Wine is the drink of the people! Even the homeless love wine. So why is it that, when we read about wine, we are bombarded with the turgid pomposities of stupid snobs with whom we would not be caught dead in a million years? Where can real people read real things about real wines from other real people?

It is my hope that this column can provide that which is so sorely needed in the hermetic world of wine-tasting: a breath of fresh air. In that spirit, we are pleased to welcome as this month’s guest taster, six-year-old Katy Goldman, who will be reviewing a ’99 Covey Run Merlot and an ’01 Shiraz.

I know what wine tastes like. My stupid little brother Kevin thinks he does but he doesn’t, he just thinks so because Mom tells him it’s grape juice when she’s drinking it and he says why can’t he have some and she says because it’s special for adults. So he thinks it’s like really good grape juice. But I always sneak some at Seder and when we go to Temple when Grammy and Grampa come to visit and we have to pretend that we go to Sunday School and stuff, and so I know it’s more like really bad grape juice.

Um, so this one bottle has birds on it and they are pretty cute. I think they are coveys. The wine is not too good, it’s not sweet or anything. It starts off looking all wet in the glass, but then it feels all dry in your mouth and it tastes like it has chalk and paste in it. Mom drank most of the bottle they sent and she said it was full-bodied, which I think means that it’s fat, because that’s what Dad kept saying she was that time she broke a vertebrate and had to stay in bed for like two months and she got really fat. So if you like fat women, you would probably like this wine, and also girls might like it because of the cute birds.

The other bottle has a funny kangaroo and it comes from Australia. I think all they have in Australia is kangaroos. I’ll bet they made this wine out of kangaroos, because it’s really disgusting and I’ve never seen any pictures of grape trees in Australia anyway. Mom drank most of this bottle too. She got all mad about how I wrote about when she was fat during the other wine, but now she is crying on the kitchen counter. I think this is a really sad wine. I only got like a tiny sip of it before Mom took it and said that tasting just means tasting, not goddamn slurping, and I said we’re not supposed to say that word, and she got embarrassed and promised to help me spell-check.

So then Kevin came in from playing outside and he was all, How come Katy gets to drink wine if it’s just for adults? And Mom went and hugged him like he said something really smart even though he never said anything smart in his whole life. He is totally stupid. He just wants to drink wine because other people do it, but he wouldn’t even understand it because wine is not for stupid babies.

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