Yesterday was a good one in my home state of New Jersey. No, they didn’t find Jon Corzine’s missing money. Or Jimmy Hoffa’s body. But the state senate did pass S3712, a bill that paves the turnpike toward Garden State life with less-restrictive wine-shipping laws. A similar bill needs to pass the Assembly, then gain Gov. Chris Christie’s signature before New Jersey wine lovers can legally buy wine directly from in- and out-of-state wine producers, and have the bottles shipped to their doorsteps.

If you’re a New Jersey resident, don’t start popping corks just yet – stay on top of these developments, and remain in touch with your representatives to make sure the bill becomes law. Fortunately, with elected officials writing informed opinion pieces in local media about the benefits to local  and tax revenue, there’s reason to be optimistic. There are, however, a couple cautionary notes….

One potential pitfall exists in that the bill contains a volume cap: Wineries must produce less than 250,000 gallons per year to qualify for shipping licenses. In most other states that have passed shipping bills with volume caps, the laws were either challenged in court or challenged and overturned, as the volume caps are seen – legally – as protectionist for the local wineries. When there’s a lawsuit, the legislative wrangling can start all over again, from the very beginning – and it can drag on for years.

The good news is that 250,000 gallons is a pretty hefty amount: Cocktail-napkin math rounds this out to roughly 100,000 cases per year. (And some have interpreted the bill as meaning 100,000 cases per brand per year, so a big California wine company that operates, say, three different wineries, two of which produce more than 100,000 cases and one that produces less, will be able to sell and ship bottles to New Jersey customers from the third winery.) Historically, volume caps have been much lower; New Jersey’s is high enough that, even if this portion of the bill isn’t challenged in court, it shouldn’t pose too much of a problem for New Jersey wine lovers wanting access to small-production, high-quality wines. Still, considering how much legal trouble volume caps have caused in other states, don’t expect this one to go unnoticed forever.

Nevertheless, right now things are looking good for New Jersey wine lovers as well as New Jersey wineries. But until the moment you can actually click the ‘Order’ button and the bottles are delivered from Healdsburg to Hackensack, fair, open and economically beneficial wine shipping is still just a hope, not a reality.

If you live in New Jersey, find your legislators here.

The movie’s been made over and over: It’s the future, and humanity has achieved perfection in some form or another … only for the ideal to unravel in a string of unintended or unanticipated consequences of having strived for flawlessness. Gattaca and Minority Report come to mind, as do the books of Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles and The Possibility of an Island. The lesson is the same in all these works: Beauty lies as much in imperfection as in the joy and excitement – and possible utter disappointment – of discovery.

These works came to mind when I read, a few weeks ago, that Australian researchers had cracked the genetic code for the yeast strain Brettanomyces. Sounds geeky, yes, but you know this is a big deal if you’ve ever opened a bottle of wine that smelled like a barnyard. A wet barnyard, actually. With muddy pigs rolling around in it. Maybe right next door to a landfill.

Brettanomyces is responsible for that smell. As many people love it as loathe it. New World winemakers, in particular, are in the latter camp, and do pretty much anything in their power to make sure that not a single cell of Brett comes near their wine. This new breakthrough ensures – in theory, anyway – that never again will a winemaker produce a wine that smells like it came from Bayonne, New Jersey.

Oddly, some people love Brettanomyces and, wrongly, associate its characteristics with terroir. It annoys me to no end when wine experts, in particular, associate flaws in wines with terroir. That’s like saying that a spontaneously combusting 1970s Ford Pinto is just showing its unique, charming character.

Yet while the achievement of the Australian researchers isn’t to be overlooked or derided (it’s impressive, to say the least), I have a hard time hailing it as good for the wine world. In fact, I know of a few Australian winemakers who go to great lengths to ensure that their wines have added flaws: just a tiny bit of volatile acidity; just a tiny bit of barely detectable Brettanomyces. So their argument goes, it’s without these things that their wines actually become uninteresting.

