Red wine doesn’t solve your life problems. It usually makes you slurry, yet extremely loving—ask anyone who has received a confusing post-9pm text from me (I’m sorry)—but it is still my favorite drink in the entire world. Beyond the obvious fact that I’m Calabrese and Italians drink red wine like water, it also makes you feel sexy. There’s no doubt in my mind that it makes my skin glow, and apparently it even helps with heart disease. Growing up, my grandfather used to make red wine in his cellar—one glass and you were near black out. But there’s a certain wine my family paired with Buffalo chicken wings (mild) and beef on weck, and that type of wine is cheap and red. It's the kind you don’t feel bad about breaking a cork in while you’re opening (you can recover that with a paper towel and pasta strainer) or spilling all over your white Vans every Saturday night. I never saw my dad drink—and enjoy—anything besides Carlo Rossi.

My love story with red wine dates back to over a decade ago. Growing up, my dad always had a jug of Carlo Rossi Paisano in our “mud room.” (For Italians, unlike most of Middle America, that’s the room where you take your fucking shoes off.) I spent a lot of my teen years getting drunk in Olmsted Parks around the City of Buffalo and at first, I’d always steal some Svedka vodka in an empty Poland Spring water bottle to fuel those nights. Then I discovered red wine, and when I went to school in Toronto, I had to decide between the LCBO (the only store you can purchase “spirits") and the Beer Store each night. At that time, the only beer I knew was Olde English and Labatt Blue. I really did want to have sex in college, so I went with wine and I drank a lot of it. But never a bottle more than $10.​

Now I’m 26-years-old and the only thing I can drink—and I’m by no means good at drinking it—is red wine. It’s still a miracle to me that people would want to have sex with me at 3am after a night out of drinking red vino, my mouth stained purple like Danny Devito as the Penguin from Batman Returns, and smelling like cigarettes. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it. Anyway, while I have no preference for wines—I tell bartenders, “Whatever’s cheapest”—I have five go-tos on my weeknights when I’m sitting in my bed talking to my cat, watching Gossip Girl re-runs, and churning out sexts.

Carlo Rossi Paisano