I was just getting off work and was going to meet a couple of my wine buddies for pizza and vino when I was abducted by two large men – blindfolded, gagged and handcuffed, then whisked away in some sort of vehicle.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a chair with a spotlight on me in a large, dark room. My blindfold was off and so was the gag, but I was still handcuffed. Before me were two beefy guys dressed in black police uniforms with the dreaded WP badge – the Wine Police, an international elitist organization enforcing wine laws and etiquette.

I screamed out a couple of obscenities, which they ignored. They told me to calm down and that I was going to be interrogated by Sgt. Bacchus. I wondered how they’d caught me – I mean, how could they have found out that I’d put an ice cube in my cabernet on a hot July day, or that I had chardonnay with my steak at a barbecue when we ran out of red wine? Perspiration ran down my forehead as the metal door swung wide, revealing Sgt. Bacchus in a theatrical flourish.

The sergeant was tall, about 6’3”, with spiked heels, a tiny black leather skirt and fishnet stockings; a sexy Amazon in full police uniform with Las Vegas showgirl legs and make-up. She wore a police cap over her curly, golden hair and had three sergeant V-stripes tattooed on her tanned and well-defined arms. In her left hand was a giant ebony nightstick. I gulped. She meant business.

“I have a few questions for you, Mr. Wine Guy,” she said in an unusually deep voice. “Patrolman Corkscrew, hand me the list.” One of the sides of beef handed her a piece of paper.

“You wrote that all wines, whether Chateau Lafite or Sutter Home cabernet, are just about the same,” she said. “What do you mean by that load of bull?”

I tugged painfully at my handcuffs and replied: “You have to understand that all wines have common elements. Most wine is about 85 percent water, and H2O has little or no flavor. Wine also has about 12 to 13 percent alcohol, which is slightly sweet. About 3 percent of wine is flavor, and that 3 percent is what wine is all about.”

“Interesting,” she said, scratching her head with the black stick. “You also said that the two most important elements of wine are vintage and terroir. Don’t you think varietal and winemaking are more important?” She batted the table in front of me with her club.

I wet my lips. “Certainly varietal and winemaking are important, but they’re not as critical as many people believe,” I said. “Mother Nature makes the wine; the growing season is the key part to a wine being great or mediocre. Where the grapes are grown is where the concept of the terroir takes place.

“Not all wine grapes taste the same – even if they’re the same varietal – if they’re grown in different locations,” I continued. “It is the hillside, how the sun ripens the grapes on that valley floor. It is the sense of place that gives wine personality.”

The sergeant got within an inch of my face, where her sharp, ultra-white teeth could easily have bitten my nose off. “The next thing you’re going to tell me is that wines have gender,” she sneered, batting her turquoise eyes, which nested in her long and very fake eyelashes.

“Good to great wines have personalities, and even a gender of sorts,” I countered. “For example, a vineyard designated zinfandel might have more of a raspberry characteristic than the one down the road, and that vineyard might have a blueberry nuance. Think of wine like objects in a romantic language, like French or Italian: objects are assigned gender. Wines can be either masculine or feminine; a beauty or a beast. Wines like Oregon pinot noir are elegant like a ballerina, but a Stags Leap District cabernet sauvignon is big and powerful like a heavyweight boxer.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” Sgt. Bacchus said, and gestured for the guards to release me from the handcuffs. “You’re free to go,” she continued. “We’re not after you anymore, now we’re after this Mr. Vino. You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?”

I shook my head no. Sgt. Bacchus looked squarely into my eyes and warned me not to put ice cubes in my red wine, or drink white wine with steak.

The Wine Police are like Santa Claus: They know everything you do, whether you’re naughty or nice. The guards broke out the champagne. I danced with the sergeant, the bubbly flowed, and then everything got hazy. I woke up in my bed alone.