Tonight I had that "nightmare" in reality. It was something really simple, but no matter what I tried I couldn't do it. All I wanted was a glass of wine with my dinner. I made pasta with sauce from a jar, nothing fancy, but I wanted a glass of Sangiovese with my pasta. I had a very nice bottle of Mitchell Katz Sangiovese I bought at the winery tasting room a few years ago. It would have made my pasta dish special, but there was one thing missing -- a corkscrew!
I could not find a corkscrew. I know I have at least two or three different corkscrews. I have one that's a double corkscrew, with two rotating spirals winding around each other. I also have one with levers to pull out the cork, and I have a battery powered one.
I couldn't find the first two anywhere, and I looked everywhere in every drawer. I found the battery operated one, but (you're already ahead of me), the batteries were dead. It took four AA batteries, but I could only find C batteries or AAA batteries. It's that bad dream again.
Finally I remembered I have flashlights with AA batteries in them. I tried the flashlights and they worked. So I took those batteries out of the flashlights and put them into the electric corkscrew, but it still didn't work. The batteries worked in the flashlights, so it couldn't be the batteries. I put the original batteries from the corkscrew back into the battery holder and noticed the springs were crooked. I slid them over to make better contact, and low and behold the corkscrew worked.
By now I had finished my dinner and it was after 9 pm, but I was still going to have that glass of wine. I pushed the point of the electric corkscrew into the cork and pressed the up button. Instead of pulling the cork up, it pushed the cork into the bottle and the wine spurted out like a volcano, all over my shirt. Well now at least I could get some wine out.
I thought the wine might have some pieces of cork in it, so I took a strainer to strain them out. The strainer I have was too big and more wine splashed all over the counter. Now I was down to 2/3 of the bottle and still hadn't had a drink. So I just poured it into a glass and fortunately there were no pieces of cork in it and I didn't spill anymore.
After all of this, which took about an hour, it was worth it. The Mitchell Katz Sangiovese is fruity and smooth. I plan to go back to the winery for a new bottle as soon as I get my driver's license back.
