When these tastings were at the Puck Building it was all so easy. But feeling obligated, I shlepped uptown on the Lex line. I took a tasting book. I formulated a plan of action and I went in to the Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri tasting.

Fewer men were sporting velvet jackets. Too bad. I think they're sexy. Actually I really couldn't get a handle on the fashion report. Maybe it was the spring-like weather.

During my short 40 minutes I tasted very few wines. One reason is that I couldn’t find tables 1-80. That cut down my choices quite a bit. I started with the Detorri Rosso, and got suspicious. The winemaker makes a big stink about making wine like his grandfather and has rejected sulfur. This wine had definitely been sulfured and I also don’t remember this kind of gritty concentration on the juice. But in retrospect that Rosso and Giacosa Barolo (anyone out there know the name of the common yeast used to inoculate Barolo?) were the best of show. Then came the disasters aplenty.

Rainoldi Sfurzat Valtellina Fruttaio Ca'Rizzieri: the first time I had a wine made from dried Nebbiolo that tasted like bleach. Two Aglianico del Vultures. The Basilisco --whether or not it was--seemed to have had a bad acid job. The Bisceglia Gudarra was smothered in vanilla. The Gods of Aglianico were rolling over in their graves. (By the way, if you missed it, Ed Behr has a story on Aglianico in this latest Art of Eating.)

For sentimental reasons I stopped over at Librandi, the major winery of Calabria to taste their Gravello; 60% Gaglioppo and 40% Cabernet Sauvignon. It tasted like toasty-oaked Lagrein.

Feeling masochistic, I tasted Montevetrano, the long-time cult wine from Campania that was celebrated as a Cotarella Bordeaux look-a-like. I smelled it, threw the rest out. The guy next to me tasted it yet had the same reaction. He asked the pourer, "Only 10% Aglianico? From Campania? So much for Aglianico being the great grape of the south."

I was reminded of the time I got rid of my TV.

1981.

The catalytic enzyme was the evening news. It was up in Cambridge and some kid in Natick had plunged through a pond on Christmas Eve. The camera zoomed into Mom's face and asked, "How do you feel?"

That's it. Unplug the TV, put on street for someone to garbage pick.

Ever since, friends and relatives have foisted tubes on me. In the past I have been goaded into taking a hand-me-down. That little TV lived in my closet for a few years. I plugged it in twice and I was glad I was able to watch the Clarence Thomas hearings and a very strung out Dylan at Madison Square Garden. Shortly after Dylan, the tube went out on the sidewalk, yet again.

True. True. When I find myself in a hotel room I am hooked and channel surf as if I was downhill skiing. It's not that I don't take that piece of cake sitting on the table; I just don't like it in my house. You see I left TV. Never looked back, at least not until the night after the tasting.

I was reading the Biz section of the New York Times and there it was. The Treatment written by Amy Bloom was on YouTube! I love Bloom’s writing. I find therapy fascinating. And there it was in my computer. It was living inside of the computer which is like saying it was living under my skin.

Here I am on episode 4. If all of the sessions were online, I'd be up watching them 'til the wee hours.

But this is exactly why I got rid of the TV. I wanted life or fiction but not this passivity.

I threw the damned TV out years ago and now TV found me. Now what am I supposed to do, get rid of the computer? Flay me of my skin?

Is the lesson here that as much as I fight the wines of Tre Bicchieri they will one day find their way into my glass and I will drink them willingly? Or will spending time at the Tre Bicchieri tasting drive me to TV?

I enjoyed talking to David Lynch, who is finding his writing chops again after years of wine directing over at Babbo, (and a fine writer he is indeed), and I had a hoot talking to an enthusiastic sprite named Lisa Qiu who complained about all of the green peppery wines in the room, but next year when the TB invite comes in the mail, I’ll have to consider the side effects of attending.