…relay toast?! Really?! Yep, really.
You know, this uplifting human story almost passed by my radar — Google alerts –unnoticed, but amidst my never-ending quest to find wine stories and articles that aren’t negatively or inwardly focused, I found this gem.
Turns out, there is a Guinness world record for something called the “longest relay wine toast.” And there is actually a holder of said record: China.
In November of last year, 321 participants stood in some kind of formation, likely a highly specialized “relay wine toast” formation, in Shenzhen. I can’t be certain, but it’s very possible Mike Daisey and/or his interpreter were in attendance.
But as we must with all emerging foreign, super-powers, we must, of course, defeat them!
First, though, what on earth is a “relay wine toast” or as some new modernists prefer to call it, a “sequential wine toast”?
Ann Marie Conover, Chairman of the Board for the St. Helena Chamber of Commerce says it’s “where participants clink glasses in order, from start to finish, rather than the more common toast where everyone clinks glasses simultaneously.”
Got it. Like a relay. Sequentially. God knows we don’t want any sort of randomness to our celebrations.
It gets more interesting…
Believe it or not, to qualify for the aforementioned record it must be executed with participants sans clothes. Yes, they must be nude. This is no ordinary “relay wine toast” record, see. So participants clink their glasses, merrily, while naked. No one said winning a Guinness! World! Record! was a thing of modesty.
Another aspect that really caught my attention was this seemingly odd requirement:
Abba – preferably Dancing Queen – must be played on a “phonographic device capable of sequentially sufficient attenuation” while the nude participants perform the “relay wine toast.”
Oh, by the way, I just added those two last parts in there to make the story sort of interesting.
Now this part is true. You actually don’t accidentally earn this record without training. So there is actually something called a “pre-clink” where participants will train by, no doubt, clinking their wine glasses in some sort of planned, and sequential fashion.
And because we like mashing up sports metaphors with taking down foreign, communist regimes, there’s a name for the event:
“The Napa Valley Wine Wave”
It happens this October in St. Helena. I’ll see you there. Look for the guy with the megaphone, clip-on Ray-Bans, and mildly worn copy of Atlas Shrugged.
Seriously, good luck everyone, smashing records is fun. Remember Disco Duck? Cheers!