I’m not sure that I agree entirely, but what I do enjoy and treasure about the wine business is that people like this exist. They’re constantly exploring for the right balance of power and elegance, grandiosity and nuance, to make something that’s unlike every other wine on the shelf.

And ask a group of Burgundy wine lovers if there’s joy in never knowing when they open that bottle if it’ll smell like a rose garden or a motel room near the Lincoln Tunnel with hourly rates, and they’ll unanimously say “yes.” That’s why they always keep coming back for more Burgundy.

Or think if every movie or book you read has the perfect beginning, middle and end. Or if every restaurant you go to is flawless. Or if every art museum only features Velasquez, Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Borrrrrrrrrrr-ring. You’d stop reading, going to the theater, eating out or doing anything cultural.

What’s the thing I remember most about the last – and only time in recent memory – that I went to the ballet? That one dancer tripped and fell, just for a moment. If the entire performance was perfect, I doubt I’d remember having attended at all.

Let me be clear: I don’t like or appreciate Brettanomyces in wine. But I do appreciate and admire the fact that it does exist, and that some people like it. When I first read of the Australian researchers’ success, the first thing that popped into my mind was the intro of my friend Lawrence Osborne’s book, The Accidental Connoisseur, in which he tastes Château Beaucastel for the first time:

Taste it?” he said. “A bit poppy, eh?”

 “Well,” I said, “maybe I can taste chicken coops.”

I couldn’t taste anything of the sort. But we swirled and sipped and agreed that the chicken-coop element gave the wine its complexity. 

At this moment, the man next to us suddenly came to life, sat up erect, and said, “Brettanomyces!” He drawled this extraordinary word, suspending his fork in midair and sending us a wan smile.

“Excuse me?”

“Brettanomyces.” I saw that his nose was quite red and that he was possibly even drunker than I. “Brett,” he went on. “It’s a yeast. That chicken-coop taste comes from a yeast called brett. Brett is everywhere in Rhône wines. Especially Beaucastel.”

“It’s very good,” I said stupidly.

He and the waiter laughed.

“I can see, monsieur,” the tipsy professor said, “that you are a man of taste. Men of taste, monsieur, are few and far between.” The irony seeped delicately through his sentences and he wiped his mustache with a napkin as I poured him a glass as well. 

“Well,” he said, “here’s to chicken coops!”

Indeed, here’s to the poop.

Nothing’s ever simple in New Jersey. I know: I grew up there (and in 1992 I had the mullet to prove it). Not only is it illegal to pump your own gas, this same state somehow managed to produce Frank Sinatra and Snooki.

It should be no surprise, then, that while the state government overwhelmingly passed a bill allowing Garden State residents to order bottles directly from wineries in and outside of New Jersey, it’ll be a little while before a bottle of Cabernet goes from St. Helena to Hackensack with the click of a mouse.

Granted, the new law – signed by Gov. Chris Christie – is a very good start. But coming with it are some complexities that explain why it’s not yet time to surf over to your favorite winery’s website (or to Lot18, for that matter), and start ordering:

—Wineries wishing to ship directly to New Jersey residents must buy a certain type of license, first. Not only will it take the state time to set up its new system (it officially opens May 1), New Jersey’s license is expensive – close to $1,000. Some states charge as little as $100 for their shipping licenses, so many wineries might think twice before (eventually) buying.

—There’s a provision in the bill that says wineries producing over a certain volume of wine per year are not able to apply for a license. Other states have tried – and failed – to include provisions like this in the past, either as a result of constituent sentiment or outright legal challenge. On the bright side, New Jersey’s volume cap is very high (250,000 gallons per year), so many small-production brands will still be eligible for shipping to the Garden State.

