Wino in a Wine Tasting Room…

Appropriate – the dried vines, the unused grapes…

I went to a wine tasting yesterday. Glutton for punishment you ask? Remember the movie Sideways where the lead character is so distraught and desperate to get drunk, he downs the spit-bowl on the counter at a snooty winery? That’s what you picture, right?

I didn’t cause a scene. I am in the middle of Georgia wine country, and Hightower Creek Vineyards is down the street. It’s supposed to be good wine (the Merlot is called “Deliverance” so they’ve got a sense of humor) and I thought I’d get a bottle for Lauren and Jon Jon for Christmas.

This is something recovering alcoholics don’t talk about much; the things we can’t do anymore. The cack-handedness of being the only person who is not sipping wine in a wine tasting room (I know, I know – why go at all?). But I soldiered up to the bar, ate a few mini-oyster crackers to clear my palate, asked for a couple of bottles and when the nice lady asked, “Well don’t you want to taste it?”

I said, “No thanks.”

There are many recovering alcoholics who say they don’t miss drinking. And we all know I don’t miss being a miserable drunk, but Hightower Creek Winery is a  quaint farm, down a long dirt road, with a pristine pond and a porch. And the tasting room is warm. You could while away a few hours in a window seat with a view of the cloud crusted mountains – the light filtering through the clear red liquid, the smell…

Maybe I am a glutton for punishment.