RED OR WHITE?

It's 6: 09 a.m. Patrick is outside and it's Grey out.

They've been telling us a little red wine per day is good for your heart, so I've been taking a few swigs of a rather good Cabernet Sauvignon, my wine of choice, each night. It's a california grape from Winking Owl vinyards that I get from the cut rate market Aldi's for $2.99 a bottle, complete with foam cork. For the price, it can't be beat.

Which brings me to my wine story. This took place in late seventies or early eighties, when I worked in South Carolina. I had this fiery petite little southern redhead for a girl friend. Everyday at the job, I would tell Kim about her and what happened the previous night. Finally he got tired of my whining. "All you do is complain about her! Why are you even with her if she makes you so miserable?" A light bulb went off in my head. He was right. I loved her dearly, but we just didn't get along. No future. So I broke up with her. Anyway, we remained good friends, friends with benefits, as they say,oddly enough, and found ourselves on a road trip, I don't remember what the occasion was or where we went. We decided we would treat ourselves to this very exclusive expensive restauarant for dinner. I called and made reservations and when they arrrived, the Maitre de greeted us with a large green matchbook with my name imprinted on it in gold ink. If that was meant to impress us, it worked and I started to get real worried about prices. Anyway, when we got to our table, to my delight, the food was affordable. Long story short, I ordered a mid-priced bottle of red wine to go with our meal. The waiter served the wine. I noted that the label didn't seem to be exactly the same as what was listed on the menu, but it was the same type of wine, and not wanting to make waves, ( A bit intimidated by the surroundings) I approved it. It was good, the dryest wine I ever tasted. A bit later, a guy comes to the table, intorduces himself as the Wine Steward, I forget the french term he used, and asked us if we were enjoying the wine. I said yes, but that I was no connieser(sic), joking. He said they don't have much occasion to open a bottle of that particular vintage. I joked, why, Is it a bad choice. No, he said. Then he did a rather stange thing. He asked us if he could taste it. We said yes, he did, thanked us and left. Curious. When the bill came, it suddenly all made sense. The wine was $200.00! Now remember this was the Seventies. I don't know exactly, but I'm sure that would work out to over $500.00 at least, adjusted for inflation, in terms of our dollar today.

I told the waiter their was a mistake, and he brought me the menu. There it was. But Twilight Zone sank in: There it was--Number Eleven at $200.00 (I had ordered by the number) . But the menu had CHANGED (Play eirie music). I insisted this was not the menu I had ordered from ( sound like a pretty weak defence, huh?) Anyway, after a long while, the waiter comes back, seems they had NEW menus, exactly like the old, except for some textual changes, and some of the old ones were mixed in with the new, and I was in the right, and would be charged only the ten dollars listed for Number Eleven. Whew!!

I don't know if that was a bait and switch they used on the rubes, but I don't think so. I hope some peon busboy didn't get in trouble--but we had the bottle of wine of a lifetime that I'll never forget!
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