Welcome to the Bunghole

Bunghole (noun): /bəNGˌhōl/ An aperture through which a cask can be filled or emptied. (But everyone knows you really mean "anus.")

Because we live in a swamp that masquerades as a suburb, even at dusk it hit 90 degrees with one-billionty percent humidity. Just a typical summer evening in Northern Virginia. On the plus side, it was a Friday night and perfect weather for a tinto de verano -- made with one part red table wine and one part cold lemon soda. It's a lot like sangria, but without any uppity fruit trying to add health to your drinking equation.

I usually keep a few cans of San Pellegrino's Limonata soda on hand because it's delicious and because buying cans of Sprite doesn't give me the same self-important thrill. However, thanks to my migraines, red wine is less frequently stocked. But on the Friday night in question, my husband and I gamely dug through our cupboard and liquor cabinet and voila (or "wah-lah," as they seem to say on the Internet), we unearthed a bottle of meritage. It was a housewarming gift we'd received a few months earlier that had gotten wedged behind the Wild Turkey and Captain Morgan's Rum because . . . priorities.

We'd never had a meritage before, and for all we knew, it was a hundred-dollar bottle of wine, but expensive or not, we forged ahead with our plan to adulterate that wine and drink it from giant plastic tumblers on our deck. Pork Chop, at only 16 months old, had been previewing the terrible twos for us all day. No expense would be spared to treat our PTSD (psychotic toddler stress disorder).

Shelby plunked ice cubes into our tumblers and popped the tabs on the soda cans. I fetched the corkscrew and hoisted the wine from our counter. That's when I finally looked at the bottle, when I actually registered something other than, "I love you. I want you inside of me."

The bottle's label was suspiciously amateur -- flimsy, somehow water stained, and secured to the bottle only at the top two corners. Then I noticed a name, in faded peach-colored font, above two clip art apples on the righthand side of the label: The Sulliivans.

"Could that be right?" I asked myself, "'Sullivan' with two i's?"

But the sun was getting ready to set and the chilled tumblers were waiting. Despite my apprehensions, I uncorked the bottle.

There are a few things I look forward to when opening a bottle of wine: the charming pop of the cork, the tang of acidity mingled with the softer floral notes, and other stuff I read about in The Essential Scratch and Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert. A slimy black cork is not one of those things.

"Shelby," I yelled, "come look at this. Does this look a little off to you?"

"Ew. Is that black stuff on the cork?"

"Yeah, man, it's black. That's weird, right? You think it's still good?"

"Well, let's just Google it to be safe."

And that's how two grown adults with advanced degrees decided to handle an obviously moldy bottle of wine -- by turning to the all-knowing, all-seeing Internet. We weren't quite ready to let go of our tinto de verano dream.

A quick search of the label's "Washington Meritage" immediately brought up "wine kit." And the mystery began to unravel.

"We got regifted!" I announced with a dramatic arch of my brow.

"Oh my god. The Sullivans were their neighbors." Shelby said, referring to the regift-givers. "They gave us a bottle of their neighbors' stank homemade wine!"

"Neighbors who can't even spell their own name correctly," I added.

The story should really end there. But as a future Darwin Award winner, curiosity won out.

"Wanna try some?" I asked Shelby.

He looked at me. For a long time.

"Yeah, that's gonna be a hard no."

I was undeterred by the rotten cork, so it should come as no surprise that I was also undeterred by the smell, which somehow hurt my eyes. I grabbed the bottle by its neck, brought it to my lips, hesitated, and then took a dainty sip.

"NOPE. Nope." I choked, "Pour it out. Get it out. Get it away from me."

It tasted like aspirational Robitussin, if Robitussin aspired to be vinegar.

Tinto de verano was officially off of the menu. But fearing for my health, Shelby whipped up a vodka martini for me in order to neutralize any wine kit amoeba.

And all of this brings me to an admittedly strange point: I don't think regifting is really so bad. If you're lucky enough to have a big family or a large group of friends, the birthdays, weddings, and baby showers can bleed you dry. And even if you don't have a particularly large flock to which you must regularly dole out heartfelt Starbucks gift cards, money is money. Why buy your dinner hostess a brand-spanking new bottle of wine when there's a perfectly good bottle at the back of your pantry, waiting to find its forever home?

But that's the trick. It has to be a good bottle of wine. Not something your neighbor fermented in his old pair of Docksiders.

So, although that dubious meritage was poured down the drain (where it is, doubtless, eating through our pipes), I think the regifting issue deserves additional attention. Check back here on Friday, when I will provide you with some helpful regifting do's and don'ts. (Spoiler alert: No one wants the TP cover knitted by your MeeMaw.) So I'll see you back here on Friday. Or else.

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