By Thom Joe Von
The beer is gone, I’m getting laid off and I have no idea whether or not my useless bachelor’s in creative writing is going to be worth anything after everything opens back up, but why whine about all that when you can WINE about it!
You read that right, I’m talking that sweet tangy grape juice, that sacred sacrament fit for both Kraft cheese and DoorDashed Taco Bell, I’m talking about our cardboard communion, I’m talking box wine.
To hell with showing up to Zoom classes and finishing assignments, I’ve decided to follow my true passion: watching YouTube videos on wine tasting and writing about it for the internet. Where better to start than the boxes of Franzia chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon that you found tucked away in your mom’s cupboard for Christ knows how long?
To start with the chardonnay, you should begin the tasting session by promptly opening Netflix, scrolling for something to watch for 40 minutes and then settling on “Friends” for the upteenth time because god has abandoned us and we’re in the middle of a pandemic with no good TV to watch.
If you get a hit of crushing loneliness from the “I’ll be there for you” intro don’t be afraid to remove the worryingly discolored bag of chardonnay from its dusty cardboard sarcophagus. Then feel free to cry and scream into it like the pillow at my — I mean — your therapist’s office. Once this crucial step in the box wine drinking ritual has been completed, go on to top of both of your parents commemorative wedding glasses, which your mom hid away in the garage after the divorce, and ask yourself if you still believe in love.
Once you’ve decided that you do believe in love, yet feel that you (much like Ross) don’t deserve it, continue to completely shit all over the process given to you in the YouTube video of sniffing, spinning and aerating the wine. Once you’ve thoroughly seen how murky and seemingly oily the wine has become from more than 20 years of being off the store shelf, proceed to warm up those cold feet you’ve been getting and suckle from that vinegary, alcoholic, melancholic pain juice strait out of the bag’s teet.
With the first box of wine out of the way, let’s move on to the cabernet sauvignon, which you should start off by mumbling “cabernet sauvignon” in a vaguely French accent to yourself. To hold some small modicum of self-respect, you should probably refrain from daring to gaze into the dreadful bag. Even looking into the handhold at the top of the box is like staring into the abyss. You learned your lesson, right? Don’t you dare tempt your resolve by looking onto what is forbidden.
Instead, let’s take this opportunity to count what you’re grateful for, like this bag of flower you also found in your mom’s cupboard and have now decided to do lines of off the side of the wine box since APPARENTLY your coke guy doesn’t consider themself an essential worker and baking ingredients are APPARENTLY hard to come by, so you might as well feel like Betty Croker by way of Tony-goddamn-Montana. It’s okay, we’re mindful. Everything’s cool.
Once your nostrils are good and packed with bread flour, proceed to suckle the wine spigot once more. Now your deadened taste buds will find peace as the acridid vino slushes over your gums.
Be mindful in this moment and project yourself into the gentle arms of Mother Gaea. As you once more become a babe, suckle sweet hooch from the earth mother while she hymns, “Be still my child, take and drink. For it is the wise and meek who succumb to listlessness in quarantine.”
Hold on, did you hear that? Bacchus himself is whispering sweet nothings into our ear. What’s that? Yes, yes, a stellar idea indeed. You, reader, you must mix the red and the white boxes of wine. It may be dangerous, but Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and orgies, insists that it be done. How else will we have homémadé rosé?
Oh god, I think you’re going to be sick. Maybe you should’ve gotten into your dad’s Folgers coffee crystals instead.
