You're out to eat with friends or family, the atmosphere is great, the food is tasty, the conversation easy. Suddenly, here comes the wine list, and everybody goes into brain lock. Except one person who goes into professor mode, hopefully not nutty professor mode. Then the wine comes to the table, and the member of your party who you'd most likely choose to toss out of a lifeboat first to save the others is chosen to taste the wine. Song and dance follow.
Someone sniffs the cork.
The numbers are in, and they're not pretty. America makes enough wine, but per-capita consumption is still at about one saucerful a year. Any discussion ends up being a tour of California's great wine growing regions. I first wrote a variation on this essay in September 1964 for Miss Ott in the 2nd grade. We visited Arrows in Ogunquit, Maine and had the best meal of the summer.