I wasn't quite sure what to write this week, for a couple of reasons... or maybe one reason, that being, this is the last column in this series for The Stranger. No more Wine Not Wine here, for a while at least. And so, with this in mind, I thought I might take it up to 28,000 feet and cruise along with you in the stratosphere, in a pressurized cabin, rather than getting down in the jungle specifics of this wine or that place... let's just fuck all that for now. Let me set the stage for you... where I am, at this moment, writing this. I just put my kids to bed, and it's been a long day. It is my day off, when I'm catching up with my non-working life, getting all the everyday things done: cooking dinner for the little ones, threatening them that I will pull their heads off if they don't stop fighting... sorry, CPS! This is all "tongue-in-cheek," as it were, and suffice to say, I'm tired now.

And this column has been washing around my brain all fucking day! But here I am, in front of this little screen, and I am drinking a glass of wine, and I'll tell you what it is: François Pinon's Silex Noir, Vouvray 2011. I picked it up at Vif in Fremont last Saturday. It cost me 22 bucks plus tax. This is what it would cost you, if you went up there to pick some up, although I may have gotten the last of it, and if I'm not mistaken, Pinon was wiped out by shitty weather in the 2012 vintage. This wine is very special to me, and it truly whispers in my ear whenever I drink it. I mean it! What does it whisper to me? It tells me I need to go out and FUCK SOME SHIT UP! I put it to my nose and I smell fungus—I smell mushrooms—I smell my girlfriend's pussy! (By the way, it is a fact that oysters, chenin blanc from Vouvray and elsewhere, and the secretions of the female vagina in a state of arousal share some of the same olfactory molecules [esters].) Seriously. And at the back of all that, I smell cotton candy stuck in some dirty lambs' wool, and sunshine and rainstorms and wet stone after rain and evaporating rain when the sun comes back out... and I am filled with longing and wanting... for something that I will never be able to have. All of this in a glass of wine, and I'm not bullshitting you! No gimmicks, no way!

This is why I drink wine... and this is what I've tried to convey in these small rants: that wine is not wine. It is not commodity, it is not celebrity, it is not anything but what you make it, whether you pick it up from the 7-Eleven or from a neighborhood wine bar in Paris. It's just wine, and you need to drink the shit out of wine.