—Out-of-state retailers are not permitted to ship to New Jersey residents – but New Jersey retailers can. That was the case before this bill became law, and it still is. In other words, let’s say a winery has sold out of a particular bottle you’re looking for … but a wine shop in San Francisco has it; unfortunately, it’s illegal for that wine shop to send you the bottle. This will certainly be a point of contention in the future if, for example, you live in New Jersey and regularly order shipments from wine shops in other parts of the state. Why would in- and out-of-state wineries be treated equally, but not in- and out-of-state retailers? Many see this sort of contradiction as a violation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, so you can expect a lawsuit to be filed in the not-too-distant future over this portion of New Jersey’s new law. (And you’ll hear a lot more about the Commerce Clause in the months ahead, as it also happens to the be a central point of debate in the Supreme Court case over President Obama’s healthcare plan.)

In all, the new law is a great start for New Jersey’s wine lovers. Just keep in mind, though, that the notion of ordering wine directly from high-end producers in other states could suffer the same fate as that new Hudson River tunnel: a good idea that got off and running, but never actually went anywhere.

For now, the best advice is to sit tight and see what happens on May 1. Usually in New Jersey, things change for the better. Case in point: I eventually lost my mullet.

A couple weeks ago, celebrated author and journalist Calvin Trillin wrote this article for Slate.com. The piece criticizes, in not so many words, those who care to achieve a higher level of knowledge or understanding about wine. So the story goes like this: Trillin is in a Grand Central bar when he overhears a few guys discussing wine; he and his drinking companion then assume there’s a high likelihood – 61 percent chance, apparently – that the men in question are “a—holes” (ACI stands for A—hole Correlation Index). It may be true that the stereotypical wine-knowledgeable person correlates with people who introduce things like aluminum siding, Super PACs or mortgage-backed securities to the world. But to my mind, vilifying those who care about this Cabernet versus that one carries with it a much greater ACI.

Taking into consideration the time and place of the story, as well as the subject of it (an old barfly), I can see why a discussion of wine among a few young, brash, rich dudes would seemingly correlate with a high ACI. But doesn’t being a young, brash, rich dude merit a high ACI on its own? Even if they were discussing, say, the upcoming Super Bowl? Or the Steve Jobs biography? Or Call of Duty, undoubtedly the coolest video game ever? The fact that they’re even attempting a conversation or trying to achieve a greater level of understanding of what they consume, to me, naturally lowers their ACI.

Look at it this way. Today, there are as many Whole Foods markets in America as there are gun stores (ok, maybe not that many, but still); we have two basic-cable stations about cooking; multiple reality shows feature culinary competitions; and a new farm-to-table restaurant seems to open every week in the West Village. There had to be a time when caring about the heritage-breed pork versus regular free-range swine instantly kicked your ACI up to 100. But not today – it’s cool. Such knowledge lowers your ACI because it involves understanding where your food comes from. And knowing where your wine comes from results in a high ACI? Why, exactly?

There are dozens of considerations with wine that are important. Does the winery treat its vineyards in a sustainable manner? How about its people, who spend day after day toiling in the rows under the hot sun? Is the wine produced by a major conglomerate or a small family that scrapes by for putting quality ahead of quantity? How dependent is the production facility on automation versus a skilled workforce? Is the wine mass-produced or made with TLC? Was the growing season solid, or is the wine overpriced since it carries the fancy label, but comes from a rainy year? Most people who care to learn about wine in these ways care just as much about the provenance of the food they eat; there should be no crime in foodies applying the same hunger for information to their choices in wine.

To be fair to Trillin’s drinking buddy, he said this of the observed trio in the Grand Central bar:

…Nearly 40 percent of people who think of themselves as wine connoisseurs are people who have learned a lot about wine for one legitimate reason or another and are not pretentious about it. Those guys over there are in the other 61 percent, I’d wager. When they get through analyzing a few pinot noirs that they wouldn’t actually be able to tell apart, they’ll probably turn to cigars or single malt scotch. People who spend a lot of time discussing both cigars and single malt scotch, by the way, have a 78 percent ACI.”

