Mixology

In my junior year of high school I had some pre-Homecoming fun with some girlfriends. Oh we were so sophisticated that we were drinking "cocktails" of red wine mixed with Coke. I think a few of us spent the next day at the Homecoming game wishing we were dead due to our pounding headaches not to mention the "drinking and dialing" of the night before. Imagine my shock when we were in Grande Cache, Alberta at the beginning of this month. Joe and I were having dinner at the bar of a restaurant when the men seated next to us ordered red wine and Coke and then mixed them! One of the men explained that the Coke cuts the dry, hard edge of the wine. Who knew we were so ahead of our time! I have my doubts as to this particular combination but was amazed that it existed outside of Southwest Side Chicago.

Today, though, I saw something that even my friends and I (good customers of Blue Nun wine which we felt was really the top during high school and college) had failed to consider. At a liquor store in Buffalo, Wyoming I saw a product from Holland which was red wine mixed with chocolate and then REFRIGERATED!!!! Hey, are these people from the Southwest Side or do they simply know how to pull the okey doke over on unsuspecting customers? I guess they thought they could mix lower quality wine with equally awful chocolate refrigerate it so that no one could really taste it and sell it to unsuspecting Americans - God help us if this is sold internationally. The Americans probably feel super Euro-sophisticated buying and "enjoying" this product. I guess we all haven't moved that far away from high school.