Wine for a Champagne-Opening Meltdown

So I am getting in the groove now: I wake up at 6:15, and do about 20 minutes of yoga. I am more surprised than anyone by this, as I do not normally consider myself to be a yoga person. I love the idea of it, but it's just not something that my body naturally takes a shine to. I am, to put it very mildly, a bit on the tight side. My hamstrings are so tight it is a wonder I am still upright, and the muscles around my shoulders are so knotted and tense, they are often mistaken for bone. Really, it is only a matter of time before I am permanently in the fetal position. Massage therapists who work on me will often poke around my back and shoulders and say things like: "Wow, that's some tension you've got there" or "That shouldn't be there" or simply "Whoa". So when it comes to yoga, my body tends to have a "I'm sorry, you want me to put my legs where, while my arms do what? Yeah, good luck with that" reaction. I have been doing some kickboxing DVDs lately, and I enjoy them, but there is something about getting up at 6am and whipping myself into a frenzy of "I punch you in the face and kick you in the groin" just didn't feel right. So yoga it is.

By 9am I am in the car. Don't ask me why it takes me 2 1/2 hours to get ready in the morning. It just does. I am getting used to driving the hour to class and back. And I am getting used to filling the gas tank every 4 days. It's really not that long a trip, it's just that our car gets about six miles to the gallon. Yes, I have one of those cars: it's big, it's loud and it could not by any stretch of the imagination be called fuel-efficient. Let me just say in my defense that when Steve and I got it we only drove about 6,000 miles a year. Now, with this class, I am doing our yearly mileage in three months. We did not plan on using this car as a daily commuting car. It is not your zippy, down-to-earth, get-you-where-you-need-to-go car. It's more like a living room on wheels.

Now before you give me a hard time about SUVs and start blaming me for global warming, let me just say two words to you: moose farts. That's right. Moose. Farts. Allow me to explain: I was leafing through a Lonely Planet travel guide to Norway, and I came upon the startling statistic that an adult moose will fart and burp its way to a methane output that is the equivalent of driving about 8,500 miles in a car. So see, that farting moose is causing a lot more damage than I am. The clear solution is to shoot all these gaseous moose so we can drive our big-ass cars guilt-free. That sounds like solid Sarah Palin-esque logic to me!

But to get back to wine, class continues to bombard me with information. And last week, though I hate to admit it, I had my first wine-related anxiety attack. As some of you may know, I am prone to a bit of anxiousness. Much of this is related to my assumption that something terrible is bound to happen. I come by this honestly, since both my parents are, I firmly believe, the ghost-writers of those Worst-Case Scenario books. Let me give you two examples: my father used to hate us running around in grass in our bare feet (in our own backyard) because we could step on glass and cut our feet. These cuts would become infected, turn gangrenous and force us to have our legs amputated. And my mother, in trying to teach me not to run or laugh with gum or food in my mouth, drew me a diagram of the throat and included graphic details of food or gum getting lodged in my windpipe. This would then, she assured me, be followed by my turning blue and dying.

Now I can hardly argue with their logic; these things of course can happen. My father being a surgeon has no doubt exposed him to all manner of horrible and freakish things that can happen to people. It also probably has given him a slightly skewed idea of how often these freakish things actually happen. In any event, the combination of my own nature and a slightly alarmist upbringing makes me inclined to create very odd and dangerous scenarios in my head. So it was that when David our teacher was showing us how to properly open a champagne bottle and filling us in on the reasons why certain measures were necessary, I began to have images of my champagne cork flying out and breaking the massive glass window of the class wine cellar, shattering it beyond repair and causing thousands of dollars worth of wine to overheat. I also imagined the cork shooting into not only my eye, but also into the eyes of everyone else in my class. The best scenario of all was the one in which the cork flew off the bottle with such force that it actually took my thumb with it. That's right. I was sitting there in class, hyperventilating at the thought of this champagne cork actually blowing my thumb clean off.

So when it came time for all of us, in groups of five, to get up in front of the class and open bottles of champagne, I couldn't do it. I actually was too freaked out to do it. This somehow managed to go unnoticed by my teacher, but when I got home I had Steve stand with me for moral support, while I tried to open a bottle from our fridge. I couldn't do it then either! I tried, I really did. I cut off the foil, I put my napkin over the cork and held it with my thumb the way David showed us. As I loosened the wire cage, I kept by thumb on the cork and my hand on the neck of the bottle and with my other hand, began to twist the bottle as we had been taught. And nothing happened. I turned and turned and turned, and nothing. And Steve was watching me, and I was growing more and more panicked, imagining that the more I kept turning, the more the pressure was building to Vesuvian heights, and the more likely the whole bottle was to just explode. I froze. I begged Steve to help me, and he carefully took the bottle from me, keeping his thumb on the cork as I insisted he do, and he gently twisted and twisted and the cork came off gently and beautifully, with barely a sound. The bastard. It turns out I had kind of misunderstood what I was supposed to do with the cork-hand, and while I had had my thumb over the cork just as I was supposed to, I did not also have one of my fingers around the cork, so in fact all I was doing was turning the bottle around in my hand, without actually twisting the cork at all. oops.

Luckily, the third time was a charm, and I managed to open a bottle of Champagne with a few twists and no pop at all. I am proud to say that I didn't break any windows or take out any light fixtures or eyes, and I still have all of my digits. Well done, I say.

My favorite wine from the last week was a Riesling from Germany. I had heard of Riesling before, but honestly, I'm not sure I'd ever tasted one, or if I had, it just didn't register. Now that I've tasted it, though, I think Riesling might be one of my favorite wines. This particular one we tasted was a Von Buhl Riesling "Armand" Kabinett Pfalz 2008. It was slightly dry with a hint of sweetness to it, and it was bright and fresh-smelling with a little bit of lime and (our teacher pointed out) a slight burnt match smell to it. That hopefully doesn't make it sound gross because it was delicious!

Bobby, I know you mentioned that you had a few favorite Rieslings. Please put them in the comments, I'd love to know what they are!

This Friday is our first test, consisting of multiple choice questions and then a blind tasting of two wines, one red, one white. Please check back here after Friday and I will let you know how it went. Wish me luck!