At least he acknowledges there’s a difference in wine connoisseurship (and he’s quite generous in assuming that a full 40 percent of connoisseurs have good intentions). For sure, the ACI on the three men probably was fairly high in that they didn’t care about the unique, important, defining characteristics of the wines they were discussing as much as they did about sizing each other up – and the corresponding thickness of their wallets. Still, it seems far too easy to assume there’s a difference between the three wine-obsesseed and the yoga-pants-clad woman shopping at the Palo Alto, Calif., Whole Foods who insists on fair-trade quinoa with no knowledge of what the designation actually means. Let me be clear: There is none.

Understanding production and provenance, and caring about what you drink is just as important about caring about what you eat. Having an elevated ACI, however, is something different entirely – and is usually pretty easy to determine on its own. In fact, plenty of other behaviors, actions, characteristics and ignorant opinions leap to mind far ahead of wine connoisseurship as indicators of a high ACI.

Chief among them, actually, is leaning against a Grand Central bar handing out ACI ratings – whether to wine lovers or anyone else. Though I can’t deny, I am tempted to try it sometime. Maybe there’s a little ACI in all of us.

Today Lot18 is offering the first wine ever to be labeled with the Pine Mountain-Cloverdale Peak AVA – the newly recognized region straddles the Sonoma-Mendocino border in California. An AVA is an American Viticultural Area, as defined by the U.S. federal government – but, let’s be honest, not everything Uncle Sam stamps its seal on is particularly noteworthy. So how big a deal is it for an AVA to be established?

Actually, it’s a really big deal. Getting an AVA approved is a thorough, expensive, political, exhaustive ordeal that can take years – only to crumble at any point in the process. When a sliver of a larger wine region earns the right to be emblazoned on a label, that truly is a sign that you’re drinking something special. If that weren’t the case, getting an AVA recognized would be far too much trouble for anyone to bother.

Just take a gander at the website of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), formerly and still somewhat commonly known as the ATF (new name, same touchy-feely agency). Start here, with the explanation that the “the main AVA petitioning elements include substantive documentation and evidence for the name usage, boundary line chosen, distinguishing features of the area, and a written boundary description with accompanying USGS maps.” If you dare, and you have a particular fondness for bureaucracy and legalese, click here to see just how many factors or features of the prospective AVA must be defined, explained and proven – whether through history, soil chemistry, climate or maybe even a distinctive, eye-pleasing feature. From there, the application is processed and petitioned for public comment once it’s published in the Federal Register.

This is where things can really go haywire – and get political – if all the details of the proposal aren’t wholly compelling. Check out this 2007 article by my former Wine Spectator colleague Dan Sogg, on competing AVA petitions to separate California’s Paso Robles wine region into East and West AVAs, or into 11 separate appellations within the region. Today, in 2012, Paso Robles remains undivided (and I suppose you’d have to ask a few local winemakers if they remain polarized on the different proposals). Either way, if no one’s come to agreement after five years, I’m guessing they won’t anytime soon.

And there’s not necessarily a victory dance among all those involved when an AVA does manage to get approved. Imagine you own a winery and vineyard, and the redrawing of the wine region’s borders affects your property and products. The situation might be one in which new restrictions force you to reach into your own pocket to re-label your wines just as they were about to go to market.

So, yes, the establishment of the Pine Mountain-Cloverdale Peak AVA is important. Just how special this place is, however, depends on your taste buds.

I try to follow three simple rules when it comes to opening the (relatively few) bottles of wine that I keep under lock and key: (1) Open a bottle when I’m in a bad mood, as it always helps or, failing that, (2) Open a bottle and share it at a moment when everyone else is least expecting it – say, if they happen to drop by on a Sunday afternoon. If you just wait for special occasions to open wines from your collection, the occasions never feel quite special enough – and you end up sharing the wines with people who don’t necessarily appreciate or understand them. Or, worse, there are so many people to pour for you barely get an eyedropper amount of your own wine. But here’s the most important rule: (3) If you spent a ton of money on the wine, don’t spend the kids’ college fund on the food to go with it. Make something simple that allows the wine to show at its best.

