Stick a Cork in It

So it’s come to this: Kayne took a bottle of screw-cap wine as a party offering the other night.

“The thing is,” she said, “it’s really perfect for a party, because --”

She stopped at that point, no doubt considering the possibility that I was gearing up to mock her.

Well…

I have a brief and undistinguished history with screw-cap wine, dating to some high school experimentation with a brand called Ripple. “A 90-cent drunk,” one of my more frugal friends called it admiringly, a comment that I think speaks succinctly to more than just the cost.

In college, I flirted for a while with both Boone’s Farm Apple and Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill. One night my roommate, Furby, pitched in as I studied for a test in the easiest college course I ever took, physical science. We tossed back a few bottles of the strawberry while he called out questions and I answered. Mental acuity deteriorated rather rapidly. I remember this exchange in particular:

Furby: “How far is the nearest star?”

Me: “Far!”

Us: Raucous laughter.

Perhaps needless to say, I flunked that test.

But association with academic failure is not the basis of my long-held anti-screw-cap bias; it’s the association with inferiority. I’m not saying the screw-cap stuff won’t deliver the goods, if you define the goods as teeth-melting inebriation. But, typically, screw-cap wines have not been the ones that evoked discussion on bouquet, balance, aftertaste and the like. No hints of allspice, no traces of morello cherry. Recommended cheese pairing: Velveeta.

So to take a bottle as a gift to a party....

I know, I know, true, tree-based corks have been going the way of the dodo for a while now, for environmental and other reasons. But at least the plastic substitutes had the advantage of still allowing a suave gent (or me) the chance to deftly apply a corkscrew and demonstrate the seductive appeal of a smooth, powerful extraction.

“Shall I pour, my dear?”

Somehow the romance suffers when the operation amounts to, “Here, baby, I twisted one off for you.” I mean, she might as well be drinking beer.

Which, in a case like that, I already am.