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A little past seven, on Monday evening this past week, a hostess at a restaurant in Door County welcomed a husband and wife, vacationing residents of Galloway County, Wisconsin, and guided them to a table overlooking what in daylight would be a glorious view of North Bay. A waitress immediately brought water, also welcomed the guests, recited the day’s specials in what seemed slightly accented English, and offered drinks from the bar. The diners thanked her but chose to peruse the wine list and menu before making any selections.
The wine list, printed on a single page of heavy parchment the size of a large greeting card (as recalled a few days later by the husband, a man nearly seventy years of age, with diminishing confidence in his powers of observation), contained perhaps twenty wines, not an overwhelming abundance. Some, of course, were offered by the glass or by the bottle; others by bottle alone. Vintage years were not specified.
The wife decided she would like a glass of Moscato, a simple choice, because only one Moscato appeared upon the list.
The husband thought he might choose a Sauvignon blanc. Four were on the list; two of them could be purchased by the glass, and the one he thought of choosing was listed as
208 Sauvignon Blanc, le Grand Ballon, France 9 / 34
The husband leaned toward his spouse and asked softly, “Where do you think our waitress is from?”
“A Slavic country,” replied the wife.
“Hmm,” said the husband. “The accent sounded French to me.”
“A Slavic country,” repeated the wife. “What difference does it make?” She did not ask this in an impatient or unkind way.
“If she is French,” explained the husband, “I will not attempt to pronounce ‘Sauvignon Blanc, le Grand Ballon, France.’” (Fraahnss is how he pronounced the country’s name.)
“Mmh,” murmured the wife. Again, not in an unkind way.
The wife, indeed, turned out to be correct.
Toward the end of the meal, when the husband and the wife had each chosen a dessert, and the wife had requested a cup of coffee with sugar and cream, and the husband still had, in his wine glass, half-an-inch (that is, 1.27 centimeters) of Sauvignon Blanc, le Grand Ballon, France, the husband noticed that an insect, a gnat would be the husband’s guess, was vigorously swimming in his wine. “Ah! Look!” said the husband, happily. He tipped the glass to show his wife the swimmer. “Waiter, waiter! What is this fly doing in my soup?” the husband asked facetiously.
The wife remembered the punch line to the old joke, but she merely chuckled and left the line unspoken.
When the waitress had brought the coffee and the desserts and had gone away again, the husband drank the last of his Sauvignon Blanc, le Grand Ballon, France, confirmed that his glass was entirely empty, and lifted it in a final toast of the evening.
“Protein!” exclaimed his wife, in a kind and encouraging tone.
♦
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