Sex and the Simple Red Wine
Melissa and I have been working through the Sex and the City DVDs. I like the show, but something about it irks my inner wine geek.
Whenever one of the four main women orders a cocktail, she goes into specifics: "Get me a Cosmopolitan" or "This is a Staten Island Ice Tea." But when she orders wine, she's vague: "I'd like a glass of red wine" or "Over a glass of white wine and some salmon, Charlotte listened to Trey talk." I can understand why they'd avoid specific wines, but why don't they order merlots and chardonnays? (They often drink Champagne, but I assume the writers, like most people, believe that it's a generic term for sparkling wine.) The four women dine out at nice places. Does a sophisticated woman in New York order "red wine" or "white wine" in tony restaurants? Is that even possible?
I could see that Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie might order wine by the color, but Cynthia Nixon's Miranda, a partner at a law firm? I don't think so. And Kim Cattrall's Samantha is a devoted hedonist; shouldn't she know something more than red and white? (I like that the show has them drinking red wine; there's none of the "women only drink white wine" nonsense.)
Is this vinous ignorance commonplace on TV? Melissa and I never watch it, and our favorite DVDs tend to have the name Joss Whedon on them, so maybe this is standard fare. Or does the show paint an accurate portrait of a thirtysomething single woman in Manhattan during the late 1990s?
And finally, for SatC fans out there, what type of wine would you pair with each character?
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