Raise your hand if you've gone to a first date at a wine bar. If you live in an urban area (or an ultra hip smaller city), then you've probably encountered the wine bar date. Perhaps you loved it and couldn't wait to go back again. Perhaps you felt uncomfortable. But in either case, that first date at a wine bar was something like a rite of passage in this day and age. Coffee shops are boring and bars are traditional but wine bars offer the happy medium between intellectual and interesting.

Of course, if you aren't a wine drinker, this rite of passage can pose a problem. As was described recently in a Nerve article, the first time to a wine bar can make you feel strangely old and young at the same time. On the one hand, you feel so grown up going on a date at a wine bar. On the other hand, you feel so young trying to figure out which wines are which and how to drink them properly. It can be an unsettling feeling.

Try to have fun with it. The problem that most people who don't enjoy the wine bar date seem to have is that they feel that the situation is too intense. The wine date can feel formal and stuffy, creating discomfort on a first date which is already a situation not particularly conducive to comfort. Try not to take it so seriously. It doesn't really matter if you don't know your merlot from your shiraz or if you don't swirl your glass just right. If your date really cares about such things, it's probably not a date designed to go anywhere. Consider the experience a learning lesson and get what you can out of it. On the other side of that date is modern adulthood!