There's a lot of hype right now about screw top caps for wine. It may be deserved; I hear it keeps the wine fresher than corks...or something like that.
And I am excited as the next person about this whole trend...but not because the new caps keeps wine fresher or whatever.
I am beer drinker and a wine drinker only. I have never been into to the hard booze thing. Sure, when I was in college I experimented with the occasional Southern Comfort and Coke (if this gives you the shivers, it should, it make me nauseous just thinking about it) and a vodka tonic here and there. But, really that was all just silly.
So for me, the screw top thing makes me feel like someone who is drinking hard booze. It's a cheap thrill. A few times a week I will have a glass of wine, and lately I have been sampling the screw caps. I like drinking wine in what most people would consider a medium size water glass, sans stem.
When I unscrew the cap on the wine and pour 5 ounces of Sangiovese into my glass in a dark kitchen, at 8.52pm after the kids are asleep...I feel like a kid sneaking gin from my mom's liquor locked cabinet.
Even though my mom didn't drink gin...or hard booze...or wine...or beer.
Maybe even better imagery is that last scene in "Unforgiven," when William Muney (Clint Eastwood), who hasn't taken sip of liquor in over a decade, takes a swig out of a whiskey bottle as he listens to "The Kid" tell him about how they decorated the town saloon with his buddy's (Morgan Freeman) dead body.
When I drink screw top wine, I feel like William Muney...that's it.
