It’s delicious
It’s fascinating
It’s history
It’s craft
It’s people
It’s place
It’s transformation (of the grape)
It makes food better
It’s good in food
It’s culture
It’s memory
It’s beautiful
It’s an adventure
It smells great
It makes me think
It’s fun to research
It’s fun to think about what to drink
It’s a good workout moving all the boxes
It’s interesting to consider the grape itself and how it came to be
The people who make it are interesting to listen to
It supports communities
It’s starting to support better care of the land it comes from
It’s starting to support taking better care of the people involved in its production
There’s a lot more, but I have other stuff to do right now.
No. I am fascinated by wine and how various grapes differ and how wineries producing the wines differ. I am genuinely curious about how wines taste. The whole process is fascinating to me. If I want to get drunk and I can do much more efficiently and inexpensively lol
Not drunk, per se, but I am more than willing to admit I enjoy the relaxation, loosening up, social lubricant and taking-the-edge-off buzz that sometimes accompanies a few glasses of wine. All part of the package.
If I want to learn something new or have something good with the food, I’ll have wine. I often use a spittoon in tastings and I usually don’t drink enough to get inebriated when drinking with food.
If getting drunk is the main point, beers and spirits are my weapon of choice.
I’ve seen that in action a few times. Most notably was the very well off, and reasonably well wine educated guy who brought a Chapoutier Crozes Hermitage to a “bottle of pain” dinner.
Yeah- thats definitely a thing. If someone doesn’t know, or a wine lover simply doesn’t have a big cellar its understandable. But knowingly bringing a so-so bottle out of a cellar of 1000+ is a faux pas in my book.
I’d much rather share a special bottle or two with friends and family than hoard them. If people show up in good faith with what they can, thats great! I’m glad to uncork a fancy pants Burg because I like Pinot and Chard and its fun to explore/discover with friends. “To each according to their means”
Plenty of generous (and patient) wine lovers poured for me when I was starting out - its good to carry that tradition onwards.
to play devil’s advocate to this, I enjoy wine for the reasons here and many that David mentioned, but I don’t drink a lot of alcohol and I don’t want to waste the relatively low amount I do drinking much other than wine.
Ergo, wine is great for many reasons, and getting a wee buzz (or more if that’s your fancy) from it is one of them.
This is the case now as well. DRC ex-domaine prices are somewhere in hundreds of $s, can’t remember if the most expensive bottlings are already now north of $1000.
For sure, and I’ve always been curious how Westvleteren has seemingly been able to keep their product mostly out of the secondary market. There probably just isn’t even close to demand on the scale of DRC. It was an interesting thought exercise though.
But look Chris, I live in a happy little world where everyone helps each other out and it’s going great over here, so if I want my DRC to be $30 that’s what it’s going to be, okay?
I’m still waiting for that time someone shows up when I’m not eating and offers me a glass of DRC.
Although I will doubtless accept when you finally show up and make that offer, it remains true that I almost never open a bottle of wine, other than to drink with food. Two exceptions that come to mind are midnight on NYE (we usually pop a 375 of bubbly) and a small glass of Tawny Port once a weekend. The vast majority of wine I drink comes from bottles I open to have with dinner, with a distant second being bottles others open at wino gatherings, which are mostly dinners and otherwise at least have snacks being served.
I’m not a “sit in my chair and relax with a glass of wine before or after dinner” guy, not because the wine would be bad but because I like it better with the meal and the amount I drink with the meal is enough to meet the limit I set for myself for daily consumption.
When I drink liquor, OTOH, which is far less often than I drink wine, it is rarely with food, because I think it’s better by itself than with the meal (and because with the meal I’d rather drink wine than liquor). Of course, I don’t go around claiming that I only drink liquor with food.
Interesting because most of the wine I drink is by itself. I like to drink while I am prepping dinner, or grilling, or sitting after the meal, or watching a movie or the birds eat out of the bird feeder on the patio. I love finding a great bottle to pair with the meal we are serving, but rarely consume more than a glass during the actual meal itself.
I’m going to go out on a limb, then, and guess that you don’t go around saying “I only drink wine with food”
My wife is like you. When we eat at a restaurant, she drinks along with the meal just like I do, but at home if she’s having some of the wine, she will almost always save all or most of hers to sip by itself after the meal.
She also doesn’t go around claiming to only drink wine with food, though.
On one hand, you don’t want to want it to be a competition or dick measuring contest about how expensive a bottle people bring.
On the other hand, you want to feel like everyone is in a similar spirit of generosity and contributing, and making the events good as a result.
It’s a pretty nuanced and (as the lawyers would say) fact-intensive thing to know where things fall. And when you find a good group and these issues don’t flare up, appreciate it and nurture it.
One of my preferred ways of dealing with this issue is that I try to declare first, or early, and that way if people decide my bottle is unworthy of their bottle of this, they can bring a bottle of that instead. That way, if they choose to bring a DRC it’s not because I misled them into thinking I was doing the same and if they want to bring something else instead, they can.
On the issue of delcare then excuse, I often offer a choice, and did that for a dinner this week. The group unanimously chose wine A over B, so I said I’d bring wine A. I knew where it was, so I didn’t go to grab it until I’d already called my Lyft. Except then I couldn’t find it. I had wine B in my hand, working on my excuse, driver arriving in 1 minute, when I finally found wine A on “one last” look in “one last” spot. Excuse avoided.
