I Passed Out Under A Tree In Napa

or why do I care about wine all of a sudden?

I had no idea I wasn’t rich until my senior year at college. I was sitting in the back row of a sociology lecture—one of those classes you use to pad out your schedule for your final semester—and we were watching some poorly made documentary about wealth and grocery stores in Massachusetts. The lesson, surely worth however many thousand dollars it cost, was that people go to different types of grocery stores depending on how much money they have. Whole Foods for the rich. Shaws for the poor.  

A few of my classmates took issue with this idea. Their families went to Whole Foods, but they certainly were not rich. Stores like Shaws, or Stop and Shop, or Segway were simply lower quality. The products were full of chemicals. The aisles were dirty. The staff was less nice. 

I was usually talkative in my sociology classes. It was my major—after changing from my deeply depressing first choice: political science—and I had gotten quite used to saying undergraduate bullshit like “the system is set up this way!” and “we don’t need to fix the symptom, we need to cure the disease!” But I was silent that day, and my professor must have noticed.

“Travis - you look like you have something on your mind.”

“I—yeah. I think… I think I just realized I’m poor?”

The room laughed, assuming I was joking. I was not.

I didn’t make this realization because my family shopped at Shaws. I made this realization because my mother, who I loved more than anyone in the world, had worked her whole life stocking shelves there. Grocery Store Clerk was the only job she had ever had, and while I knew she wasn’t Bill Gates, I somehow had no idea that it was blue collar work until that moment. I had countless childhood memories inside the "dirty" aisles of Shaws, where I would help my mom use the price tag gun when her boss wasn’t looking. Sometimes if I was lucky, I got to sneak through the waxy plastic curtain next to the seafood counter and enjoy a break with her in the stockroom. Back there away from the bright fluorescents, kind-hearted goateed men in back-support gear would call out my name, even though we had never met, which I now realize meant she spoke of me often. Those guys breaking down boxes were some of the first people who made me see my mom as someone with a life outside of motherhood. And those guys certainly didn't resemble the rude Shaws staff my classmates were going on about.

It should be made clear that I was by no means poor. We always had a car to drive, even if it was a Hyundai. I always had new outfits on the first day of school, even if my friends had Jnco jeans, and I had the department store knock-offs — outrageously named Pacos. And while I never wanted for food, looking back, almost all of our dinners were some combination of chicken and a carb. Maybe some frozen veggies with butter. And to be honest, it all tasted great.

But all that is a way to explain that as naive as it was, it wasn't until I sat in the back of that classroom, at the overpriced university I could only afford thanks to criminally high-interest loans, that I realized the truth. I was Shaws guy in a room full of Whole Foods assholes. 

And for some reason that I cannot explain to this day, I still want to impress those Whole Foods motherfuckers. I wish I didn't. But I do. 

For the next decade, I became obsessed with the connection between wealth and food, and I tried to learn everything I could to try to steal back some of the power from my Whole Foods enemies. When I moved to New York, I learned that not all sushi had to include cream cheese like the California rolls I had at Shaws. On one of my first dates with my now-wife, she almost laughed me out of the restaurant when I confidently explained to her that fried rice and brown rice were the same thing. And just last month, I learned that champagne was simply a type of wine and not an entirely different class of thing. It’s been a long road of feeling like an absolute moron, but as I've expanded my taste, I gained confidence and some insecurity faded.

But not with wine. Wine lists still seem like legalese; confusing on purpose and designed to only be understood by those who have the expensive training to decipher them. I can pick a beer I like thanks to a craft brewer in the family. I can order a martini without looking too dumb (although some weirdo waiters still insist I say “filthy dirty” instead of “very dirty”). But wine is always there, always looking down at me like the eyes of TJ Eckleburg, seeming to whisper to all it’s cool European friends about how they can tell I’m the only one at this dinner that didn’t go to Choate. 

And in recent years the insecurity has gotten worse. My wife’s success as a TV writer has grown, and seemingly overnight I've found myself at a bunch of fancy dinners, surrounded by people who either always had money or have the confidence of someone who did. And every single time that wine list comes out, the back of my neck tingles, my panic rising that someone might ask me what I prefer. And when they inevitably do, I find myself saying things like “I like wine that is dry and also not sweet,” which I’ve recently learned is basically like saying “I like movies that are funny but also hilarious.” 

And so, I've set out to stop feeling so bad about it the only way I can: learning. I started a weekly wine tasting Twitch stream, where me and two comedians drink the same bottle of wine over Zoom while a wine expert tries and fails each week to teach me what a tannin is. I started reading wine books and listening to wine podcasts and following way too many hot wine influencers who claim they want to “demystify wine” but mostly just post boomerangs of themselves wiggling in sunhats while holding a bottle called something cringey like Bubbly Toes Rosé or Watch Me Whip, Chardonnay-nay.

But against all odds, I am actually learning stuff. Last month I took a trip to Napa and didn’t completely embarrass myself (besides being so hungover at one tasting I had to leave the table and take a nap under a tree). I’ve started ordering wine for friends at dinners (usually a Gamay even though I pronounce it differently every time I do). And I’m getting an idea of what I truly hate (all those warm, thick-ass, tobacco-y Montepulcianos I drank at shitty east coast Italian restaurants in my 20s).

Hungover under a tree at Scribe Winery last month.

I also know a lot of folks are as intimidated by the word “Twitch” as I am by the word “wine.” And many friends and followers have asked me to pass on some of this information over text or DM or a way that didn’t revolve them making an account on a website mainly for tweens watching Super Mario speed-runs. So that's where this newsletter comes in. I’m hoping to pass along some of the things I’ve learned, review some of the stuff I’m drinking, and also keep myself busy during unemployment with something other than scrolling Twitter and then masturbating and then scrolling Twitter again. One email I send might be a bullet point explainer of how to hold your wine glass, or one might be a link to an article about cocktails, or one might be a long dumb essay like this one about why I’m so insecure about brown rice. And full disclosure, this will all be coming from someone who is not an expert on any of this. As I'm sure you can tell, I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. So if I say something you think is wrong, just tell me. (I’ll block you, but still tell me.) 

So that’s my plan for this thing. I’ll pass along what I learn, one email at a time, written in a way a that won’t make you feel insecure. Occasionally there will be free posts but it’ll mostly be for subscribers. It’s a newsletter about wine for people like me: Shaws people.

So subscribe if you want. Or don’t. I don’t care. You’re not better than me.

Watch me whip… Chardonnay-nay,

Travis

P.S. Tannins come from the skin of the grape. And if your mouth feels dry when you drink wine, that means the wine is tannic. See, you already learned something. Pay me $6 please.