This weekend the Cincinnati International Wine Festival is taking place at the Plum Street divider known as the Cincinnati Convention Center. Tickets range from about $55 to like a million dollars. I know some of the proceeds go to charity while the rest goes to cleaning up the puke from the old woman that didn’t know she was supposed to spit out the wine after tasting it (I’ve seen Sideways once), and I’m totally down with giving to charities and doing things to make myself feel better about my privileged life. —-
Take, for instance, the other day I gave Danny Cross a rusted-out trombone that I was going to sell to Buddy Rogers. I wasn’t really into playing it anymore and I knew how into Ska he was. I’m all about giving. I’ll give my time, my energy, even my old clothes, but I’m not really into giving away my money right now.
So, I say, why not just take some old crap to the Free Store and go to the wine tasting at Findley Market? I get the sense of A Christmas Miracle on the inside while, after consuming wine, I get the sense that all the ideas that come into my head are pure genius.
At Market Wines you get to taste four different wines for only $3, and when I say taste it's more along the lines of half a glass. So let's say you're a little lady like my cake-faced girlfriend — you'll totally be tanked within the hour. If you're more of a manly hair machine like myself, you can go double decker and for $6 be grape-faced on antioxidants and then shop for fresh fruit or an Obama T-shirt.
Spring has sprung, and there's nothing hipper than drinking wine at 11 a.m. while shopping for locally grown tomatoes. Finish off the morning with a drunken bike ride through Over-the-Rhine to the Convention Center, where you can sit outside and watch all the old people pile out of a charter bus and get funneled into the International Wine Festival.
Perhaps get another bottle of Crane Lake for the road and slip it into the invisibility cloak of drinking: the paper bag. Pass the bag back and forth taking sips until the baby boomers return into the sunlight wide-eyed and wasted talking about how McCain would have solved the economy by now using Maverick tactics, like card tricks. As they wander onto the bus to be shipped back to Mason, take notice of their newly purchased “Cincinnati International Wine Festival” sweatshirts and ball caps.