Tannic Panic! Issue #99: This $4 Bottle Ruined My Life

A descent into madness with a guilty pleasure I find myself unable to deny… André.

TRUE!—nervous, dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? Wine lovers fancy themselves rational, discerning, tasteful. I was once among them—a snob, yes, but a well-meaning one. My shelves were lined with grower Champagne and high end Burgundy. I paired food with intention. I ridiculed my peers for pronouncing "Merlot" with a hard T — those fools.

But now... now I shudder at my former arrogance. For I have tasted André.

Ah, André! Thou art a brut, and yet not. A sparkling cuvée of curious pedigree. Not méthode champenoise, no—never that! Thou art born of steel vats and broken dreams. Thy bubbles are violent. Thy sugar: unrepentant.

I first encountered her—yes, her—at a Rite Aid, of all places. Four dollars and eleven cents. My cart brimming with toiletries and forgotten resolutions, I passed her as one might pass a ghost in a mirror—unexpected, alluring, tinged with menace.

I bought her as a joke. "For mimosas!" I said, cackling like a man who has not yet tasted despair.

But friends, it was no joke. No, it was prophecy.

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The Descent

The first sip scorched my throat. The bubbles clawed at my soft palate like the talons of an angry pigeon. It tasted of corn syrup and old regrets. And yet—I found myself pouring another glass.

"I don't get it," I murmured, drunk on irony. "This is terrible."

And still... I drank.

I began hiding bottles in strange places. Behind the arugula. Inside the washing machine. In the mailbox, like a sparkling time capsule of self-destruction.

My wife begged me to stop. "Honey," she said, voice trembling like a vintage coupe, "You’re drinking André again, aren’t you?"

"No," I lied, my tongue thick with effervescence. "It’s just grower Prosecco. From, uh, the Veneto."

She found the cork under the couch.

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The Madness

By the third week, I began to see things. The bubbles spoke to me. They whispered secrets. They said the somms were lying. They said acid is a myth. They told me the true terroir lies in industrial tank farms outside Modesto.

I brought a bottle to a dinner party.

"Whoa, dude," someone gasped, "You brought André to a Barolo tasting?"

"I thought it would be fun!" I shrieked. I laughed so hard I spilled it on a Persian rug. The fizz hissed as it hit the wool, like Satan’s own seltzer.

That night, I drank alone. Not because I wanted to. But because I was the only one who understood. André…

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The Ruin

My wife left me. Not for another man—but for the idea of a brighter future. A future without André. A future I couldn’t provide.

My sommelier certification was revoked. WSET stripped me of my “pins.” My own brother Photoshopped me out of our wine blog’s “About” page.

James Suckling won’t return my calls.

And still I drink. Cold, carbonated shame from a bottle that costs less than a gallon of gas on the west coast. I know it is wrong. I know I am lost.

But in the dead of night, when all is still... I can hear it calling my name.

The twisted cage of wire gives way. The cork lifts.
The hiss. That wretched hiss!
The hiss of a soul unraveling.

The hiss of my destiny.

And I pour myself one last cry for help.

Not because I want to.
But because I must do what André asks.

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Cheers, and happy “April 1st,” you absolute maniacs.

Until next time, HAPPY DRINKING PEOPLE.

Isaac & Zach