Sharing a bottle

A friend at work texted me today to ask if I was up for getting together after work. She took the week off to stay at home and enjoy some gardening time. She lives a few miles from our workplace, so it was easy to meet up for dinner.

We went to a great restaurant inside an art museum. This place has real tablecloths and a fancy pants wine list. I felt more than a little under dressed in my work clothes of polo shirt, shorts, and sneakers, but they didn't judge.

Looking over the menu, my friend and I were delighted to see that the restaurant has a special discounted menu for Tuesday nights. This includes a list of wines for $20 a bottle.

I considered a cocktail, but was dismayed when I discovered that they didn't have any gin cocktails on the list. Really? Three whisky-based cocktails but none with gin?

So to the wine list I looked. We both agreed that we wanted white wine and figured what the heck, let's split a bottle. We would each have spent at least ten dollars on a glass had we ordered separately; this way we each got half a bottle for ten dollars. A bargain!

There were five whites on the list. My friend did not like riesling so we crossed that one off. I don't like chardonnay but there weren't any chardonnays on the list so that was easy. We ended up narrowing it down to a spanish varietal neither of us had heard of or a pinot grigio. We asked the waiter for help deciding, and he didn't hesitate: the Spanish wine it is.

He brought it to the table and offered a taste. It was fruity but not sweet, perfectly refreshing and easy to drink. It went very well with my oysters lightly fried in corn meal, apple and fennel cole slaw, and roasted potatoes.

We both had dessert - blueberry lavender gelato, accompanied by coffee. The waiter got bonus points for bringing us each a little creamer mug. Most places just bring one per table, even if there are five people drinking coffee. What IS that?!

At the end of the evening, we realized we still had about a quarter of the bottle left. The waiter offered to send it home with (one of) us. I was stunned. "I can take it home?!" I blurted out? Apparently you can. I didn't think you were allowed to have opened containers in your car (not to be confused with an open container. The bottle was of the screw top variety so the waiter very easily capped it and wrapped it in a plastic bag). My friend did not want to take it home and pushed it towards me. I drove home with the bottle wrapped up in the trunk, and now it happily resides in my refrigerator where I will finish it off tomorrow and smile.