Great for guzzling!

Being the Mom Of The Year takes a lot of hard work. Last week, for example, I brought my daughter to the liquor store.

These little mother-daughter field trips are an excellent time to brush up my daughter on the important things in life. For example, I pointed out to her that Angelborough has three stop lights, and three liquor stores, and this tells you something about our town’s priorities. We go to the one furthest away, coincidentally right next to the Post Offal (or not-so-coincidentally) because the owner knows every single thing about every kind of alcohol ever made, and he’ll even post signs on the wine bins to let you know which wine goes with what. “Excellent with fish,” for example.

“Mom,” said Kiddo2, “this one says Great For Guzzling.”

Great.

They’re totally the nicest people. I have great luck finding businesses where the owners are super-helpful: eg, I’ve had offers to help me carry one solitary bottle of wine to the car because I had a baby on my hip. They hold the door. They let me walk out the door once with a product becuase I didn’t have enough cash on hand and they didn’t feel like running a credit card. “Just pay it back the next time you come in,” said the owner. That would never fly in New York City. Could you imagine?

I brought my daughter to the till with our assorted purchases, and I said, “Oh? Remember Uncle Tom?”

She nodded. I pointed to one of the wines and said, “When we visited a few years ago, he told us how he found his new table wine.”

You can click this rather than stalking someone.

At this point the owner is listening, since he knows everything about the finest wines. I said, “He went to Bensonhurst, in Brooklyn, and found a wine store. And he waited there until a ninety-year-old Italian man walked into the shop.”

The owner is now wearing a look of disbelief, and I said, “Uncle Tom followed the guy around the store, and then followed him up to the counter. The old guy bought a bottle of this, and Uncle Tom was next, so he said to the cashier, ‘I want a case of what he just bought.'”

The owner choked on laughter. “He did not!”

“He totally did. He said he wanted to find a real Italian peasant wine.”  And I pointed to what I was buying. “That’s it.”

So now you know. You know how to find a “real Italian peasant wine,” and now that you know how to do it, you don’t need to follow my Uncle Tom around Brooklyn to find out what it is.