On (Watching) Wine Tasting

"I thought I could do it," I said. 

I could not. 

The year is 2025 and we've just done our first wine tasting since my diagnosis and treatment for liver cancer. Well, Jessica tasted the wine, and I watched. It mirrored a very similar event almost 11 years earlier. It's 2014, and I have just met my future wife, Jessica. We've dated a few times, but this is going to be different. We were going WINE TASTING. I knew nothing about wine. Well, nothing substantial. Wine equaled grape juice gone bad. Something that you got for a fancy occasion.  "Three Buck Chuck" or Manischewitz for communion at church until they got all fancy and used "good" wine. Wine was not a means to an end. Or an end. It was just there, and not very there at all.

In 2014, I had already live 42 years on this planet and had probably only consumed a grand total of maybe 20 gallons of alcoholic beverages, with the lions' share of that being beer. That's 160 pints of beer. Over the 21 years since I had TURNED 21, I'd probably had a grand total of .63 pints of beer a month. Or almost eight pints a year. Isn't it ironic that I ended up with liver cancer for being such an "anti lush?" Now, my alcohol use did increase in my late 30's and early 40s, but not to what anyone except for abolitionists and some other anti-drink groups would consider a problematic amount. Let's say two pints of beer a week. Nobody is getting drunk or pickling his or her liver with that amount of drink.

But yes, I'd have to say that I had neither a lot of experience with alcohol, or much knowledge of it. That was when I was introduced to what I imagined to be the rarified air of quality wine. Jessica had a membership to Stoller Vinyards and asked me if I wanted to go wine tasting with her. Of course, because we were dating, I'd go anywhere she wanted me to go.  If she had said "let's go to the garbage dump to watch the seagulls," I would have said "yes, I think that garbage dump seagulls are lovely this time of the year," because she would have been there. That's how much I wanted to be around her. 

But the thing is, and I would have never believed it possible, I actually started to enjoy the flavor of the wine, not just the company. I had gone to many wine tastings and indulged in the sometimes awesome and sometimes less than stellar food pairings. But I've only ever been officially drunk fewer than there are fingers on either hand. I was mainly in it for the pleasure of the taste and the experience of the drinking of the wine. And man, there have been some really good ones. There was the bottle of Malbec at a party that I had more than my share of. There have be some Cab Savs that we excellent. And almost always, I had the company to share it with. The wine became the means and the end. The means to enjoyment with other people, and the end, the product which was so tasty. 

This is not meant to be a treatise on loss tinged with sadness. 

Of all of the things that I mentioned about the aspects of drinking, it's worth noting that it's still the SOCIAL part that is most important to me. It's probably better for me to be in the "I LITERALLY CAN'T DRINK, BECAUSE IT MAY CONTRIBUTE TO MY DEMISE BECAUSE OF THE CANCER" club than the "I can't drink because I'm a an alcoholic with a fully or mostly functioning liver." I don't have a problem with alcohol beyond the physical danger it could put me in. And because I'm not an addict, I can leave it very easily. But CAN'T, rather than CHOOSES NOT TO is somewhat freeing. Nobody is ever going to try to convince me to drink. Unless they're the biggest asshole on the planet. 

But again, I crave the social part. 

So, what's a man to do when he can't drink and wants the social part? I'm still figuring that out. If anyone has some suggestions, I'd certainly appreciate that.