If you happen to be an alcoholic beverage, then Monique’s body is harder to get into than a night at the Roxbury. Any vino wishing to slip past her lips must meet a stringent list of pretentious criteria to even be considered for consumption.
See, the only chemicals she wants in her body are from the bags of random dude’s she meets at wine bars. Oh, and also a pill she found on the floor of Breakfest one year. Other than that, her body is a god damn temple.
After reading several listicles on natural wine, Monique has decided that her signature drink will be Pét-Nat. Although she is open to all natural wines provided she knows enough about their production process to talk endlessly about it.
She is invited to a picnic in Hyde Park for her girlfriend’s birthday. She notes the invitation says Prosecco will be supplied but she isn’t going to take the chance. So she swings by a specialist wine store and picks up a $40 bottle.
After a gruelling 3 minutes of not talking about her bottle of wine, she awkwardly derails a conversation about a friend’s idiot baby to bring up her pride and joy,
“Girls, I’m telling you that you MUST get into natty wine, you’re pretty much just drinking carbonated preservatives with that yucky mass-produced stuff”
Most feel this is a pretty rich statement from a girl who only 1 year ago was guzzling Gossips in a Claremont car park before a big night on literally any alcoholic beverage she could convince someone to buy for her. Nevertheless, she continues,
“Every grape is picked by hand but this producer makes sure to only apply the slightest pressure, so each grape can take a minute to pull loose, his process is so meticulous and always done with Peruvian pan flutes playing over the 18th-century clay pots”
Jesus, it’s hard to tell if she’s describing wine or trying to summon Pete Evans to the circle of wankery. She forces a few friends to have a small glass of her special elixir but is sure to make the process as painful as possible.
“Taste that? It’s the spontaneous wild yeast fermentation that gives it that crunchy, complex nashi pear finish with hints of grippy tannins and a touch of cream. But it’s complexity is really in its simplicity, you won’t find this kind of vinification journey from BWS”
Mistaking this masterclass for a conversation, one of Monique’s friends mentions that she gets a nice natural wine from Dan Murphys. Needless to say, Monique takes offence. “Oh, mass-produced, um OK”.
She spends the remainder of the picnic explaining to her uneducated friend that the definition of natural wine is actually quite disputed and true natty wine purists (her) hate the term being used to describe anything that isn’t bottled in Narnia.
Unsurprisingly, Monique isn’t given the drop on the further plans for the day so departs the picnic to sit at a wine bar and Instagram the expensive glasses of wine she purchases.
Who needs friends when you have the latest alcoholic beverage trend?