Personifying Beverages

Yesterday in an ad for some quaint local bistro (and are you with me on this one, that the decline of America started when restaurants started calling themselves everything but restaurants? bistros, grills/grilles and such; if your primary business is serving food, you're either a restaurant or, if you're really cool, a diner; that's it) I heard the phrase, "approachable wines," as in, "we offer a wide array of approachable wines." What the hell's going on in the world? An approachable wine? As opposed to a standoffish one? A peevish one? A reclusive wine? Admittedly, I am no oenologist, but I've been around the vineyard once or twice. I know my altar wine from my wine in a box, my convenient screw cap Wild Irish Rose from the kind you have to go through some pedantic snob with a towel wrapped around his or her limbs to imbibe. Wines are either tasty, not tasty, or pure dynamite--that's about it. Approachable wine. Complete misunderstanding and misuse, bordering on abuse, of the English language. Might as well have neighborly colonoscopies and jovial root canals as well. There are only three things in the world that can be described--when appropriate--as approachable: superstars of entertainment and sports, scruffy street people, and wild game.

But fine, if you insist on marketing wines as approachable, I'll play along and endow some of my favorite beverages with human qualities, too.

• Ginger Ale, preferably Canada Dry, though Schwepps will do in a pinch: sporting
• Coffee (any brand, any style, but the earlier the better): seductive
• Tea: prim
• Chocolate milkshake: adolescent
• Guinness: gregarious
• Budweiser: sociable
• Pabst Blue Ribbon: workmanlike
• Cold water: archetypal
• Orange juice (only Tropicana Premium, not from concentrate, drunk straight from the carton): godlike
• Chocolate milk: whimsical
• Wine (any, it's all the same): overrated

Drinking Blues--Lucille Bogan by spitoutyourgumblog