A Layman in Search of Wine 11

by William Powell

Of course, there are plenty of occasions when serving nibbles with red wine would not even begin to cross your mind, especially when you are sitting in a friend's pitch-dark garden at two in the morning, and he has just removed the cork with a cordless drill and a pair of pliers. And considers glasses superfluous decoration anyway. A little cheese platter would come as something of a surprise there.

Cheese for dessert

But that is really the point, because, frankly, I always find the little cheese platter surprising. Why should I shovel in bite-sized pieces of Gruyère or medium-aged Gouda with an off-dry Riesling? Quite apart from the fact that my fingers are left in a less-than-pleasant olfactory state afterwards. And don't anyone tell me I could always use the miniature fork provided to spear them. Sorry, but by the third helping at the latest, I will have abandoned it.

Wine and cheese

Or nuts and grapes? Why do people do that? A few days ago, I was invited to try a neighbour's latest “little treasure”—a truly delicious South African Chenin Blanc. And then each of us was presented with a little bowl of supermarket grapes and dusty trail mix. That simply won't do. Incidentally, I am equally baffled when certain “female connoisseurs” insist on foisting dark chocolate on their guests with red wine. I find the very thought appalling.

Nut allergy makes monks abstinent

And then I am always such a coward that I eat the stuff. Yet I can't stand nuts—though that might also have something to do with the fact that I am allergic. My wife has always wondered where this deep-seated aversion actually comes from—especially since I otherwise can't keep my hands off nibbles, and probably not even a monk willing to turn a kindly blind eye would grant me the description “abstinent”. But snacks with wine trigger my inner contrarian so quickly and directly that it seems strange. Even for me. But that is precisely what big sisters are for. They act a bit like an outsourced emotional memory.

Anything my big sister doesn't know about my earlier life is either irrelevant and so embarrassing that I wouldn't even discuss it with myself. And said sister needed less than two minutes to remind me of the Raabs across the road. The Raabs, who regularly invited my mother, my siblings and me to summer parties so excruciatingly boring that even our dog needed four weeks to recover from this Armageddon of rural tedium.

Playing cards with jokes on them

The Raabs, who served little snacks with EVERYTHING and considered Chianti from a raffia-wrapped 1.5-litre bottle, accompanied by a cheese hedgehog and salted pretzels, the pinnacle of summer culinary pleasure. The Raabs, who had a dartboard in their “party basement” and were still playing Lady Bumb in the late Eighties. The Raabs, who had little joke cards lying around in case the conversation ran dry. The Raabs, who gave me nightmares with fish-shaped crackers. How dare those Raabs? Which naturally raises the question of whether I can overcome this teenage trauma and stop foaming at the mouth whenever someone wants to offer me “a little something with the wine”. Especially since foam rather gets in the way when eating, too.

Besides, the bruschetta my missus recently served with a Merlot from Hesse tasted fantastic, though I will never admit it. For now, I think I shall continue enjoying crisps and peanut puffs with beer, and as I write this, I am drinking a delicious dry Riesling from Dürkheimer Hochbenn—on its own, without snacks.