is waif
HOW I SWITCHED FROM ARKAY BEVERAGES TO TRADER JOE'S WINE
I have become an avid wine enthusiast.
Yes, that’s right. Last time you heard from me, I was a young and foolish kid priding myself with drinking ArKay Moscow mules. However, I think I’ve found my new foreplay on the beach: wine, AKA the blood of CHRIST. Becoming a wine connoisseur was INDEED a religious experience for me. ArKay was a cute little phase while it lasted, but I needed something better that made me feel like a king, and honestly holding a glass of wine in my hand after a long day just hits DIFFERENT.
Honestly, I have to give a shoutout to Trader Joe’s Wine Shop. Going there to pick up wine is like a fun little adventure for me. And you can’t beat the prices in there either. It’s perfect for people who are living that broke lifestyle; quite honestly a college kid’s best friend. For the longest time, I used to only stick to the Trader Joe’s signature wines. I remember my first go-to wines used to be Trader Joe’s Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangria - my friends and I would ONLY drink those and we never dared to try anything else. We have since graduated to trying so many different wines in that store, though we still have a long way to go.
"Honestly, I have to give a shoutout to Trader Joe’s Wine Shop. Going there to pick up wine is like a fun little adventure for me. And you can’t beat the prices in there either. It’s perfect for people who are living that broke lifestyle"
Because of how avid me and my friends are with wine, we like to have wine nights every week. Our designated wine nights are usually every Thursday. We started doing this I guess because we couldn’t wait until the weekend. During these wine nights, we like to binge watch a few of our favorite TV shows or watch a movie. Our most recent obsession is Nathan For You, a TV show that is ridiculously insane about how a man basically manipulates real people into doing these crazy business ideas that actually end up WORKING. I would highly recommend because it is the funniest shit I’ve ever seen.
Whenever we do end up watching something during these wine nights, we like to have open commentary. That has led to the birth of a lot of our inside jokes that we casually make in everyday conversation, and from these nights we have literally created our own dictionary of weird words and phrases that only make sense to us. It is THE MOST petrominatory. And yes, that’s right, petrominatory.
When it was Halloween time, we got really into playing with the Ouija board during our wine nights, and now we have a ghost friend named Maaz who is QUITE the flirt. I like to believe that Maaz gravitated to us particularly because of his chaotic energy, which is something my friends and I all possess. Maaz coming about was a manifestation of this energy, and because of that he has made it into a few of our inside jokes, I hope he doesn’t take offense (we love you Maaz). Because I live with all of my best friends, we like to pull little pranks on each other dedicated to Maaz himself. One of the funniest things was when we left a note for someone hidden under their pillow reciting love poetry from Maaz himself. Quite the romantic he is! If you’ve got a Maaz in your life, keep them.
Our weeks can get pretty stressful with all the demands from school, as well as seeking creative opportunities outside of classes, and I think wine nights just allow us to slow down a bit and really check in with each other and see how everyone is doing. Switching to wine has been wonderful and truly a communal experience with me and my friends. It sounds cheesy, but wine nights have brought me and my friends closer, like a tight- knit family. We laugh together, we cry together, and we drink wine because life can get crazy sometimes. We help each other stay grounded and navigate through the industry as young creatives, and wine nights are essentially an example of the way that we can forget about all of life’s stressors just for a bit. We have graduated from our days of drinking ArKay — no more spicy liquid down our throats. Wine has given us a sense of camaraderie, and I think that’s pretty cool.