Drinking wine, spo-dee-oh-dee, drinking wine

When I was a kid, nobody I knew drank wine.

Sure, we saw those Chianti bottles with the melted candles in them in movies.

And my parents kept a bottle of Man-Oh-Manneschevitz around. My father would - once in a blue moon -  make my mother a wine cooler (which I think was wine and ginger ale).

When people drank, they drank beer or high-balls (4Roses and some sort of mix).

At Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday dinners, we had apple cider. I have no recall of what the grownups drank on Easter (high-balls?), but kids drank milk.

Then, when I was in college, there was wine.

Hey, hey, hey, Mateus Rose, with its nifty bottle as straw-flower vase. Same went for the Lancer's Rose bottle.

There was also Blue Nun Liebfraumilch, which, now that I parse the name a bit: Dear Lady's Milk, is kind of disgusting, especially when it's associated with a Blue Nun.

There was also white wine in a green bottle shaped like a fish.

Then there were the jugs of Gallo Brothers' Hearty Burgundy and Chablis.

Then, all of a sudden, everyone was drinking wine. French wine. Italian wine. German wine (and not just a little Blue Nun). Australian. Hungarian. Romanian. Chilean.

And, meanwhile, California wine was on beyond the Gallo Brothers. It was really good.

Our holiday meals all of a sudden featured wine - lots of it.

Some folks still drank beer, but no one had a high-ball. (Maybe a Bloody Mary before, if someone was mixing. And a Bailey's after.)

Most of that wine came from California.

Oh, sometimes a New York state wine might sneak in an appearance. Or, more booster-y, something from a Massachusetts vineyard.

Now, I learn from a brief article in The Economist (August 23, 2008), that all 50 states now have wineries. Some import grapes, but there are also vineyards in most states, as well.

Ohio has 108 wineries; Michigan has 112. And Ohio even has a state viticulturist. And the University of Minnesota is breeding grapes that can survive a temps as low as -36 degrees Fahrenheit. That will be some hearty burgundy, alright.