Spo-Dee-O-Dee Rich Blecharz
Watching and listening to some other people so I wouldn’t look like a complete fool, the first thing I learned is that people didn’t actually spit out the wine. A small portion of wine was poured into their glass and they would hold it up to the light to observe its color. Next they swirled around the glass to release the flavor. Before the wine is drank, (or is it drunk? I think drunk is what you get if you spend too much time at events like this.) people held the glass in such a manner that they would place their nose in the glass and inhale the aroma of the wine. Then and only then was the wine actually tasted. If the person chose not to finish what was in their glass, they would pour it into a container, which turned out to be what I always thought was the giant spit cup. A pitcher of water was placed at each table so people could wash out their glass, and this was also emptied into the container.
After studying the scene for about ten minutes, I decided I had picked up enough etiquette to appear as if I belonged there. Being ignorant to what was considered a quality wine; I picked my wineries using arbitrary means. The first one I went to was Francis Ford Coppola’s winery, simply because I was a fan of his films (The Godfather Trilogy, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, in case you forgot.) The wine being presented was called Director’s Cut, and after mimicking what I saw other people doing, I finally tasted it and it seemed like decent enough stuff to me. Next I tried the Eagle Eye winery, simply because the bottles had cool pictures of eagles getting into adventures on them. They were serving several wines, and the woman at the table encouraged me to try all of them. I stopped after two or three, as most of the wines all started to taste the same. (That’s not a slight to the winery, I just didn’t know any better.) More importantly, I didn’t want to end up having an impromptu meeting with a tree or the police on the drive home. If the cops had set up a sobriety check point outside Heinz Field, they could have filled their quotas for three months in a single night. After taking a break for some more food, my final winery visit was chosen because of the African American man with a straw hat and overalls sitting at the table. If anyone knew how to make wine here, it was this guy. Hearing him talk, it sounded like he did it all himself, and he was very knowledgeable about everything having to do with wine making. And in the glass of wine he was holding there were ice cubes. I guess my mom was on to something. The whole time I felt like I was being spoken to in a foreign language. People threw around terms like varietal, Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and Shiraz. I had no idea what any of these meant, nor how the soil the grapes were grown in could affect the taste of the wine.
Soon, I saw that the commoners with the cheaper Grand Tasting tickets were let in, and being that I was a VIP with two hours of wine tasting experience, I felt I couldn’t be in the same room with these people and decided it was time to leave. I was much too sophisticated for the common peasant now.
The Pittsburgh Wine festival was a very well organized and stylish event. Unfortunately the whole wine subculture eluded me. As I said, I couldn’t tell many of the wines apart and I thought most tasted the same after awhile. Maybe I was just uncultured, or my taste buds had been killed from the straight whiskey and vodka I usually drank. I wonder how many of the people there, if blindfolded, could tell the difference between a $10 bottle of wine, versus a $300 bottle. But it was very interesting to immerse myself in a different scene for an evening. For many people, I think it was more of a social event, a place to see and be seen, with some expensive booze and quality food thrown in. As for me, it was back to the corner dive bar where I belonged. If only I could convince them to put out some chocolate and cheese on the bar instead of peanuts and popcorn…
Rich Blecharz was born a nice boy in Pittsburgh, PA. But something went horribly wrong and he grew up into a cynical, sarcastic and opinionated wreck of a human being. In his free time he enjoys watching reruns of The Golden Girls while drinking cheap liquor from a brown paper bag. He is an Aquarius, and enjoys long, drunken, moonlit horseback rides along the creek in his backyard. He also believes that the world now needs Hunter S. Thompson more than ever.