There are several collectible wines on Lot18 this week, among them a rare red Burgundy and a small-production Napa Merlot. Gourmet curator Katy Andersen and I pulled together this simplified Beef Wellington recipe that’s a great match for either wine, and won’t do additional damage to the bank balance.

OK, it’s not exactly health food, but then again, who wants carrots and hummus when opening a rare wine in its prime? Just be sure to hit the gym the next day … and maybe the day after that, too.

Simplified Beef Wellington
Prep time: About an hour
Servings: 4
Ingredients:
• Four beef tips (I used beef from Robinson’s Prime Reserve, but your local butcher’s or grocery store’s beef will work just fine)
• Two packages of frozen puff pastry, thawed
• Medallion of duck foie gras with black truffles (sounds fancy, but only costs about $13)
• Sliced white button mushrooms
• Approx. 2 Tbsp. butter
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
1. Set the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Melt half the butter in a cast-iron skillet over medium heat. When the butter stops bubbling, add about 25 mushroom slices and brown them on each side, about two minutes per side. Work in batches and add butter as needed. Set aside the mushrooms on a paper towel.

3. Season the beef tips with salt and pepper. A beef tip is the thin, triangle-shaped end of the tenderloin (the thicker, middle part is the filet mignon). If your tips are thick, sear them quickly on all sides in the pan you just used to brown the mushrooms. If they’re thin, turn off the burner and set the pan aside. Just work with the raw meat.

4. Spread a thin layer of the foie gras on top of each beef tip.

5. Stack about 6-8 mushroom slices on top of each beef tip. The foie gras should hold the mushrooms in place.

6. Lay out the puff pastry on a cookie sheet. Cut large circles in the pastry, using a salad plate or small dish as your guide – just place the dish face down on the pastry and run a sharp knife along the edges.

7. Place a beef tip in the center of each circle. Carefully fold the dough over the meat and seal it shut, so each Wellington is a half-moon shape. Cut a few slits in the top of each Wellington so steam can escape.

8. Place the Wellingtons in the oven. Check them every 10 minutes, and bake for no longer than 25 minutes. The trick is to keep the beef medium rare and get the puff pastry golden brown. For medium-rare Wellingtons, try baking for 20 minutes, then move the tray under the broiler for two or three minutes. Slice in half, right down the middle, and serve.

For a good, complementary side dish, try roasting new potatoes with salt, pepper and rosemary in the same pan in which you browned the mushrooms (and, possibly, seared the beef). You can just add the pan into the oven with the Wellingtons, on a different rack. Let them roast for at least 30 minutes.

Have another easy recipe to that you like to serve alongside your special wines? Share it below.

Last night I was lucky enough to be cooked for by a chef featured in The New York Times Dining section last week, Andy Ricker (“Cuisines Mastered As Acquired Tastes,” May 29). Ricker is the proprietor of Thai restaurant Pok Pok in Brooklyn but, I should note, the experience occurred entirely by accident. I’d been invited to a cooking class and wine pairing in a place I least expected to find one: the eighth floor of Macy’s in Herald Square. After weaving through the perfume counters to the elevators, my skepticism only grew as I got lost in the bridal section, wandered by some Waterford crystal, past the Au Bon Pain to a back hallway guarded by retirement-age security, and through a door next to the employee cafeteria.

But there is the De Gustibus cooking studio, a beautiful demonstration space packed with attentive diners, jotting notes with one hand, other extremity raised to ask questions about what’s being bashed apart in the mortar and pestle or being sliced and diced on the cutting board. The walls are lined with photos of famous chefs who’ve taught here recently (Angelo from Top Chef) and forever ago (Emeril 10 years and 100 lbs. removed and a grinning Tom Colicchio with a shaggy mop, to name but two).

