Inspired by A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (which I’ve had to buy 4 times so each of my kids could have a clean copy to annotate for pre-AP World History) and in honor of my upcoming wedding anniversary, I thought I’d do a little retrospective of the past 27 years in six glasses.

Glass 1

Tequila: In case my kids ever find and read my blog, let’s leave it at tequila and frat parties. Enough said.

Glass 2

Beer : While we may  have graduated from college and dirty tap lines at the fraternity house, we were definitely still on a beer budget between paying for grad school and law school. We tried to get fancy, but still on a domestic price tag–anyone remember Michelob Dry–and my husband got into home brewing. His hoppy adventures came to end the evening that he lost control of the bottling hose while filling bottles in the sink. Our frantic screaming as the hose whipped back and forth spraying beer all over the kitchen brought our two dogs and two cats into target range as they investigated the ruckus. He regained control of the hose to continue bottling, minus several bottles worth of beer, while I started bathing the animals. It was closing in on my midnight while I bent over the tub bathing two Australian Shepherds almost 7 months into my first pregnancy. He got to wrangle the uncooperative cats into the tub and his equipment into storage…FOREVER.

Glass 3

White Zinfadel: We were a little bleary eyed from a year with our first kid when we joined a beach vacation with extended family. His cousins and their spouses were in their thirties and seemed so sophisticated with alcohol that needed special equipment—a corkscrew. They introduced us to white Zinfadel. I’m not even sure what that really is, but to someone who between pregnancy and nursing had not had much to drink in almost two years, it tasted like the nectar of the gods.

Glass 4

Chardonnay : While we had kids two and three, friends were out living life in the early 2000’s and were kind enough to share what was happening on the bar scene. Bottles of Chardonnay were broken out for dinner parties and barbeques. Compared to the soft drink taste of white zinf, the butter and oak of Chardonnay tasted like a tour down Sophistication avenue.

Glass 5

Bordeaux: Life with 4 kids aged seven and under meant we needed two babysitters to go anywhere and teenage babysitters are as rare as a narwhal in a bathtub. If we wanted a dinner that did not include an obligatory visit to the germ pit, I mean play place, we needed to cook at home. Armed with subscriptions to every cooking magazine and Food Network playing in the background while I folded endless laundry, I managed to acquire two nuggets of wisdom. Let steak come to room temperature before cooking and a little something called Bordeaux wine went well with beef. We discovered the Saints– Emillion and Julien, Margeaux, Haut-Medoc, and stayed forever confused whether we like right or left bank wines. For what seemed liked a princely sum of $40 we could pop a bottle of Bordeaux, put the kids to bed at 8, and feel like we were dining in a French bistro, at least until it was time to do the dishes.

Glass 6

Cabernet Sauvignon: My husband returned home from a trip with exciting news—at a business dinner he had tried the most amazing wine, a Darioush Cabernet Sauvignon and he found a bottle of it at Total Wine! I loved him when we married, and loved him as helped me raise our children, but I may have loved him most when the first taste of Cab touched my soul. I thought Bordeaux had my unmitigated loyalty, but the bigger, bolder, more seductive Cab won me over in a single night. It helped that my foray into California Cab was a great one—no introduction via the 1.5 liter bottle on sale at the grocery store for $8.99—and searching for the perfect glass of Cab became our hobby and passion.

So there is our marriage from tequila shots to estate-grown Cabs. Each chapter tells its own story and has a happy ending—whether as newlyweds, parents of a growing family, or half-way to empty-nesters, celebrating the moment we were in defined us. It is my sincere hope that we stay at Glass 6 for a long while, I’m not nearly ready to change my Cab for Metamucil.