My Last Hundred Bucks: The Wine That Didn’t Want to Make It to the Dinner Party

by Evan DeSimone

How did you spend your last hundred dollars, Evan?

$29.30 — A nice bottle of wine purchased for a dinner party so that I would appear cultured and thoughtful. I secretly can’t tell the difference between very cheap and very expensive wine so I consulted a friend with sommelier training on this one. He recommended this particular wine because it would suggest that I have good taste but am not insane enough to drop a crazy amount of cash on a bottle of very old grape juice from Europe. I dropped it in the parking lot.

$30.15 — The same bottle of wine purchased from a different store because I was too embarrassed to go back in and admit my mistake. I assume that the $0.85 difference in price helped defray the cost of the second store’s classier lighting arrangement and the sampling station where I tried four excellent bourbons. Money well spent.

$17.50 — Fancy wine bottle opener that I was conned into buying by the same person that gave me all that bourbon. Money dubiously spent.

$16.45 — Cheese platter that I purchased after I absentmindedly opened the nice wine at home while making sauce rather than the sad bottle of Rodney Strong that I keep around specifically for cooking purposes. The cheese, as it turns out, was a way bigger hit than the wine would have been. Everybody loves a nice stilton.

$4.37 — Overpriced tiny gift bag that I purchased after deciding to give away the fancy wine bottle opener as a hostess gift because I DO NOT DRINK WINE.

Total: $97.77

Evan DeSimone is a full-time corporate sellout and part-time internet scribbler. He tweets nonsense here.

Photo: Derek Gavey

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