Real Housewives of Vancouver: Rehab Wine

The best part of the Real Housewives of Vancouver, Episode Six, is when Ronnie reveals her revolutionary concept for a wine, or more specifically her revolutionary concept for the NAME of a wine. Mind you, she does not know anything ABOUT wine, other than it makes her drunk, so she cannot comment on things such as vintage, fermentation, aging, clarity, flavor, aroma, bottling, label design or pairing suggestions.

She DOES, however, know she wants the bottle to "look expensive" and as if "what’s in it is going to taste good". She also has what she considers THE greatest name for a wine which is both "controversial" and "different" and that name is Rehab.

The inspiration for Rehab came to her during, yes you guessed it, a stint IN rehab. She looked around and thought, "Hey, there's good business in this!"

People interested in rehabilitation might want to find out the name of the facility Ronnie went to, so they know where NOT to go because evidently its recovery program is FLAWED.

I wonder if she plans to market her wine at Rehabilitation centres, Detox facilities, Mental Health clinics and Church basement AA meetings - maybe do a tasting on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. While Jody hands out lunches to the homeless, Ronnie can try out a batch of Rehab on the winos.

I mean you have to know your demographic, right? And while Ronnie says her wine does not discriminate – anyone can drink it at ANY time, even with a plate of scrambled eggs at 7 o’clock in the morning – I think it is fair to say Ronnie isn’t exactly the most SELF-AWARE person on the Zen side of town.

I am not sure her 23-year-old son, Jhordan, is any more aware than her, but in any case Ronnie discusses with him her oxymoronic idea. As she fills him in, she sucks on a cup of red wine through a plastic straw.

Her son wants to know WHY she is drinking wine out of a straw. And this is what she says: "It doesn’t look very fancy does it? But it’s the way I drink red wine and so it makes it okay".

AND THERE IT IS, the crux of the problem: Ronnie thinks she is entitled, simply by virtue of the fact that she is RONNIE, to do, say or believe whatever pleases her, no matter how ridiculous, despicable or hurtful to another human being it may be. 

It furthermore does not appear to matter, so long as she can do whatever her ego dictates, if her actions are harmful to the PLANET (excessive consumption of fossil fuel with added carbon emissions to pilot a float plane to a lunch date a few kilometres away, as well as littering the ocean with $10 tennis ball comes to mind).

Jhordan  naturally likes his mother's concept for a wine label and wants to know more about it, asking, "So what’s your whole plan for the wine then?

Ronnie pauses, to gather her slightly intoxicated thoughts no doubt, before replying, "I really don’t know that much about wine. I drink wine, I had the idea for the name, and that’s as far as I can go".

Jhordan , whom Ronnie describes as a "genius", does not know "really anything about wine" either. When he goes into the store he "looks at the label" and "that’s what basically sells him on the wine".

I wonder if he also buys books based solely on cover appeal, but never bothers to read them. Instead, he keeps a library prominently displayed, thereby giving the impression that he is well-read, which is where Ronnie gets the notion her son is "brilliant".

I don’t know that the advertising agency executives, Nick and Ute, share Ronnie’s estimation of her son’s brilliance. They seem to be a little bewildered by her as well.

The male executive, Nick, cracks me up. He looks like he can barely contain his disbelief and contempt for the stupidity he is hearing. The partial smile he keeps pasted to his mug is more of a grimace than a genuine grin. You can almost SEE the battle going on inside his head.

On the one hand he wants to blurt out, "IDIOTS!! Are you kidding me with this stuff??”

On the other hand, his agency does need the business so he tries to make himself appear engaged, interested and impressed. Unfortunately, he is not all that successful at feigning enthusiasm, not that Ronnie or  Jhordan  appear to notice.

At one point, Ronnie jokes about giving arsenic to Mary and asks “is it too early to start drinking?” She then erupts into this kind of stoner, Beavis and Butt-Head cackle.

The expression of HORROR on the female executive’s face is priceless, but even better is Nick, who fake laughs at Ronnie’s “joke” and then partly rolls his eyes before he catches himself. The eye roll was fleeting and barely perceptible, but I saw it and he did it, and it was frigg’in awesome.

The executives want to get a feel for what Ronnie and  Jhordan  hope to convey with Rehab and what the “ambition” is. Ronnie does not understand their “very strange” questions and suspects the agency people are not on the same page as her and  Jhordan  (they’re not even in the same dimension of the universe as far as I can tell). In any event, Ronnie’s main objective is to “make money”.

In addition, she would like her wine to have a lower percentage of alcohol. She and her “remarkably talented” son believe there are many “wonderful reasons” to have a reduced ethanol content. For example, it will enable drinkers to drink more alcohol, starting earlier in the day (?breakfast), without getting sleepy. Imbibers won’t get as hung over and there is the added bonus of less calories.

All this coming from a woman who previously claimed she didn’t drink anymore (pretty much WHILE she was drinking) and who was deeply offended that Mary implied she was an alcoholic. This goes beyond simple denial folks – this brings into question Ronnie’s very IQ.

Again, what was the name of that rehab centre Ronnie went to? Addicted minds need to know…

Addendum: Winellama, who although claims not to be a wine expert, seems to at least be something of an amateur sommelier, managed to get her hands on a bottle of Rehab Lite and provides us with an interesting review: Wine Review: Rehab Lite, Sauvignon Blanc 

MORE FROM EPISODE SIX

EPISODE FIVE and EPISODE FOUR

EPISODE THREE and EPISODES ONE AND TWO