Wine, women, and song

I’d like to say a few words about the buying of wine in Poland. A surprising number of people have told me that Poland is in a ‘transitional state’ when it comes to alcohol consumption. It’s passing slowly and painfully from a ‘vodka’ culture to a ‘beer and wine’ culture thereby bringing it in line with the ‘civilized’ peoples of western Europe. I say ’surprising’ simply because one wouldn’t expect such an obscure subject to come up in general conversation quite so often, but it does. Exactly why the drinking of beer is described as a new thing in Poland I haven’t quite managed to figure out since the big breweries seem to have been going strong since the nineteenth century, however, that’s neither here nor there.

There are three places where one can reasonably expect to be able to buy wine in Poland (assuming the Pope isn’t in town, in which case there are none); the supermarket, the local off-licence, and the poncy wine shop. For non-British readers I offer the following translations: an ‘off-licence’ is the British name for what the Americans would call a liquor store and anyone else would call and alcohol shop (commonly known as the ‘offie’ in British slang); a ‘poncy wine shop’ is a wine shop frequented by ponces. There are quite a few poncy wine shops in Krakow (ok, ok, it’s a shop that sells wine and nothing else) but they are far too easy and no fun. There’s a very good one on the main square in Krakow where the staff have been specially trained to stare at their customers in a witheringly disapproving manner.

Buying wine in the supermarket is a bit like renting pornographic films at the local DVD shop. You are required to slip unobtrusively through a set of swinging doors into a secretive and slightly shameful enclave. It makes you feel very grown up and degenerate. Small children hang their arms over the barrier and wonder what the adults are doing in there pouring over strange bottles with an odd gleam in their eyes. You pick your wine off the shelf and take it to the special cashier within the enclave. She eyes you suspiciously, rings up the cash, wraps your wino in paper and plastic, and hands you the receipt. It’s very important to keep this receipt because when you go to the proper god-fearing cashier at the front of the shop to pay for all your other non-shameful purchases, she will want to look at it. I have no idea why. The first time I was faced with this situation I did what everybody does with receipts and promptly dropped it, or stuffed it into a pocket, or otherwise disappeared it. This was a bad mistake. My goodness what a hoopla ensued. The default assumption was that I had snuck into the wine enclave, snaffled a couple of bottles off the shelf, wrapped them in paper, put them in a plastic bag, and then tried to sneak them through the cash desk by cunningly placing them on the conveyor with all my other stuff. I almost got away with it too.

Now I’m used to it I actually quite like the system. In the UK you pick up wine in the supermarket with no more thought or palaver than you would pick up toothpaste. I quite like the danger of the Polish system. Can you keep hold of that all-important receipt? Will the security guard believe you? I also quite like the way other people queueing at the cash till eye your tightly wrapped bottles and wonder if you are a straightforward drunk or a sophisticated type capable of picking out proper wine. They will never know.

Having said all that, buying wine in the supermarket is nothing compared to buying it in the local offie. Open-all-hours alcohol shops in Poland are actually extremely well-stocked with wine, not to mention a hundred other kinds of intoxicating liquids. The problem is that it’s almost impossible to get at them. The average Polish off-licence is a narrow shop strictly divided by a counter. The customers are on one side of the counter while the sklepowa and all the booze are on the other (depending on the area bullet-proof plexiglass may be involved). Walk up to the counter and the resident troll says “What do you want?” or words to that effect. “Red wine please” opines the innocent customer. The troll rolls her eyes and gestures over her shoulder at the two-to-three hundred wines for sale. “Which?” she asks. Now that’s a tricky question when the wines in question are a good two meters away and it is therefore impossible to read the labels with any accuracy. Also you have to consider the fact that there are a dozen people standing behind you in the queue who may or may not be raving alcoholics with the patience of four-year-old children.

Fortunately the Poles have come up with a cunning system for coping with this fundamental flaw in the wine-selling business; “Sweet or dry?”; “Semi-sweet or semi-dry?” All wine-buying decisions come down to this. The proper response is “Yes. I would like a semi-dry wine for about 20 zloty.” You are then handed a random bottle that vaguely matches these parameters. Note that one should always say “semi-dry” if one doesn’t want to be equated with teenage alcohol experimentation (wisniowa anyone?) and that 20 zloty puts you safely outside of jabola country. Exactly how vintners make money from this arrangement I have no idea. For the customer the results are diverting and occasionally pleasant.

The women? There is only one A.

The song? I was listening to T-Love ‘I Love You’ (Polish version) when I started this. And no, I am not a wise man.