there for…..paying money to support their cause. To say I was frustrated was an understatement. I excused myself from the line, marched over to the screening room and knocked on the door.
When it opened, I found several headband clad girls, sitting up against the wall, glaring at me.
“Yeah, you guys telling the kids to sit down and shut up? I don’t think so; be respectful.” I said then closed the door to go back to my cute lil’ party.
By now A’s husband had eaten everything on his plate and I was looking at my plate like a predator. They finally began to ration the wine which was indeed 1 sip per bottle, per person. Also, we were told not to eat the food until we paired it with the appropriate wine. To torture myself, I raised my plate up to my nose to breath in the warm sweetness of the meatball.
When it was our turn to have a sip of wine I began the negotiations.
“Hi, I would like to buy a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon I see here it’s $25. Do you accept check?”
“Oh, none of these bottles are available tonight to take home. That’s illegal. You sample tonight, purchase then your wine is sent to you.”
Seriously? This is not how wine tasting works. O.k., maybe it is but not the ones I’ve hosted. You make sure you have a ton of wine and food, case closed. I turned to my husband.
“What’s a wine tasting without more wine?”
“A wine tasting.” He said.
“Yes but that’s not the point.”
By now, A was getting a text from her daughter, similar to the text I had received about ill-treatment.
In the end
I had 1 meatball, 2 shrimp and a slice of cheese. Alcohol consumption: 2.54 ounces. I left hangry, annoyed and frustrated. I clearly learned my lesson on which “wine tastings” to avoid in the future. So tell me, have you ever been to these so-called wine tastings? What was your experience like?
this does sound a bit grim
Grim, frustrating, annoying…pick one. It all blew!
Love this! I can sympathise with the lack of food & especially with the lack of wine I’d have been gutted.
Yeah and you don’t want to be that person that gathers up your kids because there isn’t enough wine. I’m sure the collective WTF’s, running through everyone’s heads were at least 500+.
Ridiculous! I haven’t had an experience like this myself. BUT I did write a scene for my novel where the food is rationed similarly and the host freaks out when there aren’t enough hot dogs because someone ate two. Based loosely on a story I’d heard from a friend about her rationing experience, the scene was fun to write. Your story though feels like the old saying ” truth is stranger than fiction.” Who give 2.54 ounces of wine! Personally, I need to drink at least 12 ounces to convince me to buy a $25 bottle of wine!
Right?! I just felt taken advantage of. We made an effort to come out to this, to support this team and we are rewarded with 1 slice of cheese, 1 meatball, 2 shrimps and 2.54 ounces of wine. Who am I Fievel Mousekewitz?
Fievel! I love that movie. 🙂
Oh good! You got the reference!
Lol!No, I haven’t been to one before, but to be honest wine gets to me… so that 2.whatever oz would be about enough lol!
Oh my! We need to work on your wine threshold! I mean after all, aren’t you a teacher? That alone would drive me to drink.
Lol! Thing is… if i drink then I can’t get up for school… if i succumbed I’d need s drink nightly not weekendly! ?
Yeah, I could see how that could be a vicious cycle.
Exactly…!!!
I don’t like wine but my pet peeve is always when people don’t provide enough food. If you don’t want to provide enough, don’t have the event!
Right! I totally understand not wasting food but if we make the effort to come to the party you better damn well feed us….oh and not mistreat our children.
I suppose the only credible thing from said wine tasting (can we call it that? I mean a thimble full is hardly a tasting is it??) was that you provided a post that I could chuckle at in sympathy. I stopped going to them ages ago owing to voluminous cases that rendered a grim head the following day. The equivalent of a beer festival, but with wine.
The food might have been OK if the meatball was vast in girth with giant mutated shrimps; however, your tone suggest otherwise and a rather crap night!
Gary, I should have called this How to Screw Up a Wine Sip. Because it was literally an adorable little sip. And your right, if the meatball was the size of my fist, I’m on board. I can easily down 10 shrimp at a sitting and to only allow 2 is down right mental abuse. And the worst part that I didn’t even write about, the shrimp were the last thing to taste with the wine so we had to wait till wine was poured for 50 people…..twice before we could eat the shrimp. We began to question the safety of the shrimp as it laid lifeless on my plate, looking at me and saying, “eat me…eat me”.
This is an obvious “traumatic” experience; I feel there was serious potential for a much longer rant upon matters of wine, meatball and shrimp; which, coincidentally is very like one of my post titles Of Wine, Nature and Elegies in Oak. FIFTY people? Your shrimp lay passive for a very long time then and clearly not under the shady zone of a giant meatball!!!
This is an obvious “traumatic” experience; I rather feel there was serious potential for a much longer rant upon matters of wine, meatball and shrimp; which, coincidentally is very like one of my post titles Of Wine, Nature and Elegies in Oak. FIFTY people?
Your shrimp lay passive for a very long time then and clearly not under the shady zone of a giant meatball!!!
Luckily you weren’t asked to slice and share the shrimp ? Fun post.
That would have been the icing on the cake!
What the heck?! What’s the point?! Ugh, this person was not meant to host a party. I understand it was meant to raise money but still, let people have some damn fun. Ugh, sorry you had to go through that
Thank you Nicole. We immediately stopped and bought wine on the way home. This was so ridiculous.
You lasted longer than I would have!
My only experience with a wine tasting ended with Me consuming all ‘free’ bottles; eating all accompanying food placed in front of us; being told i had an ‘undeveloped palate’ and Me puking up in the toilets for half an hour. In my defence, no one discussed wine tasting etiquette with Me before we got there 😉
It was a great day!
Ok see, that sounds like you would be an amazing buddy to attend a wine tasting (a real wine tasting) with. You just want to have fun and eat. Can’t blame us.
LOL … well, thats what I thought it was all about … turns out there is an unspoken expectation … yeah, I don’t those lol.
But your one … I can’t think of anyone who’d actually on purpose, attend … and stay 😉
Some day I’ll have a Hot Mess Wine Tasting and you will be invited. I’ll have wine pouring from a life size Greek God or something. Like, you will literally be able to swim in it. I’ll have a buffet solely dedicated to cheese and grapes and Uber cars waiting to take everyone back to their hotels. Sound good?
Sounds perfect!! 😉
I’ve not been to many wine tastings. Guess I’m not cool and sophisticated enough. The few times I have been, they are come-ons. You get a tiny taste of wine and if you want more, you can buy a glass.
And see, I would have totally been open to paying for more but it was like the apocalypse happened. We had 5 bottles to ration between 50 people and nothing was going to increase the amount of wine available to us.
Nope. I’ve only been to wine tastings at actual vineyards. That’s crazy. At least have a lot of food for the guests to eat.
Right! It was an unobtainable carrot dangling in front of us.
LOL. I would have been hot.
That’s not a tasting. It’s a teasing.
A wine teasing….I like it!!!
I would very much NOT like it. Boo