When to send your wine back

I hate when this happens, but I had to send a glass of wine back last night. Friday night, end of a long week, relaxing with my fiance, getting ready to go to the comedy club...and served a glass of wine that tastes not quite right. We were in a Northern Kentucky restaurant better known for its family fish and chicken dinners than for its wine, so it's not like I was going to get a sommelier to confirm that the wine was corked, or bad, or whatever. I'm no expert, but the Seattle wine blog says corked wine "smells like wet cardboard, sweat socks or running shoes." This was none of those, but there was something very off, and perhaps kind of vinegary about the wine (a Kenwood red zinfandel).

This is how sending wine back is supposed to happen. Our not-so-good waiter last night took away the offending wine, brought me the wine list, let me choose another selection - a white this time, always safer in restaurants where wine is not necessarily a mainstay - and promptly returned to the table 30 seconds later to ask, again, what was the name of the wine was that I ordered the second time around. "Uh, I think we'll just skip the wine tonight." I didn't want to work that hard for it. And really, I didn't want another bad glass.

I do hate sending things back, but if they are bad, they're bad. I decided not to take it anymore after I decided - against all better judgment - to be adventurous in a Cajun restaurant in Hong Kong 10 years ago. I ordered the alligator, and that, unlike the wine, tasted and smelled like dirty sweat socks. I suffered through that (what was I thinking?). But never again!

Do you have horror stories about sending back wine - or food for that matter? Hopefully you don't have to do any of that this weekend. Happy Easter!