Imagine a naturally occurring liquid that made food taste better and everyone happier. If it were discovered today we’d probably outlaw it – too much damned fun.

Still I think I ran out the door first. You know what Rodney Dangerfield said, “I’d never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.”

My dignity was so far gone I had no trouble guilt tripping her into leaving me alone with my beer and delusions of gunslinger perfection.

Despite all of these pitfalls I did well on my decanting. I had truly become the steely eyed gunslinger super-hero Sommelier.

Try as I might, 24 hours was not enough time for me to cram enough wines into my brain to match the menu that was thrown at me. Not sleeping didn’t help much either.

When I put on the blazer I purchased for my exam, the first one I haven’t bought a Goodwill, my beard stuck out like a giant dust ball.

Speaking of frost how about harvesting grapes in late December, after midnight with bare hands? Sounds like a ring of hell Satan would set up for French vintners who add too much Merlot to their blends.

You might be asking yourself, where is Iber and why are we just concerned with the Peninsula? If so then you probably had a public school education like me.

I had many Super-Hero Sommelier fantasies during this class. I would wander from village to village, drinking all of the wines and naming all of the varietals and their characteristics. Italian maidens with blazing eyes would set before me clay jugs of red mystery wine and steaming plates of pasta.

If it weren’t for the prohibitionist Americans would have been producing fine wine for perhaps a century.

For our blind tastings we used a form developed by the Court of Master Sommeliers.

All MS’s have been so thoroughly tested, so tortured by the minutia of the totality of the wine world that they are on some deep level traumatized. Mentioning a test to them is the equivalent setting off loud fire crackers near war veterans.

By the time this course ended I would have shaved my head and beard, started using flash cards again for the first time in 20 years, and promised my wife I was “quitting tomorrow” about 10 times.

Middle age has made me wildly susceptible to compliments, something that must be obvious to people when they look at me. It certainly was obvious to my wife and our friend because they had me believing I was born to be a wine expert in no time.