02.01.05
Fruit Bombs?
I’ve never been a drinker. Even when I spent three months in France I only drank once — and that was because the chef at a restaurant in Troyes brought a bottle of Calvados to the table and sat down to drink with us. It’s not that I’m opposed to it on moral grounds; I’ve just never cared for the taste of alcohol.
Recently, though, I’ve branched out a little bit. On my birthday last year I had a Guinness and a Blackthorn cider — and, at the instigation of the friends who took me out, a shot of vodka, which tasted like rubbing alcohol to me. And recently I’ve had a few glasses of red wine — mainly Pinot Noir, at first inspired by Sideways. I find I like red wine more than white wine, possibly for the same reason I prefer Guinness to lager: the deeper and richer the drink, the less I taste the alcohol. Pinot Noir in particular has a sort of peppery, spicy flavor that I quite like.
But I’m far from a connoisseur. Wine terminology confuses and annoys me. I’ve been a tea nut for several years, and tea terminology can be pretty baroque at times (single-estate first flush tippy golden flowery orange pekoe Darjeeling, anyone?), but it’s nothing to what the wine snobs dream up. As an example, take a look at the words used to describe flavors and aromas. Tea tasters use words like “grassy,” “herbaceous,” “bright,” and “astringent.” Some might come as a bit of a surprise, like “cheesy” or “stewed,” but it’s not hard to imagine what characteristics the taster is referring to. But look at the terms used by certain wine tasters — some excellent examples of which can be found in Stephen Shapin’s article “Hedonistic Fruit Bombs” for the London Review of Books. Blue-tinged? Lanolin? And what’s all this about helicopters? I mean, I can be as snobby as the next guy, but I call BS here. And I’m not drinking anything that reminds someone of “cat’s pee.”
I like the article, though — especially the bits about one wine critic becoming so influential that he shapes the entire industry. Even though this particular critic seems relatively reasonable (at least I can imagine what a “fruit bomb” would be like), the loss of diversity in subjectively judged markets like wine (or movies, literature, music, etc.) always makes us culturally poorer.
