UNCORKED MEMORIES
Santa wine is better with time, also the laughter
I was raised by teetotaling Methodists, the kind who would make John Wesley proud. The closest thing to the “Devil’s Elixir” in our house was vanilla extract and an old bottle of Vick’s Cough Syrup. That is why finding a wine cork on my parents’ Christmas tree in 1987 was such a paradox.
My youngest brother was born into our very dry household when I was 9 years old. He knew the rules, or so I thought. The Christmas following his 21st birthday, my worldly, newly legal college brother showed up on Christmas Day with a bottle of wine for our holiday dinner. He was so proud he was beaming. When he pulled the bottle from the sack, I gasped, my face flushed red, and I immediately snatched the empty brown paper bag from his hand and started breathing into it, all while keeping my eyes turned to my mother because I didn’t want to miss seeing her hair burst into flames. I was so disappointed when her only comment was, “How do you plan to open it? We don’t have one of those cork removers. Just put it in the ice box where no one will see it.”
As my brother walked past her to the fridge, my mother spotted the label and broke out in uncontrollable laughter. The wine was named Chateau St. Nicholas and included a beautiful picture of St. Nick. Seriously! Santa Claus wine! I put down my paper bag long enough to say, almost without laughing, “Where on Earth did you get Santa Claus wine?” He proudly answered, “At the liquor store in Ada, Oklahoma.” I was laughing so hard that all I could mutter was, “Tell me more.”
His tone turned a bit defensive as he replied, “I asked the guy at the liquor store what he recommended for Christmas dinner, and he suggested this. It cost $3, which I thought was reasonable, so I bought it.” More hysterical laughter. For a minute, I felt terrible for heckling his wine choice, and then I remembered we could all have been running for cover had Momma Murray’s reaction gone the other way.
After dinner, my middle brother announced he was going next door to see if our neighbor had a corkscrew. “Oh no!” shrieked my mother. “You can’t do that; they’re Baptist. They won’t have one. Don’t embarrass me by letting them know there is liquor in our house!”
As it turned out, our Baptist neighbors had not been schooled in our Wesleyan ways. They didn’t even have to root around in a drawer looking for it while saying things like, “We’ve got one here somewhere. It was a white elephant gift from the company Christmas party. We never use it.” No, they just picked it up off the dining room table and said, “Bring it right back.”
While we waited for my brother to return, I read the label. This fine wine, with its deep undertones of gold, frankincense and myrrh coupled with highlights of moldy boot leather and soot, was vinted at the (wait for it) John Wesley Winery in California. I can’t make this stuff up. Zoom in on the label and you will see it. At this point, we crossed over into fullblown, unbridled laughter, the kind where you can’t talk because you have nearly lost consciousness from a lack of oxygen. All my brother could mutter was, “I’m never bringing wine to you people again!” Good plan, man, good plan.
Eventually, we caught our breath long enough to open the bottle only to discover the winery had imprinted the words “Ho, Ho, Ho!” on the cork.
That was all it took to push our little family over the edge. I don’t think anyone actually drank the wine. We would have just snorted it out of our noses between sips! During the revelry, my mother spotted a wayward piece of ribbon on the floor. Without saying a word, she tied it to the cork and hung it on the tree as a sign of surrender. A provided photo isn’t of the original cork; it now hangs on my brother’s tree. However, a tradition was born that day. When someone turns 21 in our family, they are required to go in search of some Santa Claus wine — lest they face being turned away at the door.
We only have to wait one more year until my niece turns 21 and brings us our next bottle of Chateau St. Nicholas. I’m not counting on the wine being any better, but the joyous laughter accompanying it only gets better with time.
Jeanne Salmon is a lifelong Oklahoman who apologizes in advance to the two other Jeanne Salmons in Oklahoma who might get calls about this story.