How many bottles of wine is that?

I really love wine. Red wine – the kind that is so dry it stains your teeth. Just a few hours from Pau is Bordeaux, the Holy Land of great red wines (Lourdes is in the other direction).

There are many, many wines from Bordeaux. They range in price, but I usually spend between 2 and 3 euros per bottle. This is bad. I am spending roughly 3 to 4 dollars for wine that, in the States, would cost 15 to 25 dollars. Cheap red wine in France is not swill, it is amazing and the best wine I have ever had.

Inevitably, I am going through a lot of wine.

This seems to be a pretty good diet. Rich cheese, baguette, croissant, pain du chocolate and a bottle or two of wine each night has me quickly losing my cubicle belly. None of my pants from America fit, the pants I bought in Pau two weeks ago are already a size too large.

Mom, Dad…clothes money?

In the meantime, I am buying more wine and a belt.

Back to the headline! No longer am I converting euros to dollars in my head. No. It makes far more sense to convert euros to bottles of wine. How much does a pitcher of beer cost? 15 bottles of wine! How much does one beer cost? Two and a half bottles of wine. How much does a bottle of wine cost at the bar? 5 bottles of wine.

Going out in France costs many bottles of wine.

I may have had too many glasses of wine, or maybe I am just missing business and economics, but I tried to give a lecture on utils and how they pertain to drinking wine at home versus drinking while out. This led into a discussion on wine opportunity cost. Drinking red wine every night at home or once a week at the bar are both desirable choices, but they are mutually exclusive. Ah, utils.

Long story short, I think its pretty much decided that its going to be wine at home from now on.