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When I was a kid, camp meant roasted marshmallows, campfire sausages, and toast cooked over a fire, all washed down with plastic cups of day-glow Tang. Campfire songs, playing Kick-the-Can and swinging from an old tire that hung from an even older tree, and plunging from it into the lake. I loved all that. The mosquito bites and smelly outhouses, less so.
Now, many years later, camp means Vinocamp and Cheesecamp. It means smart conversation about wine-soaked lansdscapes, the philosophy of wine-and-cheese-pairing, and boutique wineries. It means sips of wine and nibbles of cheeses to sample as you become educated (a.k.a. 'wine-soaked') in an environment with wireless internet access and indoor plumbing. I love all that.
Vinocamp is an illuminating way to hear knowledgeable people (okay, big-time wine geeks) discuss the merits of old versus young wines, and to actually taste examples that illustrate their points. Next door in Cheesecamp they're discussing the philosophy of wine-and-cheese pairing. Huh. Who'd a thunk there was a philosophy involved? This is deep. Way, way deep.
Back in Vinocamp, the facilitator asks how many in the room have wine cellars. Most raise their hands. Phil and I do not. But we do have this little space under our outdoor stairs that we call The Spider House. In it are a few bottles of very questionable homemade wine. Homemade elderberry wine, just in case the homemade adjective itself wasn't enough to frighten you. Perhaps this counts as a wine cellar—after all, I would like to join in and raise my hand. I try to convince myself, but I really don't think this is what she means.
And the truth is that even if we did have a proper wine cellar, we lack the discipline required to make that concept work. We buy wine. We drink the wine. Then we buy more wine. That's how it is for us. We're not big-time wine geeks, obviously. Just more-or-less normal people who enjoy wine. Drinking it, not cellaring it. Apparently, people who are into cellaring wine are advised to buy three bottles of something they like. One to drink now. One to drink in a year. One to drink in five years. If we buy three bottles of something we like, we'll drink a bottle tonight, a bottle tomorrow, and, if we sit on our hands and hide the corkscrew, a bottle next weekend.
Anyway, if you are a wine geek, or a cheese geek, or aspire to be either, you should think about attending Vinocamp next summer. And now I have to go and sing Kumbaya with the others.
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