Top tips to make wine scary again this Halloween
If you're tired of feeling comfortable around wine, learn to fear it again this spooky season with these helpful suggestions for beginners and experts alike.
It’s Halloween tomorrow, which is the ‘scariest night of the year!’ – apart from the creeping dread that weighs upon our somnolent brows and plagues our dreams with visions of wine labels the night before an MW exam of course.
As everyone knows, the scariest thing in the world is not ghouls, ghosts or goblins, sprites, spirrins or spictrines; it is – you guessed it – wine!
So much to know, the fear of social embarrassment, confusing Bordeaux with claret, is this wine good? The anxiety! The crushing weight of existential dread!
Yes, wine is a vast and scary subject populated by bores and snobs and people wearing ties and red trousers at one end; and then bores and snobs covered in tattoos and wearing teenie-weenie beanies at the other end.
They talk in tongues and want to make you ‘try things’ when all you want is a nice smooth Malbec for £5.99.
Terrifying stuff.
And then, on the other hand, when you do know about wine, what is there to fear?
The urge to sin, maybe? The thrill of transgression? The siren call of the ‘wrong bottle’ or the deep-seated anxiety that you’re not going to like the expensive thing you’ve just bought. Could it be corked?!
Below are a few ways that the wine amateur and aficionado alike can make wine scary again this Halloween.
Lay out some glasses, light some candles and get ready to hide behind your copy of The World Atlas of Wine…
The night draws in
If you’re not confident about wine, talk with someone who knows about it – tremble at how little you know!
If you know about wine, engage with someone who knows less than you – quail before the ignorance of the masses!
Try a wine you’ve never had before – our greatest fear is that of the unknown…
Try a wine made from a grape variety or in a region you can’t pronounce – foreign words are scary.
Try a wine covered in dust and cobwebs – think of it as dressed for the occasion. Will it be a trick or a treat? Spooky!
Increase the unease
Drink wine from your best glasses – how many will you smash tonight?
Drink a great wine from terrible glasses – thick rims! Think of the drinking experience!
Spend more than you normally would on a bottle – will it massively disappoint you?
Drink a grape or wine style you profess to hate – there’s nothing scarier than facing up to the fact you might be wrong when it turns out you like it.
Drink a wine with flavours that challenge your taste buds – oh no! Acetaldehyde!
Grapple with the concept of terroir – it’s enough to drive anyone mad.
Drink a glass of cream Sherry – you have become your grandmother/maiden aunt.
Hipsters – drink some Bordeaux – you know you want to…
Normies – drink something that isn’t a Bordeaux blend – feel the urge to dress like a tradesman.
Anyone – drink a bottle of Echo Falls/Yellow Tail/Blossom Hill – the ultimate frankenwines!
Drink a Silvaner from a bocksbeutel – a literal Frankenwein
Try to have a reasonable discussion about natural wines – feel the homicidal fury build inside of you.
Full-bodied horror
If you’re uncool, try a wine made without sulphites – eeek!
If you’re cool, try a wine made with sulphites – shrieeeek!
You take a nice wine to a social gathering but there is no corkscrew – the wine does not have a screwcap. Everyone else is drinking Prosecco from the corner shop.
Hunt down a unicorn wine – drink its blood!
Spend a frightening amount of money on a bottle of wine – it is corked.
Your significant other – who knows little about wine – texts you to say they’re ‘grabbing something from the rack to drink with their friends’ – you will arrive too late to stop them.
Serve red wine with fish – you monster!
Eat someone’s liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti – not a Chianti Classico though, a generic one – in a fiasco.
Pass the Port to the right – the horror!
Look at the price of Burgundy – No. Some things are too scary to contemplate.
VPQ