too much of a good thing.

i've been thinking a lot about wine, recently. it's been the result, i think, of having seen Sideways and then having the oppurtunity to visit Moore Bros within a couple weeks of each other.

i don't want to call myself a wine snob, but the truth is that i like good wine, the same as i like good food. i can, with some proficiency, discuss tannin, acid, structure, fruit, nose, palate, and finish. i'm not so hip to terroir yet (besides the obvious, say, chablis), but then, terroir tends to be a mystical realm at best, open to all kinds of mythologies and superstitions (i'm not kidding. there is such a thing as holistic viticulture).

however, as i introduce him into the subtler aspects of wine, i find myself having to compare things that perhaps aren't ideal. i mean, when you compare one really good bottle of cabernet sauvignon with a really good bottle of red zinfandel, there's little room to explain one's antipathy towards the mass-produced, characterless merlot that floods the market. i'm finding myself having the odd urge to hop over to the state store (for those of you unfamiliar with the structure, the pennsylvania government regulates all sales of wine and liquor and runs their own retail outlets, some of which are better than others) and pick up a $5 bottle of merlot, and maybe another one of white zin, just so i have an example of the travesties that can be wreaked ;) it has come to me that when you can compare an estate-bottled, handcrafted vintage with a blended, industrial prduct, you can better explain not only why one should drink good wine, but what the qualities of good wine in fact are. just as you won't really understand why mcdonald's sucks if you never eat there (or conversely, if it's all you eat). and, you know, it probably won't end up being poured down the drain, because these wines are vinted specifically to be smooth and unchallenging and, above all, drinkable.

i think it might be an interesting experiment.