Teaching Your Children About Wine

Eat, drink, and be merry
Originally uploaded by jwlphotography

Every Friday night during my suburban Philadelphian childhood my parents ate dinner by themselves, shockingly late (by an 8 year old's standards) at 9:30 pm, at a table lit with candles. Food that my brother and I would not tolerate was prepared for these meals, and the house often smelled of exotic Indian spices, unfathomably slippery entrees like Coquilles St. Jacques, and homemade split pea soup. On the Friday closest to their anniversary each January (right about now, actually), my beautiful British mother would get into her damask wedding dress which miraculously still fit her after two children. There were approximately 1000 (or so I remember) covered buttons on the back, and I was allowed to fasten them. My handsome American dad would put on his wedding bow tie made from the same fabric as my mother's dress. It all smacked of grown-up sophistication, and this annual ritual was something I looked forward to for months. ("Eat, drink, and be merry," photo from jwlphotography)

With these Friday night dinners, there was always wine on the table. I remember bottles of Mateus (can't mistake that shape), straw-covered Italian reds that were then recycled into candleholders on family spaghetti nights, and German white wines with black cats on the label. I must admit, this was a pretty cosmopolitan selection for the suburbs of Philadelphia, ca. 1970.

It may have been the 70s, and cocktails may have been big, but on Friday nights it was wine all the way. And the wine that I remember so vividly from those Friday nights was also served at more ordinary dinners during the week, with tacos and hot dogs, chicken cacciatore, and all the other culinary delights of the times. My mother and father cooked nearly every meal I ate as a kid. There was nothing I "didn't eat" except, for a brief time, lobster.

These Friday night dinners and daily food and wine experiences shaped my love of wine, way back when I was only drinking milk and apple juice. I associated wine with home, with comfort, with family, with conversation, and with food. I wonder if that's why I was never tempted to down huge amounts of alcohol as a teen or a college student. I never saw much point in that, and it had no frame of reference for me. Where were the candles? The nice glasses? The ritual? The food? When I was old enough to buy my own wine, it was always in connection with a meal, a friend, a dinner party. In my parents household, wine was never something to be had to muffle desperate aloneness, as a sleeping aid, or to make something possible that otherwise would have seemed impossible--three reasons that a lot of people drink (and drink too much).

Every time you drink wine, you are teaching your children what to think about it, and shaping their attitudes. When you drink it, how you drink it, with whom, and why--these soak into your children's worldview in ways that you can't even imagine. Drink only on Thursdays? Chances are your children will see wine as an occasional, special thing that they can take or leave. Drink too much all the time? You may want to think about that--for your sake as well as your kids' sake.

Here in America many of us (myself included) wish that there was more of an "everyday wine culture." But the only way to build such a culture is to put wine on our tables, to treat it as something to be had with a meal, and to take it from a "special occasion" item and transform it into a far more regular--but no less ritual--occurrence.

All the important things about wine I learned from my parents. Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad. And thank you for the love of family, the love of food, and the love of wine that you shared with me. You taught me well.