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Note added at 7 mins (2006-06-14 15:11:00 GMT)
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Ordering wine in a restaurant can be an intimidating and potentially embarrassing situation, akin to the fear of being chosen last for a pickup baseball game or not being asked to dance at the senior prom (or being asked to dance, depending on how many left feet you have).

The waiter, or worse, sommelier, comes by and hands you a leather-wrapped book which is just a few pages longer than War and Peace. After fingering through a few pages with your eyebrows turned up, you glumly reply "We’ll have the house wine."

First of all, don’t EVER order the "house" wine; unless you’re eating in a European village (where the house wine might be fun to try) or in Little Italy (where you’ll be shot if you don’t). The United States definition of "house wine" is often "the cheapest wine we could get our hands on this week to sell off for a major profit to people who don’t know any better."