When I read vintages wine all I can see is vintage swine. Whenever I give a talk on wine all I can hear are wine whines. They seem to be everywhere. Can't wine drinkers enjoy themselves without having to constantly carp on about something being wrong with the wine!
Even when Parker gives a 91 score to a wine someone seems to feel it's necessary to point out how the other nine points were lost!
This is a wine rant and it's going to make me feel good.
The world is chock block full of good wine. Most of this has been put together with a great deal of honesty. Most of it is made so that we can sit back and relax. It is not made for wine bores to pick at and to pull apart so that the local wine club can justify its existence. Most wine is simple and should be left to its own deveices.
Then there are the wines that are not so simple. These are the good ones! Some years they are the great ones. Can we feel satisfied in picking away at these? Yes if we are asked to shell out serious shrapnel in their general direction. Yes if they enter competition and want to win prizes and yes if they aspire to be treated as better than their peers. These probably account for less than 1% of all the wine produced. They probably account for greater than 90% of all the words written about wine. Now there's a wine whine. How come we don't write books about table wines?
Because nobody would buy the books? Good chance that's true. And we still continue to buy volumes about wines we'll never taste at all. Maybe we buy into these books so that we can criticise with aplomb. Maybe it's our knowledge of the 1% that allows us to criticise the other 90%...
Maybe we should just lighten up and recognise that haut couture is not ready to wear and that ready to drink is a very different wine to its vintages wine relatives.
Even when Parker gives a 91 score to a wine someone seems to feel it's necessary to point out how the other nine points were lost!
This is a wine rant and it's going to make me feel good.
The world is chock block full of good wine. Most of this has been put together with a great deal of honesty. Most of it is made so that we can sit back and relax. It is not made for wine bores to pick at and to pull apart so that the local wine club can justify its existence. Most wine is simple and should be left to its own deveices.
Then there are the wines that are not so simple. These are the good ones! Some years they are the great ones. Can we feel satisfied in picking away at these? Yes if we are asked to shell out serious shrapnel in their general direction. Yes if they enter competition and want to win prizes and yes if they aspire to be treated as better than their peers. These probably account for less than 1% of all the wine produced. They probably account for greater than 90% of all the words written about wine. Now there's a wine whine. How come we don't write books about table wines?
Because nobody would buy the books? Good chance that's true. And we still continue to buy volumes about wines we'll never taste at all. Maybe we buy into these books so that we can criticise with aplomb. Maybe it's our knowledge of the 1% that allows us to criticise the other 90%...
Maybe we should just lighten up and recognise that haut couture is not ready to wear and that ready to drink is a very different wine to its vintages wine relatives.
