Moby Grapes Deluxe, or The Great White Wine
Call me Ishmael, or don’t bother to call me Ishmael, I disappear into the third person fairly quickly into the narrative. I had come to the great inland port city of Chicago in quest of my deepest flowing desire: the ultimate journey to find The Great White Wine.
I established residence at a modest hostelry and then sought to pursue my all-pervasive search for the ultimate Vin Blanc. Ah, many the night did I pound the multitudinous pavements of the great metropolis of Chicago, seeking in vain that ever more reticent beverage of the gods (Presbyterian gods, of course).
Finally, I faced my nadir, one cold and unforgiving night, when my nocturnal universe was racked with tempests and a searing wind roaring fiercely off of Lake Michigan, that mighty inland sea. Nearly frozen to the quick, I stumbled into Club Ahab and was gratified by the generous warmth and the forthright, honest welcome by diverse other travelers. Recovering my stunned senses, I then perceived that sublimely great and legendary beverage captain, Ahab himself.
Still numb from the Frisian cold- but yet on fire with unquenchable desire - I dared speak to his august presence: “Beverage Captain Ahab, I approach your mighty and all knowledgeable presence with awe and reticence, but must know I where to find that legendary elixir: The Great White Wine”.
Ahab was lost in thought for a nonce and then momentously stated: “I too had similar quests when I was but a stripling neophyte, devoid of the knowledge of the grape. My endless travails and desperate journeys eventually gave me a pitiful half-knowledge of the all-encompassing wide wine world, but alas, what the waste of the springtime of my glorious youth and the unending carnage of vainly repeated, inchoate attempts at comprehensive wine competence.”
Club Ahab basked in respectful silence as that peerless personage continued his noble discourse: “Oh, had I but then known the cosmic, immutable, eternal wine truth, handed down before the Fall of Adam: that when wine push comes to wine shove, there is naught to compare to Gilmo the Wine Pro, Master and Commander of Wine and Song Chicago. Once I had finally sought his peerless tutelage, the myriad complexities that had racked my corporeal being - as well as tormented my eternal soul - ceased, as if transformed by the sudden arrival of a beneficent and peaceful dawn after a fearsome nocturnal storm. Thusly, I truly, finally and unchangeably discovered that: I was an Instant Wine Insider and then solemnly knew: that Never I again wouldst have to Fear a Wine List”
And so, the great sea of wine rolled on and Rachel, the barmaid, solemnly, assiduously and unimpeachably announced the final judgment of the last call.
