Lo Hai Qu at a Wine Country Bachelorette Party

My crazy intern Lo Hai Qu has been driving me nuts asking to publish another post on HoseMaster of Wine™. I told her that I would publish her work if she promised to quit smoking. She told me she’d quit smoking if I’d stop crying every time I watch “SOMM.” (I can’t help it, it’s just so moving, all those brave and talented drunks.) “I’ll swap you butts for holes,” Lo explained. No deal. Lo wore me down, however, and so today’s piece is her doing. Oh, man, here we go again.



Me and my girls Loqueesha and Shizzangela were invited to a bachelorette party, which I hate bachelorette parties. But we had to go because it was Shizzangela’s cousin Malvasia, and Malvasia is meaner than a sackful of vegans at a Ruth’s Chris. Malvasia even scares me, and I don’t scare easy. OK, I do have one unusual fear. Clowns. Coulrophobia. See, even my fears start with “coul,” and come with “pho.” So, yeah, something about clowns scares the crap out of me, maybe it’s all that scary-ass makeup. You won’t be catching me at the Napa Valley Wine Auction. Anyhow, we and a bunch of Malvasia’s other girlfriends, like Fondue and Rotundone and Crystal Meth, rented a limo and went wine tasting. So fucking cliché. Whatever happened to parties where you’d give the bride lingerie and condoms and edible panties and wines like “Bitch” and “Ho” and “Duckhorn?” Though buying lingerie for Malvasia is like putting eye shadow on a giant squid. So maybe wine tasting wasn’t such a bad idea.

And, of course, we had to get all dressed up. Getting all dressed up to go wine tasting is just stupid. It’s like going to the gym in pantyhose. Shizzangela wore her best, brand new, sparkly wine shirt. Fuck, I hate her choice of clothes. Everything she wears is about her big gazongas. This one said, “For Best Results, Let These Breathe.” Loqueesha’s skirt was ridin’ higher than Keith Richards on a mule. If she bent over you could see all the way to the Petaluma Gap, and, boy, can that get windy. We piled into the limo to go wine tasting. I learned a lot.

Tasting room people hate bachelorette parties, but you can’t blame them. We weren’t going to spend any money. Millennials don’t have any money, we just all try to act like we work for some kind of cool startup, like we got software money, so they’ll pour us really expensive wines which we won’t buy because, well, because have you tasted that expensive crap? It’s all intense and kinda weird, like dating Johnny Depp. You see, for us bachelorettes wine tasting is just a cool way to get really drunk. Like, when my uncle Oh Fuh Qu goes out to a bar from ten o’clock until five he’s just an alcoholic. If you go wine tasting from ten to five, you’re a connoisseur! So much cooler. I mean, who’s going to subscribe to “Stinkin’ Drunks’ Guide to California Wine?” Oh, look, that wine got Three DUI’s, I want that! Some of those tasting room people got kinda nasty with us, especially towards the end of the day. I mean, we’d only been to like seven tasting rooms, we weren’t that shitfaced. One old guy pouring at a tasting room told Crystal Meth she’d had too much to drink, so she told him, “Oh, yeah, old man, then take your pants down and let me blow into your Breathalyzer. No way I’m blowin’ an eight.” Fondue laughed so hard she wet herself, but we were tasting Sauvignon Blanc so nobody noticed.

Everybody talks about tasting room etiquette. It’s a tasting room, not High Tea with the Queen, why are we talking about etiquette? We’re drinking in a room full of old retired people—it’s like the average age of people working in tasting rooms is Death minus two. Rotundone was kinda funny. She asked the old fuck serving us in one tasting room if he wanted to trade. He said he would, so she said she wanted a bottle of the Merlot and she’d give him a six-pack of 2013 Ensure. But as far as etiquette goes, I guess you’re not supposed to wear perfume to a tasting room, which seems kinda stupid and pretentious. I told Loqueesha she wasn’t supposed to wear her favorite perfume, “Black Hole” by Stephen Hawking, but I knew she wouldn’t listen to me, she uses perfume the way arsonists use accelerant. And she wasn’t the only chick in our bachelorette party sporting perfume. Shizzangela had on something I think she bought at the Dollar Store. It smelled like a carnival had an orgasm on her shirt. So when we walked into one tasting room, the fire alarm went off. Which was cool cuz then the crowd left and we had lots of room. People complain about the perfume, but then these are the same people dragging their kids into the wineries. Why do people take little kids to tasting rooms? They don’t let drunks hang around the playground. What kind of parents take their kids wine tasting with them? No one wants kids in the tasting room. They’re bored, they want to make noise. That’s the drunk people’s job! It’s embarrassing to see kids in a tasting room, it’s like having sex in front of a bunch of pregnant women—takes all the fun out of it. There’s your etiquette to learn. Leave your kids in the car and crack the windows if you have to.

Even though I hate bachelorette parties, I had a pretty good time. We made Malvasia wear a tiara with a veil, and a sash that said, “Tasting Fee Waived with Purchase.” I don’t remember much after the fourth or fifth winery, but somehow I signed up for like four wine clubs. Well, let’s say Shizzy signed up for four wine clubs. That should be funny when she finds out. She won’t remember if she did or didn’t so she won’t know it was me who signed her up. We got pretty trashed, but I think the wineries should be grateful that we showed up, even if we didn’t buy anything. They need us, we’re the FAA. Future Alcoholics of America. We need the practice.