Back in my day, when you took a young lady out for a date you had dinner as part of the evening.  At local places that were the norm for us, you would have to have twenty pieces of identification, and you should have probably brought your parents with you for additional verification.  Not what you wanted to do on a date.

By happenstance I was attending the finest high school in Detroit.  It was located in the downtown area, and that is where the finer restaurants at the time were.  I remember the first time I took a date downtown, you had to dress up for dinner and because of this, we would look older.  The food on the menu was different, from the local restaurants in the neighborhood.   Sometimes they would even be written in French and I would have to ask for guidance even for the food course, but what a great early addition to my education.  Then the waiter would ask you if you would like to look at the wine list.  Imagine asking you if you wanted to have a drink without asking you for ID before hand… a teenager’s heaven.  So I would look at the wine list for something affordable and would ask for help.  A great meal, alcohol and I appeared to be a big man to my date.  Nirvana was attainable.

So of course,  as many as the dates as possible were in better places, especially if they had a wine list.  I had to start studying the wine lists, so that I would seem natural at it, but at the same time I was trying to taste as many different wines as I could afford.  At the same time I was developing my taste palette and started to discover that certain types of wines appealed to me more, but I still wanted to taste more.