The Life of a Wino

Times have been a little slow round the ol 'pocalypse ranch lately, which usually means that things have been too busy to waste time tappin' away at words that no one's gonna read. Being busy is a good thing though... not necessarily for a blog, but so it goes.

Adventuring has been happening, however, even though the winter months tend to be the slow season. This weekend, I decided to classy it up a bit with a trip to the big city with my better half.

On Saturday, we hit up the annual San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition at Fort Mason. I don't know if you've ever been to one of these, but it's gotta be any wino's vision of heaven.

From 2-5 pm, it's a full-on free-for-all with the best wineries on the West Coast. There must have been hundreds of bottles to sample (and re-sample). This is the kind of festival that really gives you a reason to celebrate.

Now as for myself, I've never been an expert in the world of wine. I couldn't tell much of a difference between a $2.50 bottle of Rite Aid wine and a $35 bottle of Francis Ford Coppola wine (doesn't that guy make movies anymore... or did he die?). That's not to say I can't appreciate a good bottle of wine... it's just that my wine purchasing is generally directed by how interesting or hilarious the label on the bottle is. I've come to learn that this isn't generally the best plan of action, and here's my theory as to why: If your wine sucks, but it has a funny name, stupid people will buy it anyway. I'm not proud to count myself among that demographic, but what can ya do. I'm a sucker for a picture of a dog drinking booze (or a "booze hound"... damn, I should open a winery!).

Here's a few examples... there was Big Dog, which somebody explained to me was owned by the same company that makes those Big Dog t-shirts that fat guys wear.

I don't know if that's true, but I must say that the wine actually tasted like the smell of one of those outlet stores. You know, kind of a leathery, new jacket smell. Maybe fat guys dig it, but I wasn't a fan.

I also came across the Side Job, which sounds enough like some sort of dirty sexual thing that it made me a bit uneasy.


I don't know what goes on in the "Side Job Cellars," but I can only assume it's something along the lines of that Kubrick movie... I think it was called Tom Cruise Goes to an Orgy. Wine wasn't bad though.

So, all in all, a fine adventure. Towards the end of the event, you could tell that the sold-out crowd was getting a little sloppy, as people were constantly bumping into each other and pushing in to get their last serving. Ah, the life of a lush. AKA a wino.