Dealbreaker: The Wine Bar
The drink that sank my date.
by Will Doig
September 24, 2007
Shortly after I turned twenty-eight, I was asked on a date to a wine bar. From what others have told me, the wine-bar date seems to be a modern right of passage for those in their mid-to-late twenties. I know very little about wine. It's not that I don't like drinking wine. I buy bottles, four at a time, at Trader Joe's (total: $8.96). Wines with names like Rabbit Ridge and Ravenswood, Clay Station and Yellowtail. Wines with colorful logos on glossy black labels, from vintages like 2006 and vineyards in Lodi, California.
But I have little experience with wine as a thing, and I'm falling into the minority on this. Wine sales were up 3.4% over the past year — Americans consumed over 2.5 billion liters. Enrollment in wine schools has been rising at twenty-five percent per year, according to BusinessWeek. There's the Sideways effect, for sure, and Trader Joe's cheapies probably have something to do with it. But Sideways was targeted to people my parents' age, and Trader Joe's, at least for me, is more about getting buzzed at a premium price. I think it has more to do with this theory posited by Emily, a twenty-six-year-old writer from Brooklyn: "With internet dating, people are going on a lot more first dates and can't be bothered to be creative about them all the time. They become one-trick ponies. They become experts on wine and bring you to a wine bar. Chances are you're not the first person they've brought there."
That's exactly how I felt when I arrived for my date on the Lower East Side — the latest rapt audience for this guy's hit one-man show, Boy, Do I Know My Wine! But what I also felt was an unsettling combination of old and immature. Old because I was on a date at a wine bar — a more conservative venue than I saw myself dating in a year or two ago — and immature because I didn't have the appropriate skills, poise or factual knowledge to warrant my presence there.
A sommelier came over and handed me a leather-bound menu twenty-four inches high and three inches wide. Inside, in six-point italics, was a list of hundreds of wines. Most were from regions of the world I'd never heard of. None were from California. They ranged in price from my monthly internet bill to well beyond my Brooklyn two-bedroom's monthly rent.
My date was wearing a small black T-shirt to match his dark hair and complex demeanor. He had stick-thin, eggshell-white arms. "What kind of wine do you like?" he asked. I squinted at the list. Charmes-Chambertin, Joseph Roty, Cuvˇe de Tres Vieilles Vignes, 1985. Chateau Latour Grand Vin Pauillac, 1988.
"Something . . . red?" I said.
He smiled understandingly: Oh, I see. "Do you like fruit overtones?" he asked in a baby voice, cocking his head sympathetically. "Or something with a more oaky feel?"
"I think oaky. Definitely oak," I said.
"And what about body?" he continued. "Thin, medium or full?"
"Mmmmmedium."
"Okay!" He ran his finger slowly down the list, putting his vast oenophile's analytical skills to work based on the data I'd provided. Finally, he called the sommelier over in triumph. The little man clicked his heels and came bounding over to our table, hands clasped in anticipation. With a grand flourish, in what sounded like perfect pronunciation, my date looked up and ordered . . . some kind of expensive red wine.
Urban courtship has always encompassed a degree of know-it-allness — a degree that I've noticed only increases the older I get. More and more often, I find myself in group conversations, waiting on my toes for a segue or an allusion that I feel I know enough about to jump in and add something, but just when I think I've caught one, the topic has already zipped past, and I find myself thinking, "Wait! Go back! I wanted to say something about that too!"
The wine bar is this type of situation incarnate. When the little sommelier poured the wine, he poured it into my date's glass first. The date then sniffed his drink long and hard, held it up toward the light. I dutifully followed his lead. He told me about the region of Italy that the grapes were from. Eventually, the topic drifted away from the wine, but the tone had been set. We talked about the time he spent studying in Italy — turns out he's fluent in Italian. We talked about Italian history, then other types of history, then his family history — something to do with the wax industry. What about my family history? He wanted to know. I don't really know my family history. I should learn more about it. Genealogy is fascinating, he assured me.
Things continued along this vein. Without a hint of arrogance, he brought up topics ranging from upcoming foreign elections to an indie band called S.K. Robot. He mentioned an old movie he'd recently seen at the Anthology Film Archives, an art-house theater with uncomfortable seating. He affably asked me what I'd seen recently; all I could think of was The Descent.
"I feel inauthentic enough on first dates," says Joey, a twenty-five year old who lives in the East Village. Joey was once taken on a date to a wine bar by a girl who he describes as "pretty in a drastic way."
"I had just moved to New York days before, and many things were making me feel mature and immature at the same time," he says. "I remember feeling so out of place [in the bar] that I didn't know what to do with myself or what to say. If being at the wine bar made me feel grown up and proud to be living on my own in New York City, it also made me feel like a total fraud, and I haven't been back since."
When I tell people I dislike being taken to wine bars because I don't know wine, they don't understand why I can't just say to my date, "You know what? Why don't you order? I don't know anything about this." Self-deprecation is endearing, they point out. And I agree. The thing is, I already feel like I'm playing catch-up, even on neutral turf, when I'm in a date situation. My deprecation flows without a wine bar to help it along. And it's not that I'm unwilling to learn something new. I'm just looking for a level field where one person isn't there to show the other person "how it's done." I felt I had been brought to this wine bar for the express purpose of being wowed, to play the role of the magician's assistant, smiling brainlessly as he theatrically saws me in half and makes doves fly out of my segmented torso. I began to feel as if he were on a date with himself, and I was his wingman.
"The fact of the matter is, wine tasting is an intellectually dead pursuit. It's interesting for about fifteen seconds," says Leslie, a twenty-six-year-old journalist from the Upper East Side. "The culture is akin to the way academics use big words to make themselves sound impressive."
I think she's right. I remember a few facts I learned from my date that night, but there wasn't much in the way of incisive discussion, mainly because I felt I was out of my league. I shrank from raising points I might have brought up at a venue that didn't seem to demand a requisite expertise. Like I said, I struggle with this even when I feel comfortable.
When we left the bar, I was more than a little drunk. Over four glasses of wine — each a different type, each a new opportunity for a lesson in grapes — I'd learned that my date knew how to fix motorcycles, was scuba certified, had read the Koran, could bake a soufflé and was working on a pilot for the Cartoon Network starring characters he had designed in his spare time. None of this was relayed to me with smugness. It was simply put out there on the table, like the wine.
Afterward, we walked around for a while, then parted ways for what would turn out to be the first and last time. He headed for the 6 train. I headed for a bar.
©2007 Will Doig and hooksexup.com