Ever had someone say something rude to you, and then hours (or days) later, you thought of all the sharp-witted things you could have said in return? It’s not a very adult longing, but I sometimes wish I could step back in time and put “George and Julia” in their place.
My husband and I were on our modest honeymoon in April of 2006 when we encountered George and Julia (their names have been changed to protect the discourteous). We had just met up with Ben’s former college roommate and his wife hours before at a beautiful Napa Valley B&B.
Our friends were incredibly generous—they gifted us our stay at the inn and took us to what should have been a lovely dinner that evening. However, they were also a bit shy about meeting me for the first time, and perhaps to feel more at ease, they invited another couple to dinner to facilitate conversation—at least, I guess that’s what they were thinking. Ben’s friend cautioned us that “George can be a little pretentious.” I think the word he was looking for was “obnoxious,” but that was yet to be determined.
Ben and I were introduced to George and Julia at the restaurant. He was a professor of optometry at a major university, and she was a well-known landscape designer. We sat down, and George presented the impressive bottle of wine they had brought to share at dinner. The restaurant did have a good wine selection (it was Napa Valley, after all), but he probably preferred to pay a corking fee rather than restaurant mark-up on a premium wine. Again, this is an assumption on my part.
The wine was soon opened, and after it was poured, I took a reflective sip and said, “I taste a note of anise—you know, like licorice.”
George promptly rolled his eyes and said, “Oh, it always slays me when people who know nothing about wine say, ‘I taste black cherry,’ or something like that.”
Mind you, I had known this goober for all of 5 minutes, and already he had been pointlessly arrogant and tactless. True, I was just a wine neophyte at the time, and I couldn’t have told you the difference between a Grenache and a Sangiovese. Nevertheless, I was an invited guest and a newlywed, and my mama had raised me to have better manners than George had just exhibited. Ben and I both spent the rest of the dinner looking like deer in the headlights.
There wasn’t much else we could do. When George wasn’t extemporizing about art, science, and philosophy, Julia was endlessly dropping the names of her glamorous clients. They also had a college-age daughter who apparently was a cross between a Rhodes Scholar and a Playboy Playmate, if you believed all the gas they were giving out.
I don’t think the other four of us said more than 10 words the entire THREE hours we sat at that table with those two dreadful bores. I remember that I had lamb that night and that I was wearing a gray cashmere sweater. But what I truly will never forget is the haughtiness and discourtesy exhibited by those two blighted individuals all evening long.
I forgave our friends immediately—they are kind, well-meaning people. They don’t talk much—how were they to know the difference between self-aggrandizing babble and witty patter? Or maybe George and Julia acted differently around strangers in an effort to conceal their own social awkwardness.
Whatever the reason, I’ve never felt so relieved to be rid of anyone’s company as I was when we politely bid George and Julia goodnight—and good riddance. That was the last time we ever laid eyes on them, thank goodness.
That was a long time ago, and I don’t know if it was because of George or in spite of him that I went on to develop a solid knowledge of wine. If I were to sit down with those two people tonight, we would have a very different kind of conversation.
For example, if I could replay the evening, I could wait until they took a bite of food and then launch into a lecture about how the WWWII allies used French wine shipments to track the movements of German troops. Or maybe I’d tell them how Chile had the only Camenere grapes that survived the big phelloxera epidemic. Or perhaps I’d talk about how the Paris Tasting of 1976 really happened, as opposed to the way it was portrayed in the film Bottle Shock.
Then again, if I could do all that, what would that make me? Just another self-important, insensitive snob who insists on showing off to the detriment of everyone else.
I still have much to learn about wine, but even if/when I do possess an encyclopedic knowledge, I don’t think I will blather on and on without encouragement.
About 5 months ago, I was talking with an acquaintance when he said that he and his wife also enjoyed wine. I told him that I’d just drunk some white Burgundy from Macon Villages (pronouncing it correctly as “Ma-kohng Vee-lahzh”). He immediately replied back, “We like that Macon Villages (as in Georgia and Native American settlements).”
To which I responded, “So do I.”