Now the things I truly didn’t expect to happen: One, that my concept of Thai cuisine would be completely upended. And two, that Riesling is not the only wine that pairs well with it. In fact, just burn the damn rulebook on pairings. The three wines paired with the half-dozen dishes or so all came from New Zealand: Quartz Reef NV sparkling wine from Central Otago, Craggy Range Te Muna Road Sauvignon Blanc from Martinborough and, one of my all-time favorites, Craggy Range Le Sol Syrah from Hawkes Bay. The star dish of the night (a salt-crusted whole fish, recipe below) paired as beautifully with a minerally Sauvignon Blanc as with the peppery, powerful Syrah.

If you ever get the chance to attend a class at De Gustibus, don’t hesitate. Grin and bear the mobs of tourists looking for Diesel jeans and everything DKNY. But, just as importantly, get yourself to Pok Pok and let this fresh, traditional, vibrant cuisine wash that soupy green curry chicken takeout you’ve come to expect of every Thai place out of your head forever. Same for all the “rules” about what wine to choose.

Plaa Phap Kleua
(salt-crusted whole fish with dipping sauce)

Look for a wine fridge on Craigslist

Last weekend, I made a startling discovery as I opened the door to my wine fridge to make space for a couple bottles that I’d just brought home: A thick layer of ice coating the entire back inside wall of the unit. The bases of some of the bottles were even awkwardly frosted into place, like Ötzi the Iceman.

The good news: The contents of the bottles were not frozen, and no corks appeared to be pushed out. And, contrary to popular belief, modern winemaking technology and skill are such that wine can take one heck of a temperature-swing beating before bad things start to happen to it. The question, though, was what to do next in order to keep the wine cool yet remove the ice.

First, I removed the bottom six or seven bottles from the unit (it holds about 35 bottles total), and put them in my other, tiny wine fridge that holds about 16 bottles. In lieu of a second wine fridge, the regular refrigerator would have been sufficient, just dialed up a setting or two.

Next, I folded a bath towel and placed it in the bottom of the fridge, turned it off, and left the door open by about half an inch, overnight. In the morning, all the ice had thawed and the moisture had been absorbed by the towel – and the bottles were still reasonably cool to the touch. I removed the towel, replaced the bottles, and turned the wine fridge back on – to a warmer setting than it had been on previously. I noticed a day later that a very thin layer of ice had started to form again at the back of the fridge, but nothing like the glacier that had built up there before. I’ll just keep an eye on it from now on, and make sure the ice doesn’t accumulate again.

The bigger question, though, is how to store your wines if you don’t want to invest in or maintain a wine fridge. Here are a few tips:

1. Keep the wine in the most consistently cool part of your house.
That could be a closet or a basement – it doesn’t matter. Wherever the temperature stays below 70, that’s just fine for anything you plan to drink over the next several years. A little cooler would be better (optimal temperature is about 56-60 degrees), so the wines might age at a slightly accelerated rate as you approach 70 degrees, but we’re not talking days or weeks by any means. If the wine was made to last for years, it will do so as long as the temperature is consistently below 70.

2. Bite the bullet and get a wine fridge… on Craigslist.
That 35-bottle unit I mentioned above sells for $400 online. I paid $115 for it on Craigslist, from a guy a few blocks from my apartment who decided to move to Malta. And, with some creative stacking, I have 40 bottles crammed into the fridge. My mini wine fridge that holds 16 bottles has an extra four or five stacked in there, but it also cost more than $200 at Home Depot. Lesson learned: Go with Craigslist first.

3. If you have a second, regular fridge in your garage or basement, use it for wine.
Put the fridge on the warmest setting, and stock it with wine. The warmest setting on a regular refrigerator is usually about the same as the coldest on a wine fridge. Take out the racks and stack the bottles on their sides – they’ll be just fine. So what if the door is opaque? You needn’t show off all your wines, all the time (in fact, limiting exposure to direct sunlight is a good thing).

