It's not all beer and roses.

In the past, I used to say, "I don't really drink white wine," and would turn up my nose, and flip my hair, and imagine myself the coolest daughter of artists who ever did live because I only drank red wine, and ALL the red wine, in massive gallon jugs that would later be re-purposed into artsy candelabras. I WAS SO COOL.

As I get older, I am getting less cool. It's true- all the younger, cooler kids are saying so. (But, fuck them, right?)

As I get older, though, there are a million things which are open to me that I did not, would not, or didn't know enough to try before. Like white wine, a glass of which I am drinking as I write. (I call it 'practicing one handed typing'.)

It's a chardonnay from a winery about an hour north of me- Silver Decoy Winery in East Windsor, NJ. I met a couple friends there this past weekend for a tasting, tour, and outside drinking in the summer sunshine, while a band played an odd mix including Adele, Paul Simon, and the Zac Brown Band. It was a good day and I came away with a more than decent $13 bottle of wine.

I think I always thought that white wine was 'weak'. Weak in that it didn't seem to get the job done, but also weak in that the girls I had seen sneaking white wine were, well, not really girls that I would give a second thought to. (And by "sneaking white wine" I mean Arbor Mist White Zinfandel, which now that I am processing that, it changes my perception of what I remember seeing and why I have these biases. The girls were still vapid and boring, though.)  Those girls get manicures and go to the mall. They actually DO turn up their nose and flip their hair, and don't just say they do for dramatic effect (see first paragraph). Farm girls don't drink white wine.

Maybe therein lies the turn: I'm not a farm girl anymore. In my heart and in my past, yes, but in reality, no. I live in the suburbs and in two weeks I'll be living in Philadelphia proper again. I'm trying to cultivate the mindset of Woman and in this version she doesn't have dirt under her fingernails. In fact, she has fingernails- she doesn't bite them because of overwhelming anxiety about being a country girl in the city. Maybe I need a manicure. Maybe I need another glass of Chardonnay. Maybe both? (Oh, God, you'll tell me the minute I start being vapid, wont you?)

One thing I can tell you is this, the crux of my argument FOR white wine: It is fucking hot, and this Chardonnay is cold, and alcoholic, and no matter what I thought before, it is tasty and I'm half drunk.