I spent part of my Saturday night volunteering at the Orpheum Theatre. I’m on a board for Omaha Performing Arts, and the members volunteer our time in various capacities. Saturday, my job was to be pleasant and check people into the donor lounge by scanning their tickets. Easy enough work, and I got to have some truly fascinating conversations as well. The woman volunteering to run the coat check on the sixty-two degree night had little to do, and told me about traveling the world with her late husband after the two of them had retired at age fifty. She plans to go to Chile and Antarctica next.  I enjoyed speaking to her.

At one point, the Vice President of OPA, who is also the friend who asked me to join the board, stuck her head around the corner and asked “Red or white?”  We share an affinity for wine, and I appreciated the offer. I also totally balked. If I’m at home and picking wine, I’ll go with red eight nights out of ten. But in a place where the wine was donated, that had the potential to be a misfire. “Er… is there a white that isn’t Chardonnay?” I asked, hating the way I knew I must sound, yet compelled by the fear of an oak-and-butter bomb exploding in my mouth. “I’ll check,” she smiled patiently, and then a moment later, “Yes, there’s a Sauvignon Blanc.” I resisted the urge to ask if it was from New Zealand, lest my fear of grassy cat pee be realized. “That sounds great,” I told her. And it was.

Plastic cups aside, the reality of low-cost wine is that if you don’t have much money to work with, white wine is almost always the better choice. I’ve never had a red wine I liked that didn’t get some exposure to oak, and the wines I truly love typically see substantial time in very expensive new French oak barrels. White wines, on the other hand, often fare just fine without oak aging. True, there are some exquisite whites that see oak, even new French, but my guess was that the Sauv Blanc would have been aged in stainless or possibly concrete.  Stainless tanks or concrete “eggs” can be reused for many years, and white wine grapes tend to cost far less than coveted Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. For this reason, if you’re in an unfamiliar place and asked “Red or white?” I suggest going with the white. Or a beer.

Time flew by as I sipped at my pleasant glass full of tropical fruits and stark acidity, chatting with various people who stopped to say hi to me. Eventually, another volunteer came around with a tiny handheld xylophone and tapped it four times, signaling that the show would begin soon. I did a quick tally on how many people I had scanned in, tossed my plastic cup, and set off into the night thinking that if volunteering for Omaha Performing Arts meant talking to wonderful people while sipping a nice glass of wine, I ought to get signed up to do it again next weekend — and now I know that the house Sauv Blanc is a solid choice.

Cheers,

Mark