Jakes Fault Shiraz

Crack. Crack. Pop-pop-pop. A playful tap on the back of our hand and a mock stern warning: "Hey!" he says. We snap out of it. "Oh, right," we say. "Sorry. That's gross." It is. We have been, apparently, cracking our knuckles with increasing frequency lately and unless he's around to tell us, we don't even notice it. We had to find a new nervous habit ever since we swapped in our five rings – three on our right, two on our left – for the new one he gave us. We wore those five rings on our fingers for years, and there are still faint-but-visible indents pressed into our skin, reminders of where they had settled in. We used to fiddle with them when we got nervous or bored or drunk, brushing one finger against another, turning the odd errant ring front and center again. And now they're gone, banished to our jewelry box, and knuckle-cracking has become our latest habit of choice. And we know it's our fiancé's fault.

We're sitting at Sage's underlit bar – it looks like a photographer's dimmed light table – and the brewery's sweet smell mingles in the air along with faint jazz music. Some of it sounds vaguely familiar. Once, we knew our Jaco from our Mingus, but that knowledge has been lost to time. That's the fault of an ex, who passed on his musical know-how to us. In return, we introduced him to Jimmy Buffett and Van Morrison's vast catalogues. He took to it, and years later, he took a twenty-plus hour road trip down to Key West in a pickup truck. We heard that there were a few wrong turns involved, and hell, that could be our fault.

That we even like Jimmy Buffett at all is our sister's fault. We remember hearing "Cheeseburger in Paradise" when we were about ten years old, looking at our twenty-year-old sister despairingly and asking how it was that an intelligent college student like her could respect a singer who wrote a goofy ode to ground beef. But we figured it out when we turned eleven.

The wine is Jakes Fault. Its name is spelled out vertically, in an askew jumble of letters. Its taste is equally lighthearted; the shiraz is full of spice and berries. It warms our innards up and gives us something less offensive to do with our hands. The two $8 glasses go down quickly, and that's probably our affable bartender Cary's fault. Even though we think the price is steep, we'd like a third glass. But we only get a reimbursed a small amount of money for this column, which is corporate's fault. We'd pay for it on our own, but we're a little broke right now, and that's got to be our boss' fault.

But we know – the knuckle-cracking, the fidgeting, the bank account, the Buffett – it's our own damn fault. Yeah, we know...it's our own damn fault.

Got a drink suggestion? E-mail kristie.mcclanahan@riverfronttimes.com