Until the past month or so, I had zero interest in wines. I like vineyards. The ones on TV and in movies. But still, what is wine? A slightly zingy version of grape juice? Come on. But it's definitely better than drinking a couple of beers every night if you're trying to avoid gaining (more) weight. So I've been sampling a variety of white and (mostly) red wines lately.
Turns out living in urban Honolulu has its perks. Access to interesting little wine/liquor stores is easy. Tamura's is a 5-minute drive up Kaimuki. Liquor Collection is in the midst of bustling traffic at Ward Warehouse. Less inviting. But still close enough.
All I know is, red wine is red wine. They all taste pretty much the same to me. So while I was on Kauai working recently, I couldn't help noticing the selection at Kmart, where I'd gone to get a snack. There it was in the aisle, standing alone and apart: Barefoot wine. So this is the campy stuff that people make fun of? Cheap wine?
Barefoot has won awards. Says so on the bottles. All kinds of wines, all on sale for $4.79 a bottle. How does an award-winning wine go for that cheap? I don't know. They tricked me. I bought a red (see below). But the problem was, even at that price, it was still a corked bottle. Which is cool. I like the whole cork thing and saving them in a big empty jar that will probably be emptied out into a trash bag in 10 or 20 years.
But I had no choice but to get a waiter's corkscrew ($5) and then go on YouTube to figure out how on earth to use it. Thank God for YouTube. I would never have figured it out myself, being mechanically moronic. (I scored 18 on the mechanical section of the ASVAB test in high school. All the girls I knew scored at least 75.) So there I had it in my hotel room: fake cheese whiz, low-fat Wheat Thins (yeah, a wtf moment — real Wheat Thins are high in fat) and Barefoot wine. It took me longer to find the hotel's ice machine than it did to uncork the bottle.
But I got plenty of video editing done as I enjoyed my night of trailer park goodness. With some of my favorite pupus costing crazy bucketloads of money these days (ahi poke is $15/lb, poi is $6/bag, lomi salmon $5 for a small container), this might be the best way to go.
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