A little while ago, Taz mentioned Alpana Singh in a post on influential desi women under 30. I recently discovered that Alpana, in addition to being the youngest person ever to pass the Master Sommelier exam, hosts a show called Check, Please! on Chicago Public Television. AND she has a book out: Alpana Pours: About Being a Woman, Loving Wine, and Having Great Relationships. The general vibe she’s going for in the book might be described as “Shiraz and the City”; the idea for it came from watching couples order wines at upscale restaurants:

Singh cringes when she thinks about the drop-dead gorgeous woman who dined at Everest with an equally great-looking date. The guy proceeded to order a $490 bottle of Champagne — and the unsure woman asked for a Diet Coke. That’s when she knew it was time to birth Alpana Pours.

“I may not be a relationship expert, but I saw five years of relationships” by advising couples on wine. “It was like [having] ringside seats,” says the Monterey, Calif., native.(link)

To sum up (ladies, are you listening?), Alpana declares: “Looking super hot in a really expensive dress can be immediately undermined if you order a diet cola.” (The book also has chapters with titles like, “Pairings: Wine, Hooking Up, and Dating” and “What Wines Go With Bingeing?”) While I’m definitely not the demographic Alpana is, um, catering to, I guess I’m fine with it as long as no one is serving Tunatinis anywhere, ever.There is also a detailed profile of Alpana Singh at Chicago Reader. Along with some other choice quotes from the book, there’s some stuff about her background:

Her father and mother, born in Fiji, emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-70s just before she was born. As it turned out, her mother’s papers weren’t valid, so she returned with her baby to Fiji for three years before the family finally settled in northern California. Singh’s parents, who worked as a waitress and a cook and never drank wine, were very traditional. “When I read Jhumpa Lahiri’s books, I almost cried,” says Singh. “Trying to explain to your parents things that happened to you in the Western world—you really do live a double life. You go to school and you’re talking about New Kids on the Block—‘Oh my god, Jordan is so cute!’—and then you come home and sit down for Indian prayer and learn how to cook and clean, how to be a proper bride. I think that’s where a lot of my push back comes from: I’m not going to do what you guys think I’m going to do. This is not me; this is crap.”(link)

Two thoughts: 1) Fijian desis are a force to be reckoned with. And 2) Jhumpa Lahiri shows up in the strangest places, doesn’t she?

There are more wine tips from Alpana Singh in this little Chicago Sun-Times piece. Two in particular caught my eye:

Older isn’t always better: Singh compares aging wine to a relationship: If it’s good from the start, it only gets better; if it’s rocky at the beginning, time makes it worse. Many good wines are meant to be drunk young. “Otherwise, while you’re patiently waiting for ‘Mr. Right,’ you may inadvertently be letting ‘Mr. Right Now’ get away.”

Get over the “Pretty Boy” phase: Nothing’s wrong with Chardonnay, but don’t you want to move beyond? Singh calls wines like Chardonnay “pretty boys” that “don’t ask you to think…Ask yourself, ‘Is the thrill still there?'” Later, you’ll likely develop an appetite for sophisticates like Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling and Sangiovese.

(link)

Wine as a metaphor for dating, or dating as a metaphor for wine? (Admittedly, neither are particularly relevant to me these days: the only bottles I’m scrutinizing are Dr. Brown’s!)