Aged Wine

I learned something tonight. Something admittedly small but which should be seen for what it is: freedom from mental slavery.

I feel like Emmeline Pankhurst, a suffragette from the early days of the twentieth century, who chained herself to railings in England as a way of getting women the right to vote. No, I don’t mean cold, unfeminine and quite unattractive to men – I mean empowered.

Certain People would contradict my discovery. Note the capital Letters. Certain People is my term for that group of people who think who believe they know things that are good for the rest of us; supposed facts about the way life works that translate into rules for governing themselves and by which they determine the foolhardiness - or general ignorance - of others.

Those beliefs would include the assumption that a bottle of wine, once opened, should be poured down the sink if not consumed within an evening or two. I would suspect that such people might die of cardiac arrest if told that there might be enjoyment found in a chardonnay opened and partially consumed prior to a 5,000 mile bicycle trip and subsequently discovered, four months later, in the fridge.

Please don’t think I’m getting at wine snobs – even by the use of that term. I appreciate a good wine over a bad one, but a great deal of taste is subjective and so my idea of what makes one better than another might not agree with a more experienced drinker’s view. However, if that quaffer is content to allow my enjoyment what he might refer to as cooking wine without making jokes at my expense or otherwise pretending that I was born of a goat and raised in a trailer in the hills of North Carolina, we can be friends.

So now you know the source of my empowerment. I’ll refer to it as aging.

Just for the record, I don’t eat congealed cereal.

Or green bread.

But blue cheese that’s increased in blueness? Oh mama…..