So I am setting in my chair with a cup of coffee and public television. Public TV is all we get since the switch to digital. We get like four channels of OPB.
So this cute lady is explaining to a buff looking gardener type fellow how to taste wine. They are sloshing the wine in the glass, and taking sips... He asks her how you can taste hints of berries and toe-maa-toes in your wine. She smiles slyly and says it is a good question. I suppose this all some sort of lowgrade romance TV that I don't understand but to answer the question, how can you? You can't. They just make this crap up.
Like you could separate out berry, fruit and tomato scents out of the evaporating alcohol in a wine glass? It smells like grapes! Rotten grapes! Lets just be honest and comment it does not taste like rubbing alcohol and how quick it knocks your girl friend on her shapely bottom, or how quickly it impairs her judgement-which I think is the goal anyway. Or how fast it gets you to forget how small the portions of your $100 gourmet meal are, and how many glasses does it take for you to not care that you could have had a big arse steak for the same price?
Can you really taste the difference?
We were once gifted a $100 bottle of wine. It was horrible, sharp and bitter with a yeasty aftertaste. I tasted no berries or tomatoes. I was complaining that we should have regifted or sold it on ebay and instead of ruining our Christian testimony by imbibing snobby wine. But, my wife is a happy cheerful person (13 years of marriage to me has brought her down a bit...) and hates to waste things. She flashed a cheerful smile and said,"We'll have Spritzers!" So she fetched a tray of ice and a can of Sprite and you know it was not so bad. It became a happy dessert drink!
So here I live in the middle of "wine country" and I think any wine that costs more than $20 a bottle is pretentious and I officially don't drink anyway...
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The picture reminded me: When I was in college, my roommate and I kept our duplex in town over the summer once. We would work on the farm all week and then go to town and get inebriated Saturday night...I'm better now!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, we once bought some Mad Dog. Grape I think it was. We didn't drink 1/4 of it and we weren't too choosy at that point. Some years later I got invited to a wine tasting. Way more expensive liquid but still the same taste. I'll take a beer any day.
I guess I'm just a gourmand. I actually LIKE dry white wine and sweet red wine. But, $20 a bottle: what are you Budd, a millionaire? Give the the cheap stuff! Do they still make Ripple? I remember having it frequently back when I was underage and headed for hell on a banana peel. I rarely touch alcohol anymore, though, there's just too many other things that are more important.
ReplyDeleteOrin, it is best to leave ole John Barley Corn alone I suppose. This whole wine thing is too funny for words. The wine tasters just string together all these descriptive phrases so it sounds like they know something. Then the peasants buy the wine based on the label and thus a market is born. I will say the craft beer market is somewhat the same but I like beer people much better. Ever see the "Married with Children" when they had the beer revolt?
ReplyDeleteGorges, I don't pay $20 a bottle. Sometimes people give us bottles. Sometimes we drink them. I always wondered about Blue Nun as the advertisement said it went with anything.
There are beer snobs, (some might call me one) but they tend to be more down-to-earth than the wine folks. A group of us go to the brewfest in Eugene every year, it's a benefit for the local community college radio station. Kinda fun to people watch there. The crowd ranges from ultra-conservative, NRA hat-wearing folks to the hippies and anarchists that Lane county is famous for. Interesting to watch the interactions!
ReplyDeleteLone Star Beer and Bob Wills music,
ReplyDeleteWhen I hear Faded Love I feel at home