Pinot Grigio, Please.

I don’t know much about wine. I know that red wine can be easily removed from a blouse if soaked in club soda, and I know that no one looks good with purple lips and stained teeth. Other than that, I must admit, I know nothing. And when selecting a bottle, most of my picks are based on one major factor – creativity of the label. In college, it was easy. Wine Wednesday consisted of a “3 Bottles for $10” deal at the local Keg & Bottle convenient store, and as you can imagine our selection was limited and the quality of wines I grew accustomed to was not that impressive. In an effort to educate ourselves, my friends and I took a wine appreciation course, where every Tuesday we listened to a man in inappropriately tight pants speak to us in an Italian accent about flavors of cherry and honey as he continued to fill our glasses with a heavy hand before we headed out to Taco Tuesday. My most meaningful contribution was likening dessert wine to peach rings. As you can see, I learned a lot.

Now that I’m so old and mature, antics like this are no longer appropriate. Enter the Santa Barbara Wine Festival. Escaping Carmageddon, in a last minute and entirely spontaneous decision – my favorite kind as of lately – my roommate and I traveled up the coast to Santa Barbara for the annual wine festival. Joining friends from school, it was funny pretending to be so cultured and sophisticated in a place that once hosted the beer garden for the All Sorority Volleyball Tournament while we attended UCSB. Who am I kidding? Even with my hair in a high bun, caged wedges and mismatching J. Crew patterns, I was fooling no one. And neither were my friends. Which was made apparent as we engraved our souvenir wine glasses with things like Diva and Sexy Mama and ran around demanding more pinot grigio. Too busy filling my glass with wines I pretended to know about, I missed the engraving booth, which was fine because I chipped my glass while cheers-ing, and later lost it all together. But what really blew my cover, and eliminated all possibility of scoring a dinner date with a handsome, wealthy, divorced wino in town for the festival, staying at his Montecito summer home - was the bird poop that bounced off of my hand and slid down my skirt. No joke. And yes, that was the kind of crowd I was hoping to find at such an event. Now you can try and tell be that being pooped on by a bird is good luck and blah blah blah, but I will tell you that you are full of shit. Pun intended. And you obviously have never been shat on before. The only lucky thing about the situation was that it didn’t land in my glass. Because that would have been a real tragedy. 

With hundreds of vendors, it was impossible to sample them all in the short four hours we were allotted. But we definitely did our best. The next day, the 405 opened earlier than expected and our drive back down south was a breeze. How cool would it have been if Aerosmith’s I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing came on the radio? You know, like in Armageddon? Way cool. And how cool would it have been if a bird didn’t poop me on? Even cooler. 

Sorry I don't have pictures. Obviously my hands were full. Maybe next year I'll invest in one of those wine glass holders that hang around your neck, leaving my hands free. Or maybe I won't.