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.