4. Your regular fridge is ok, too, if it has enough space.
Just turn the dial up a bit, since a refrigerator’s coldest setting is just above freezing. Make it just a little warmer, and load in your wine. A couple degrees higher won’t affect your food one bit. The entire bottom shelf of my refrigerator at home is jammed full of beer, Champagne and white wines ready to be opened. All my food is perfectly cold.

5. Don’t worry.
Even if your house or apartment tends to get very warm, it’s usually only for short periods. Most wines made today can handle a little temperature fluctuation and still taste great – just think about the fact that all the imported wine you drink had to sit on a container, on the ocean for several weeks, before it landed here in the U.S. You only need worry about extended periods of extreme heat or cold, and if you see the corks distended or leaking. Other than that, a relatively warm room won’t hurt your wines much at all, especially if you plan to drink them over the next year or so.

Have a question about what to do with your wines? Post it in the comments section below.

The view from the rooftop.

Last weekend, we were invited to a party on a friend’s rooftop on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. On the way there, my wife and I grabbed a $35 grower Champagne at the wine shop, as the hosts were celebrating both a birthday and a new job.

I always worry expect, however, that when I bring a nice bottle to a party, I’ll get to drink about an eyedropper’s worth of the good stuff, and will be stuck forcing down $5 Malbec for the rest of the night.

Imagine my surprise, then, that every single bottle others had brought was…thoughtful. Even the $10 Grooner Grüner Veltliner someone plopped into the cooler, with no pretense, is a delicious value. Someone else brought a Moët rosé Champagne. Another person brought a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand (not a second label or silly brand – the main label from a real winery).  And imagine my delight upon grabbing a random bottle in the cooler and pulling out…a Chassagne-Montrachet. Even more stunning was that two of the other party guests actually knew the region and that the wine would be dynamite, even though they hadn’t brought it.

The best part? Not a single other person at the party works in the wine business. There were nurses, teachers, bankers, executive assistants – and yet all in attendance understood and appreciated great-tasting wine, from the $10 Grüner on up. There was little discussion of wine, fawning or swooning over this label or that, which made the evening all the more enjoyable.

I never did get to taste that grower Champagne, but I’m not sure I care considering that everything else I drank was delicious. And, as an added bonus, I am most definitely looking forward to the next party this couple hosts.

What’s your go-to wine for bringing to a party? Mine’s usually Cotes-du-Rhône, but it might be time to raise my game if regular, summer-evening partygoers know a lot more about wine than they used to.

A couple weeks ago I was greeted by the pleasing and potent smell of marijuana as I and three companions walked into Oak at Fourteenth, a modern, gleaming farm-to-table restaurant in central Boulder, Colo. At least, we thought the cloud that blew past our faces was weed since the plant is largely decriminalized and is more popular in this part of Colorado than K Pop is in Seoul – however, just so you know, a quick Google search tells me that having a couch on your porch in Boulder is against the law, so think twice about sitting outside and smoking a joint on your Jennifer Convertible.

Anyway, it turns out the Oak at Fourteenth chefs were using hops to smoke some prime cuts of lamb just outside, and while I have no idea if it’s true, I’m told that hops are in the same general botanical family as marijuana, hence the brief – and ultimately disappointing – aromatic confusion. But it wasn’t long after we sat down at our table that we became convinced that the culinary explanation for the odor was not only poppycock, but that most of the restaurant staff was more fully baked than a loaf of sourdough. Much of this has to do with the quartino (pictured), the small vase-shaped vessel that many a trendy restaurant uses to serve a single glass of wine. But I’ll get there in a second.

