Wine.

Look at that, with just one word a collective cheer let out from every wino over the age of 18.

However, I humbly ask for forgiveness from every one of you who believe wine is the six o’clock cure to anything and everything.

To me, wine is a dreadful piquant taste that leaves a film in my mouth.

In my early 20s I drank a lot of tequila, vodka and basically any hard liquor I could ingest, yet there was always that inexplicable draw that urged me to keep trying wine. I would gingerly take sips in hopes that one sweet day that sour red (or white, or rosé…I don’t discriminate. I hate them all equally.) liquid would appeal to my taste buds.

As much as I tried to board the Bordeaux train, I have found myself left at the station. Still firmly cemented in my belief that not everything needs to be washed down by a liquid that makes you even thirstier than you were before you wet your whistle.

Look, there is something classy about wine, something sophisticated in the dainty way you clasp the stem between your fingers and swirl it. People drink it up like it’s the best thing to be made from grapes since purple Crush. Which is obviously the superior grape-y elixir.

Now, some people might just think “Oh, you’re just pairing it incorrectly.”

Nope. That’s not it.

Almost every wine I have ever tasted just hit me with undertones of cheap happy hour lighter fluid and a hint of extra strength bug spray.

I say almost because I grew up Catholic and it would be blasphemous to say the wine ingested in church was bad. I mean, as an eight-year-old you feel like straight up rebel sipping from that gold goblet that 45 other people put their lips on before you got up to the front.

That’s beside the point.

Before I go and bash every fermented grape juice other than that of the Catholic church I will say this, $5 fruit wines (Boones, Arbour Mist…you know the stuff every 15-year-old gal drank at her high school parties) will always hold a special place in my heart. By no means are they tasty, but who doesn’t love something that can transport you back to your misguided youth. That brown bagged beauty will always be a part of me.

Now look, I want to like wine. I want to be able to go to a wedding and not pay for drinks at the toonie bar because I’ve polished off half the free table bottle before the speeches were done. I want to have that almost painful looking red wine mouth after enjoying a couple glasses with my favourite gal pals. I want to collect my wine corks as I finish off each bottle and attempt to recreate some artsy project I saw on Pinterest. I really want to. I just can’t.

I promise, I have given it a shot. A fair shot I would say. I just can’t get my palate to cooperate.

So, as I creep up in the years I’m going to have to find something to drink that’s not vodka Redbull or Jagerbombs. Since wine is out of the question, I may find myself resorting to prune juice.

And, if anyone ever tells me I’m aging like a fine wine, I will take that as an insult. In no way is telling me that I look like a barrel of crushed grapes that sat long enough to go absolutely rotten before being bottled and put on a shelf for consumption a compliment.

So for now I will graciously say pinot thank you wine lovers. It’s all yours.