St. Patrick’s Day seems to be the day lots of crazy people dressed in green pretend to be Irish for a day and drink lots of green beer. I am not a beer drinker but I refuse to be left out of the fun and besides, a few of my ancestors and also a few of Trixie’s actually came from Ireland.
Not to be outdone by the faux Irish, I armed myself with a small bottle of green food coloring. Now I am prepared to compete with the rest of the fools. Trixie and I went to one of our favorite local pubs for St. Pat’s and it was packed. We walked up to the bartender and ordered two Chardonnays - two Clous du Bois to be exact - not exactly Irish sounding. A few moments later, with the help of a few drops of green food coloring, we were part of the gang - sort of. One by one, people began to stare at our wine glasses. Looking at us as though we were from Mars, It seemed that no one has seen green wine before - green beer is expected, but green wine?
A few people began to ask “do they really make green wine?” Sensing a serious amount of gullibility in the room, I told them it was a special wine created by leprechauns from the old country. They are only allowed to sell it once a year on St. Patrick’s day. I went on to tell them that based on the leprechauns ancient tradition, they make it by fermenting shamrocks in an old Irish whiskey barrel. Many people were hanging on to my every word. This was amazing - they all seemed to believe every thing I was saying. (Hmmm.. time to sell that swamp land in Florida!) One person actually asked me if the winery was located in a hollow tree. I had to carefully explain to him that those are the cookie elves not the wine leprechauns.- I guess I can be quite convincing (don’t you believe this story?). I must admit, I think they all had been in the pub since noon so a few of them were not “hitting on all cylinders”. I’m still not really sure what some of them were saying that night, their language had de-evolved into a series of sounds that did not make much sense. I doubt if they could remember it anyway.
It wasn’t long and everyone was singing about Green Alligators and the Unicorn made famous by the Irish Rovers. One person was convinced there was a pot of gold around there somewhere and wanted to look in some odd places. Come to think of it, I think it might have just been a good (or really bad) pick up line.
Here’s to the luck of the Irish, green beer, crazy people and the Leprechaun’s Shamrock Wine!
Where did I put my Blarney Stone?
Cheers!
Angus
