It's really true; I love wine and food from Italy, France, Germany, and other countries as well. And who among us can reject a bargain? But I also really hate wine, especially many aspects of the wine scene. Let me explain my top ten reasons for this love-hate relationship. Previous articles discussed the unconscionable expense, the embarrassing lack of knowledge, no wine cellar, I can't get the ... bottle opened, insomnia, and food problems. This article discusses those obnoxious wine snobs that infest the wine scene.
Ask any hobbyist. The nicest people are his or her fellow trap shooters, crap shooters, tiddly-winks players, 18th Century fountain pen collectors, or you name it. Don't be shocked, I can't believe wine fanciers (snobs?) are nicer, more cultured, and even more generous than trap shooters, crap shooters, your run-of-the-mill plonk imbibers, or, perish the thought, abstainers. They may not be worse, but they are certainly not better than the others. Wine fanciers are probably richer or at least start richer than most others, and they do have some special, shall we say, gifts. Who else beside wine fanciers can somehow find ten different aromas and twelve different tastes in three ounces of dross? And the haughtiness, "You thought it was a 1982, any fool... ". To be fair I never heard those exact terms. But I do know what they were thinking.
My apologies to my betters; I do not and absolutely can not remember every glass of wine that I ever emptied. I do remember some of the best and I cannot forget some of the worst. But as far as the vast middle ground goes, why should I bother to clutter my precious store of memories? I am no psychologist, but I have heard of a weird mental disorder (don't take this as a technical term) called total recall. An individual blessed, or should we say cursed, with total recall can remember every word of an insignificant conversation that took place two or twenty years ago. This brings certain wine snobs to mind. To them I say, why don't you get a life. The ability to recall and in some ways regenerate pleasurable memories on demand is great, if you don't overdo it. Here are the other reasons that I hate wine, to be explored shortly: Those smells and those tastes, Those colors, Home brew, One more problem and yes, The Solution.
Some of you are familiar with my wine article series "I Love Italian Wine and Food, " similar French and German series, and my travel articles that always manage to discuss local wine and food. It's true; I really do love wine and food from Italy, France, Germany, and other countries as well. But I also hate wine and many disheartening aspects of the wine scene. Let me explain my top ten reasons for this love-hate relationship.
The unconscionable expense. Don't let anybody kid you. Good wine is expensive. Great wine is of course even more expensive. There are bargains, but finding them is like kissing scads of frogs to find a prince. You have to kiss a lot of frogs (yechh) before you get to kiss a prince. Believe it or not, I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to kiss any princes.
I do, however, want to drink fine wine. And I find that the more fine wine I drink, the more fine wine I want to drink. Before I started writing wine reviews, twenty dollars was more or less my limit for a bottle; now I almost feel like apologizing when I spend less than twenty. Having tasted some excellent wines in the forty-dollar range, I am dying to know how sixty-dollar wines taste. Needless to say, some of them will be disappointing. But in some ways it is worse to find an excellent sixty-dollar wine. I can't go around spending sixty dollars a bottle on a regular basis.
My wife gave me her generous permission to buy a single one hundred dollar bottle of wine per year. Such a bottle will cost me at least two hundred dollars; my wife is not a wine lover, and in all fairness she will want a one hundred dollar item for herself. But that's by no means the end of my wine expense problems. One of the most wine-savvy people I know recently described the pleasures of a $600 bottle of Chateau Petrus; a top of the line French red wine. I gingerly asked him if it was worth the money. His response was short and sweet, absolutely. I am still far from that stratospheric price point, but...
Levi Reiss has sinced written about articles on various topics from Touring Italy, Travel and Leisure and Food and Drink. Levi Reiss has authored ten computer and Internet books, but between you and me, he prefers fine Italian or other wine, accompanied by the right foods and good company. He loves teaching computer classes at an Ontario French-language community college. Hi. Levi Reiss's top article generates over 450000 views. to your Favourites.