You call this stuff wine?

I should know better.

When the wine salesman, err, sommelier, comes up to me in the store trying to sell me something, its not necessarily something they think tastes good. Its usually a bottle that gets them their commission.

I normally steer clear of these people. They don't know my taste buds, how finicky I might be, whether I like spicy zins or big cabs or fruit forward petite syrahs.

They don't know whether I'm spending the last $12 in my pocket or I've cashed in the quarters in my piggy bank to buy a bottle whose vintage is in the 20th century.

They don't know. And I know they don't know. And so when their shelves are filled with dusty looking bottles with labels I've never heard of or read about, I go for my usual reliables: A Peachy Canyon. An Ed Meades. A Peter Mondavi. A Layer Cake or Boarding Pass Shiraz.

But sometimes, in my confusion, my self doubt about my own taste buds, and willingness to try something new, I don't buy what I think I want, they sell me what they want me to buy.

And I get home. And I take that first swig. And I wish I was drinking Reunite instead. And no, it's not just in my head.

And its not like you can take the bottle back. Uhh, sir, this Gnarly Head tastes like shit. I'd like to exchange this open bottle for your most affordable Barossa Valley Shiraz.

And its not like I'm going to go back and buy another bottle that I'd like better. I make decent coin, but a big percent _ rightfully _ goes to my son in Austin.

So when this happens to me _ happens, like I caught a disease or something, right? _ I'm stuck with the musty-feet tasting alcohol for the night.

And its like, when you get back to the house with your takeout and you realize they didn't put extra cheese on your pizza or extra cucumber sauce on your Gyro sandwich. You're starving. Right now. And every bite you take, you are muttering, damn, those mutha-fukkers.

But you go to bed with a full belly, only out of the $5.99 you put down for the Chick-fil-A on wheat which came broiled instead of breaded.

The angst is much more with a bad bottle of wine, when you invest $15 in some fancy sounding, Chateau foo foo that turns out tasting like whatever smegma must taste like.

Wine isnt like anything else. You get a certain quality when you pay a certain amount of money for single-malt scotch, or running shoes, or stonewashed blue jeans. But sometimes, that wine bottle on the top rack hides so many secrets that an article in Wine Spectator can't unearth.

You only know the wines you like by tasting the wines. To hell with what someone else might say.

I didn't go with my own instinct when the wine guy came up to me tonight with all of his fancy words and clever terminology.

That mutha-fukker.