Before I do, please, by no means take the above paragraphs as a bad review or dismissal of Oak at Fourteenth. We had a lovely dinner there, most everything we ate delicious. Even the forgettable dishes were perfectly passable and at least somewhat enjoyable at the time. Much of the fare would certainly hold up to a New York City dining standard, I felt, an assessment the well-to-do professional male and decidedly non-granola female clientele – with their straightened, colored hair and remarkably tan skin, most unusual attributes among Boulder women last I checked – would very likely agree with. I even hope to eat there, again, on my next trip, but under one condition – that they take the quartinos outside and smash them to little bits, then use the recycled glass to make one massive, psychedelic-looking bong.

And this has nothing to do with the fact that we were asked three times, just after we were seated, if we’d like sparkling or still water, then asked three times if we’d like to start with a cocktail, then asked three more if we were ready to order. (Need another hit, anyone? There’s a little resin left in here …) It doesn’t do much for table conversation among friends:

“So as I was saying, the other day I was on the subway and–”

“Would you like sparkling or still water?”

“We just ordered from that other guy.”

“Anyway, I was on the subway, and this guy comes up to me and–”

“Would you like sparkling or still water?”

“We just ordered from that other guy.”

“Oh … would you like something else to drink?”

“Sure, two martinis, a Manhattan and a glass of the Cabernet.”

“Great, I’ll be right back with those.”

“So the guy comes up to me and says–”

“Hi, good evening. Would you like to start off with some cocktails?”

And so on. And when the first round of drinks arrived from the bar, delivered by two waiters for some reason, my glass of Cabernet was presented in a quartino. One waiter said to the other, “Oh, we forgot the wineglass. Could you please go grab one from the bar?”

The other waiter went to go hit a gravity bong, I can only guess, then went out to find a pizza with this other guy, then got distracted by some dude in a bathrobe singing “Blood on the Tracks” with his out-of-tune guitar on Pearl St., right next to that guy with a giant telescope and a coffee can you’re supposed to add tips to, just for looking at the moon for a couple a seconds … before someone makes a bong out of the coffee can.

I decided that I should just drink out of the quartino rather than actually ask for a wineglass when a waiter arrived with food that wasn’t ours. To at least one semi-conscious waiter’s credit, I only drank half the wine out of the quartino’s tiny spout over about 20 minutes before the man arrived with a stem, and apologized. I’d have ordered a second glass if I had confidence that it would arrive at our table, or even in a drinkable vessel. Maybe just his hands cupped, holding some wine? But this is when I got to thinking: Why bother with the goddamn quartinos anyway? There’s nothing ceremonial or even helpful to the wine quality by pouring it from a bottle into one vessel, then another, and then into my mouth. What’s wrong with skipping the quartino step?

In a normal restaurant environment, you tell the waiter you’d like a glass of Cab, the waiter tells the bartender, the bartender pours from the bottle to the glass, hands the glass to the waiter, who then hands it to you. The quartino just adds an extra, annoying element – one that, presumably, I’m supposed to be flattered or entertained by for that full second and a half that the waiter pours the wine from one glass to the other. (Such talent! Such skill!) To be honest, I’d kind of like that second and a half of my life back. And don’t restaurant owners always complain about costs? Why introduce an extra five-dollar piece of glass to the equation (say the restaurant needs 200 of them on hand, so an extra $1,000 in startup costs), one that’s not only useless, but is just too confusing for the pothead waitstaff to manage? OK, sure, there’s the issue of ensuring that every person who orders wine by the glass gets an equal pour – if that’s a concern, just measure behind the bar. I won’t know or care.

Now that I look at the above paragraphs, I realize that it’s completely reasonable to conclude that I, too, am higher than a 747. I am not, so far as I know … but if a blood or urine test were to reveal otherwise, I blame the “hops.” And yet it’s still fair for me to believe that any sane, service-minded restaurant should do away with these pretentious pieces of glass and just bring out some damn wine already. One thing’s for sure, though, next time I’m served wine in a quartino: I’m taking it home and making a bong out of it.