Wineing . . .

I never liked wine . . . I was a beer person, until my son suggested one day, that the reason I didn’t like wine, was because of the 'crap' wine that Regis drank. He suggested that I should try a nice robust red wine instead of the sweet bubbly stuff Regis favoured. He was right, and once I tasted nice Shiraz, Cabs, or Malbecs, I found I did actually like wine. Now, my son and I do not agree completely on wine . . . He thinks I buy cheap wine, and I must admit, I find it hard to spend too much on a bottle of wine. Where I look for the sales or interesting labels , he goes for the slightly higher levels in vintages. On one of his trips to Dartmouth, a case of wine arrived at our door prior to his visit, so he would have “his wine” when he got there. This system works out pretty well, because with both of us purchasing bottles, the wine rack is always well stocked. And I do get to taste some of his “better” wine from time to time, but I still do not notice any real difference. 

That bottle is empty

I like coming to visit here in Toronto, because the wine in the LCBO outlets are all a couple of dollars cheaper than in Nova Scotia because of lower taxes, and I can usually find bottles unavailable back home. There is one particularly nice LCBO location in a restored train station with an amazing selection of wines from all over the world that I like to visit at least once every trip. During this visit to Toronto I bought a case of wine there with a nice variety of interesting reds, whites and bubbly (for Regis). Back at the condo, I unpacked my purchases and put them in a wine rack that Ryan was not using. 

Then at dinner a couple of evenings later I pulled out a bottle to have with our meal. I checked the label, a 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon, but as I had bought a number of bottles, I also checked with Ben if it was one of mine or his. He assured me that it was not one he bought so I opened it and tasted it - a very nice cab, and poured glasses for myself and Ben. Ben uses a wine app on his phone to record wines he has tasted so he took a photo of the label to enter this bottle into his records. As he looked at the reviews, he said “That’s odd, the app says this wine is worth $45?”. I immediately apologized for opening one of ‘their’ wines, but Ben insisted he had not bought this one, and I knew I certainly had not chosen a $45 bottle of wine. I decided to check the LCBO receipt to be sure, and there it was . . . somehow I had picked up the wrong bottle and put it in my cart. It was not actually $45 but was still $41.95. I will admit I am not very careful about checking my receipts so I had not noticed the total was higher than normal, as there were also some very inexpensive wines in the case. 

OOPS

As Ben and I were laughing at my mistake, we both refilled our glasses and when Ryan got to the table and found out we were enjoying a $42 bottle of wine, he was very willing to accept a glass as well. And, I do actually think that it was a bit better than my normal $20 bottles.