Well, Maybe Not All

The new issue of GQ has an excellent package entitled "All You Really Need to Know About Wine." I have to say, it's pretty good, and not entirely because I contributed an item called "Five Wine Tips That Will Change Your Life."

By the way, I wouldn't ignore these tips if I were you. This isn't the kind of pseudo-caring crap you get from Dr. Phil. This is practical information that will immediately improve your social life.

I'm so proud of those tips that I've come up with five more.

1. A waiter's corkscrew, resembling a folding knife, is the only kind of wine opener you need. Buy one with a foil-cutter that pops out of the handle. Novices will gaze at you in awe.

2. When ordering wine by the glass in a restaurant, always ask when the bottle was opened. If it didn't happen that day, keep asking until they come up with something that was. This greatly diminishes the risk of getting a wine that's gone bad.

3. Pay no attention to challenges from wine geeks. Particularly obnoxious questions include: (a) "Do you think this wine was fermented en barrique?"; (b) "Did the aftertaste linger as long for you as it did for me?"; (c) "Don't you notice a hint of brett?"

4. Learn to identify a corked wine—it often has a musty, wet, locker-room-towel smell. Allowing your guests to drink a wine contaminated with TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) is more embarrassing than walking around with your fly unzipped.

5. Memorize a wine phrase that sounds intelligent. I continue to say, "Wasn't there hail in the vineyards in '83?" (There was, but who cares anymore?) Everybody, not just novices, will gaze at you in awe.

It's also a good idea, when you take your mother to dinner, to order a German Riesling Kabinett. Finally, you'll have done something to make her proud of you.