My dad really loves wine. His interest began in Argentina; I suspect he realized that he was no match for his friends in the cooking arena, but he could choose wines for their asados, or barbecues. Back then, I was too young to drink, but his love of serving wine remained long after we left the country. Now it’s something that we share as a family.
Some years ago, the two of us had lunch at an Italian restaurant. As we looked over the menu, he pointed to a sign that displayed the wines available. He then told me something, as if he was passing on a secret.
“If you are ever on a date, and the guy is trying to pretend he knows a lot about wines, you tell him you are choosing the bottle and get a bottle of Luigi Bosca. It will likely be one of the most expensive on their list.”
I liked the idea of my own father encouraging me to not take men’s nonsense by charging them for it. We didn’t order wine that day, but he did break down the reasons why he believed Luigi Bosca to be a great product: the grapes, the way it’s made, the fact that they used actual cork instead of fake cork.
When he gave me that advice, dating wasn’t part of my daily preoccupations. And I think about it often nowadays because I have never been able to dazzle new dates with my specific knowledge on wine. Beer, rather than a whole bottle of Argentinian wine, is the staple drink for dates.
So while I haven’t been able to measure people by the wines they suggest, Luigi Bosca has become a personal gauging mechanism by which I measure liquor stores, and by association, neighborhoods and spaces. Every time I go into a liquor or wine store, I walk through the aisles looking for a bottle.
I found one once, which I bought and drank with my roommate on a lazy Sunday while we watched Disney movies on Netflix. The bottle now stands in my windowsill: It contains the exact amount of water for my plant’s weekly drink. Both roommate and plant are very impressed.
Published: June 21, 2020
