Oh No! Who Let These Guys Into the Wine Tasting in Mendoza, Argentina

Dave ad I together make quite the traveling duo. He's dark skinned and locals often mistake him for at least partially Latino, and there is no mistaking the fact that I am a gringo. If someone walks up to the two of us without fail they will speak to him in Spanish and me in English, always. This has had it's advantages, but one thing that always made me laugh is when I order the bottle of wine with dinner they present the bottle of wine to Dave, because he has no idea what he is doing. Dave is the type of guy that a good selection of beer is Coors Origonal and Coors Light. I adimitedly am not much better but know enough to not look like an idiot (well, any more than usual).

So knowing that we would be going to the wine capital of Argentina Dave and I took it upon orselves to do some research on the finer points in wine tasting. We were very diligent an learned a lot of vocabulary like the five S's: 1) see 2)swirl 3)sniff 4)sip 5)savor. We learned key words that are often used to describe wines that we would be sampling, for instance the Malbec often is described as tasting like violets, fruit, or beer. The Cabenet Souvignon reaks of blackcurrants, eucalyptus, chocolate, and tobacco. Beyond that, we leared other common words in wine tasting descriptions such as mown grass, minerals, pepper, bramble fruits, and (my personal favorite) pencil shavings. Besides our vocabulary, we also took it upon ourselves to practice our pretentiousness. We became so good at the whole gig that we decided that wine tasting was not abiguous and pretentious enough yet and the second day of tasting we needed to up the antee some.

So we dressed in our finest trucker hats, workout shorts, and best socks and sandles combo, rented a couple of bike, and went out to show Argentina how wine tasting should be done. Like any good taster we started with our sparking whites which Dave described as being ¨surprisingly light for its darkness.¨ Not to be out done I decided that there was no adjective that was good enough to describe the sample and thus had to describe it as being ¨violently¨. I tell you, that describes it the best.

Sample two was a good (how we pernounced it) Cab-er-ett So-vig-non, to which I went first. Just the nose of the wine made me want to faint, but I pushed through and tried it only to angrly spray down the server exclaiming, ¨Why would you serve this Nazi boot polish?¨ I bet she learned her lesson. Dave actually enjoyed both his glass and mine, and to quoth him, ¨The Maggotty cheese sensation was balanced quite well with the hysteria of the obviously new barrels. It tasted so angry white boy polka.¨

After making a couple of recomendations to the other impressed tourist for Chared-o-nayse that was comfortably numb or more accurately like Lynn's track cletes (hey sis) we moved on to the next winery. This time we were introduced to a wine that neither of us had tasted. The Pee-not No-ire was quite good. It was so very electric that I had o take my finger out of the light socket. It reminded me of a tropial beach on a fall day, and Dave of the color yellow and Bob Barker's retirement.

The cement our fame into the wine tasting history books, Dave and I pulled a move that was described to me by a wine tasting legend who shall remain nameless (but his might begin with `A´ and end with `dam Pivetta´). After going through all the S´s it was so obvious what the wine tasted like. So I opened my eyes to the gathering crowd and announced, ¨It tastes like, like, like... grapes!¨ As everyone rolled their eyes and walked away, I couldn´t help but think how accurate the description was, nor why the owners has not personally invited me to stay as their permanent wine taster. I guess they just don´t tallent if it hits them on the taste buds.