My Personal Wine

There is currently a beer ad going in which people just ask for a generic beer, and when asked more specific questions about what it is that they want they say they don’t care. Of course that’s the wrong answer and they end of with a bad beer because they don’t choose the one you are supposed to buy. I can’t stand these ads, and to tell you how effective they are I don’t even remember who they are for.

The biggest problem with these ads is the simple fact that I have never heard anyone at a bar say “give me a beer,” and I suspect the same is true for you. Now someone might say this at a party where they know the selection is limited. But, if they are at bar they will always order something specific. They don’t say “give me the house beer.”

Now they do say that when it comes to wine. I was recently at a restaurant and the couple next to me ordered two glasses of wine. The woman ordered a Cabernet, and when the waiter asked what one she wanted, she sort of raised her voice incredulously and said “I want a Cabernet,” as if that somehow cleared up the situation. The man said to give her the house cab and he wanted the house chardonnay.

As someone who loves wine, and as someone who is also a wine snob, this is wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to start. What it says first of all is that people who do this know absolutely nothing about wine because they believe that one wine is just as good as another. I can tell you that that is simply the furthest thing from the truth. I have a friend who was under this impression and thought that wine out of a box was just as good as a really expensive wine, and so couldn’t understand why you would spend a lot on wine. I had to disavow her of this by letting her taste and compare different wines and to her astonishment she found out I was right.

Now this is not to say that you have to spend a lot for wine to be good, because you don’t. You can find some excellent wines between $10-$20. You can also buy some wines that I think are terrible for a lot more, so taste is not based on price. (Although I will write later about studies that have been done that put people’s feelings about the taste of a wine solely on the price people thought it cost.)

Now since the Methodist church has a historic position against alcohol and its consumption, you might find it a little strange that I am writing about alcohol. I personally support that position, and I drink alcohol rarely. And even though I would prefer to have wine over a beer, I drink wine even less. A lot of this has to do with the fact that I am married to someone who is an addict in recovery, and I could never drink a bottle of wine all by myself and so I don’t. and often the wines that are offered by the glass in restaurants simply aren’t all that good and I would rather pass on wine altogether than to drink bad wine.

So here is the end of my rant (or my wine, if you caught the meaning from my title). If you are going to drink wine, please take some time to learn something about them, and please don’t just ask for a generic wine as if there is no difference between these things. And finally, if you are involved with a company that grows, sells or markets wine, this is the perfect opportunity to begin to educate the general public about the differences. Everyone will benefit from this.