Thanksgiving Wine: I Blame Canada

Thanksgiving is coming up. Food mmm. Wine mmm. The first glass of wine I can remember tasting was in my first year of university. It was Thanksgiving, and one of my friends had organized a potluck.

The cozy (read: cramped) house was filled with the homey aroma of turkey roasting in the oven, stove top dressing warming on the stove top (we were students, GIVE US A BREAK) and the distinctly musty smell of burnt cat hair (the hosts’ cat walked past a beeswax candle and narrowly missed bursting into flames). So much to be thankful for (an important one being NO ROAST CAT).

The first glass of wine I was to enjoy on that Thanksgiving Day, was a blend of red (I am fairly certain “red” and “white” were the only kinds of wine that existed when I was in first year uni)… generously mixed with the fizzy sweet goodness of… I’m sure you will all recognize this name… 7up.

7up. Well, I suppose my VERY first tipple was sans the 7up but I thought it was so disgusting and was THIS close to pouring it out (a deplorable crime for ANY university student to commit), before my almost cat-less friend had the brilliant idea to mix it with something that I DID like. And who doesn’t like 7up? I mean, come on.

To be honest with you, the wine didn’t even taste very good masked by the 7Up. Thinking back on it: OF COURSE IT TASTED HORRIBLE! Wine and 7up?! There were at least a dozen people in that house and NOT ONE person stopped me. Zero. You’d think that in a group of 12 people over the age of 12 there would be at least ONE PERSON who would have the wherewithal to say: “Hey, I think that the combination of soda pop and wine might be a bad plan.” I am from a small town in Northern British Columbia. I can’t possibly be expected to know the finer points of consuming wine, let alone what kind of pop one should mix with it.

Really what I am getting at is this: What on earth is going on in Canadian universities? Do you think this travesty would have occurred in Italy? Chile? France? I am VERY STRONGLY DOUBTING IT.

Chantal: Mais non! Take this vin away, vin is grotesque! Horrible, horrible, horrible (pronounced “horeeeble”)!

Nicholette: Oh mon dieu! Moi can’t believe you do not like wine. What to do, what to do? I know, let’s BASTARDIZE IT BY MIXING IT WITH SOMETHING CARBONATED.

Do you see? I can’t even translate the scenario into half-French because IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN. It’s not even in the half-French vocabulary. The French have been drinking wine with their croissants since they were 3 years old… and what exactly are the Canadians doing? Drinking maple syrup? Drinking snow? Losing hockey games?

My first experience with wine could have been a beautiful memory. I could have stood out on the balcony to get away from the cat smell, drowned in the intoxicating bouquet of “red” and let that first sip of my true adulthood mingle with the bloated feeling of eating far too much on a very special Thanksgiving Day.

Instead, I had some really bad 7up.

And I blame Canada.

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