by Mimi Toro

For those of us who aren’t quite clear about the origins or meaning of the prepositional phrase, “to the face,” a brief debriefing:

Dating back to the golden ages of fledging wine exploration and the founding of the secret brotherhood of the Face, this phrase was uttered as a right of passage for those who wished to cross the threshold and enter the infamous secret enclave of the Order, a site later identified by anthropologists as 1545 Larkin (recently excavated from the treacherous terrain of Russian Hill). Stories found buried deep within the pages of an ancient and invaluable tome, the much sought-after Facebook, reveal that these four wise men had been seated upon the hallowed apparatus,* sipping a particularly rare wine from the Sonoma Valley of California and drafting a manifesto, the last remnants of which were recently pieced together to reveal a sheet of specially coated wax paper (scientists confirm it was of the ‘butcher’ variety) scrawled with a permanent ink that most likely came from an implement known back then as a Sharpie.

What exactly these men had been discussing remains a mystery to this very day. But what is known is that they were very powerful and had amassed a collection of the sacred quaff and it’s inherent wisdom that granted them both limitless power and widespread envy. The Order of the Face thrived for several centuries, wandering the globe and expounding the virtues of wine through their underground publication known only to accomplished scholars as Wine to the Face. Wherever they stopped, whole towns gathered to celebrate their infinite wisdom and their thirst for life (several accounts tell of entire countries taking wine to their faces as ritual sacrifice to the Order) and the men never lost sight of their humble beginnings at 1545 Larkin. Although their last known whereabouts have yet to be discovered, it is rumored that the men divided themselves amongst the four corners of the earth, each falling into a deep, intoxicated slumber beneath a tree. Legend has it that to sit beneath a tree of the Order is to experience an instant and interminable euphoria. Theirs was a story, never to be forgotten.

The Order of the Face has inspired countless offshoot organizations and the phrase itself has been inculcated into the vernacular of over 90 countries, even rising to fame in post-Lebowski America as the virtual parlance of our times. No single word in the English language at present can summarily express the complete sentiment of exuberance and enjoyment that this phrase embodies.

These were men who didn’t just do things. They took them to the Face.

*The apparatus that had served as their initial throne was discovered several years after the Larkin lair had been exhumed. What once had been a modest blue, curtained futon was replaced in their heyday by a suede sectional that allowed for deeper meditation and thus their most enlightened manuscripts.



-Mimi Toro is a reporter for Food to the Face and an avid member of the Wine to the Face Society