So this weekend my new girlfriend and I went down to the DC area to meet my mother, who was briefly back in the country and visiting my aunt who lives there. This is, of course, stressful, because like any healthy 30 year old, I have mother issues, and I don't mean in the Oedipal kind. I kept having to emphasize with my girlfriend that I wasn't at all worried that she wouldn't like my mother, or even that my mother wouldn't like her--more that she wouldn't like me with my mother, or would see my neuroses evident in my mother and would then extrapolate where my neuroses would end up years down the line and be horrified. Like the astronaut in 2001 looking down the wormhole, and instead of remarking, "My god, it's full of stars!" instead say, "My god, it's filled with crazy!"
My fears were ungrounded. The trip went just fine. My aunt's three year old daughter was a handful of crazy, but only in the way a three-year old girl hepped up on caffeine and life can be.
But while we were down there, we drank. My aunt is no longer with her husband, but she does have the wine closet that they put together, featuring hundreds of bottles of wine that they bought to drink, or to store and then sell off years later, or just to collect. It was all in a ten foot by ten foot climate controlled cellar. We picked out some wine to drink with each meal. Family interaction always goes better with booze, unless you're an Irish family in a bildungsroman.
From left to right:
Chrysalis Papillon Reserve 2003, from a local Virginia Winery
Alexander's Crown Cabernet Savignon 1976 (Sonoma Vineyards)
Delaney Vineyards Cabernet Savignon 2003 (Texas)
Cappellano Barolo 1995 (Italy)
Domaine Sante-Anne Syrah 1994 (Cotes du Rhone)
Not pictured:
Two bottles Brut Champagne (don't remember)
One bottle South African Eiswine
One Reisling that was very good, but I don't remember where from
One Gruner Veltlinger, also very good, but I don't remember where from, and no photographic evidence remains
I learned that neither my girlfriend nor my mother know how to use a foil-cutter or a wine bottle opener. Hopefully that's just about the only similarity they have.
It was my first time ever drinking a wine that was older than I am (the 1976 Cab Sav). That's an interesting experience. It seemed almost more effort than it was worth, when the cork disintegrated and it needed to be decanted through cheesecloth. It was smooth, except for the grit involved, but probably mostly wasted on me*.
* I'm only a couple of years on from making the joke "I smell hints of fermented grapes" when others are talking about the nose of a particular wine.
It was still good, and it was better than talking about personal things with my mother. We talked about cats and Costco, mostly.
And I never never never want to have children, right now.
