Rex-Goliath - Cabernet Sauvignon @@@ (3 corks)

Retails: $4.97 (Wal-Mart)

This is a popular wine whenever you order wine at any ordinary bar. It's a pretty standard, very drinkable red that covers all the grounds---Gorgeous red color, oak smell, nice sweet start with a hint of dryness in the finish. I'm about to enjoy it with one of my favorite simple meals--whole wheat pasta and sauce.

My parents were in their early forties when I was a child. It was the 80's and light beer was all the fashion. I can remember my mother cooking dinner with a can of Coors Light or Natural Light popped open. She always had a drink while she was cooking and often a bowl of chips n' salsa to accompany. Somewhere in my pre-teens, my parents made the switch from beer to wine. I have absolutely no idea why. My mother, being Quebecoise and of European decent, always drank wine in restaurants, but for some reason drank beer at home. Was it an effort to adopt American culture? Was it cheaper? Did it just go better with chips?

Somewhere in time, the taste for wine grew within my parents and influenced my passion for wine. I don't dislike beer -- I always keep a few Corona Lights in the fridge for guests and also for myself when the Florida heat gets a little too intense for wine drinking...but wine will always hold a special place in my heart. For one, it has helped my inherited cholesterol go down ten points (hardy har har, I know bad joke...but it's true!) I have cocktail hour every day when I come home. He prefers a rum n' coke, I prefer wine. It's a ritual that we enjoy together.

But truly, what strikes me most about wine is that every time I drink it, it holds something new to experience. Even within the same bottle, the wine changes over time and no two feel exactly the same. In a world of globalization, where there's an intense mantra of "sameness" in everything we encounter (think how disturbingly similar every McDonalds is)---wine is affected by weather, by soil, by harvest and there's something comforting, natural and "green" about that.