At a recent fund raising dinner that I attended I was swirling a glass of a quite mediocre pinot noir in a futile effort to bring the wine to some semblance of drinkability. A young lady drinking a rather neon bright red concoction of alcohol asked me why I was swirling the glass of wine.
I replied to her that I was volatizing the esters.
Apparently this is illegal in the state of domicile in this great country from which this particular young lady originated. Or so it seemed to me when the rather large, rather short tempered, rather protective, rather unhappy behemoth who was accompanying the damsel quickly made his introduction to me.
What did you just say to her? He asked in somewhat less than a civil tone. The can of Old Milwaukee he was holding was a definitive clue that I was not currently communicating with a member of Les Amis du Vin.
In a somewhat hesitant voice I again advised that I was volatizing my esters.
How the heck was I to know that her name was Esther? Who names their daughter Esther anymore?
And, in retrospect, I can, with a certain degree of unnecessary remorse, concede that volatizing can, after 10 or 12 Old Milwaukee’s perhaps sound like something else.
The moral of this story: be aware of where you are, who you are with, who you are speaking to and perhaps how big their companion is before you utter that fateful phrase, volatizing your esters, in public.
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