Customary DMC Folklore
“Wine Game”

Alex Derenchuk
Hanover, NH
May 22, 2019

Informant Data:

Alex Derenchuk is a senior at Dartmouth College. He grew up in and attended high school in Bloomington, Indiana, but now lives in Tennessee. Alex started rock climbing his freshman year at Dartmouth in 2015 and has been very involved in the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club (DMC) ever since. He is now a leader in the club and has climbed quite often over the years and learned many climbing skills as a result. He has also been quite an involved member in the social aspects of the club.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context: This piece of folklore was collected in a conversation with Alex at Baker-Berry library. Alex was first exposed to wine game during his freshman year after joining the DMC. It is most frequently performed around the campfire at the end of the days of climbing trips during breaks, and also at social events in off-campus apartments in Hanover during the term. All the members of the DMC present will gather in a circle to play wine game, but only those who want to participate will do so. It is usually started by a singular upperclassman or leader in the club.

• Cultural Context: As far as Alex knows, wine game is a custom exclusive to the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club in particular. It is not something that is practiced by climbers belonging to any other group. Wine game is important to the DMC because it fosters bonding among members of the club, both intra-class bonding as well as inter-class bonding. It promotes intra-class bonding because it is a competition between class years, and therefore makes members of the same class year feel as though they are working together. It promotes inter-class bonding because it is another way to bring together club members of differing class years in the same social space to be able to socialize with each other in a different sort of environment than usual.

Text:

Wine game begins when the group of members of the DMC come together to form a circle, initiated by an upperclassman or leader in the club. The leader has a one-gallon jug of Carlo Rossi wine, and takes the cap off and throws it away to symbolize that once the jug is open, it must be finished, and the cap will no longer be needed. The jug is then christened with a short dedication led by the initiator to “DMCers past and present,” as well as “the homies and the homeless,” “Earl and Valerie,” John Joline, and Chris Vale. All of these people are important figures in the history of the DMC, and this dedication adds a level of seriousness to the ritual, where all members presents quiet down and listen. When wine game is done around a campfire, a bit of wine is poured out into the fire with each name mentioned. After this christening, the one who performed the christening takes the first swig of wine from the bottle and then passes it on. The aim of the game is to finish the last of the wine from the jug, but the game is done by class year—if you win, you win for your class. Therefore, it is really a competition between class years, not on the individual level. Everybody is only allowed a singular swig, and then must pass the jug on to the next person in the circle. This way, the game is fair, and everyone gets a chance to win it for their class. When drinking, members must hold the jug by their pinky finger and rest it on their bent arm, a method known as “Texas sidearm.”

Sam Drew, Age 20
Hinman Box 0250, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Dartmouth College
Russian 13
Spring 2019