Any hobbies beside wine where enjoyment may include loss and destruction?

WINE TALK
1

I’m not sure where this thread belongs, but it is “Wine Talk.”

I was at a home last night where the owner has world class collections of old books, antique canes, match safes, ivory, sheet music and art–one of the most amazing collections I’ve ever seen–and it made me wonder.

Collecting and appreciating wine often involves “destroying” it by drinking the product. Are there any other hobbies where you collect something and use it up, thereby reducing the available number?

A philatelist would never lick a stamp and mail it. You don’t burn an oil painting after looking at it. Cooking doesn’t count since you can always make that recipe again. Only with wine collecting do you use it up and diminish the available supply.

Other hobbies have products with lifespans such as wine–you can breed dogs or cats that have finite lives, but you can always “make more.” The life of a particular wine is finite and its enjoyment may involve consumption.

It’s a very strange hobby that we have, isn’t it?

alan

2

Thanks Alan. You just made it much harder for me to open any of my particularly collectible wines. [welldone.gif]

3

Interesting post.

Just riffing here, but what about music as a comparison? I’m thinking in particular of the live performance of a piece - although it’s commonly codified as a written piece of music, an individual performance exists uniquely, as a moment in time colored by the players, the venue, the listener’s state of mind, etc… many of the same transitory elements that exist when tasting wine.

Although wine is theoretically limited in supply, for all but the very rarest there is almost always another bottle available, making it possible to taste a wine through its evolution - just as one can hear the same piece performed time and time again.

To further torture this analogy, listening to a live performance is akin to drinking a bottle of wine - neither one will ever exist again in precisely that same state… but both can be tried again at another time. In both cases, one would expect to experience similarities, but also to savor the uniqueness of a particular “performance”, whether musical or vinous.

The place where my analogy breaks down is in the fact that music can be recorded - or (as Melissa puts it) “you can’t drink wine on YouTube”.

4

Model rocketry?

Robot wars?

5

Alan, As a stamp collector, book collctor and a minor art collector, I don’t consider wine a hobby, its more a passion, and in such more aligned with food than stamps.

Interesting topic tho.

6

Jeffrey Dahmer had a hobby like that.


[wink.gif]

7

I’d say cooking is akin, no performance is ever the same twice.

8

Slow day? [emot-words.gif]

9

I used to be on the varsity Javelin Catch team in High School.

We went undefeated because we didn’t believe in practice. All the other teams had to default.

10

My hobby is dancing. While there isn’t necessarily a diminishing supply, I don’t do “choreographed” dance, so each is different every time, every song, and with each new partner. As far as diminishing, well, eventually I will get old and things won’t work quite as well, my mind/body reactions will slow down and what used to be a saucy mambo will be diminished to a granny waddle and a faded memory of times past [dance.gif] [dance2.gif] .

11

Cigars

car racing - car will eventually die

12

Yeah, you must “destroy” the product to enjoy it but at the end of the day you can’t get sh*t faced on postage stamps, either…

JD