I like wine. But it's a fragile, variable product, best appreciated as food craft in conjunction with other good food. Wine is meant to be consumed, not hoarded, preferably in the locality of...
I like wine. But it's a fragile, variable product, best appreciated as food craft in conjunction with other good food. Wine is meant to be consumed, not hoarded, preferably in the locality of origin, in company to share and appreciate an ephemeral pleasure.
The Sour Grapes culture of wines collected and stored as objets de art, as status symbols, perverts the craft. It's never a certainty that extra years of storage really improve a product that's been shipped all over the world. The differences among Grand Crus or other valued premier regions and vintages are exaggerated to the point of meaninglessness.
The joy and surprise of a great bottle (and I've never spent more than $60 for a wine - the incremental improvement after that is largely illusory) are never so extraordinary that they can't be more meaningfully achieved by giving away that money to someone in need.
It's easy to think of Rudy Kurniawan as having performed a service by exposing the fraudulence of wine as a collectible commodity, however self-serving his motives.
I just watched it now as I had literally nothing else better to do. It's actually pretty good. I nearly turned the documentary off 15 minutes in due to the smugness of the rich people being so...
I just watched it now as I had literally nothing else better to do.
It's actually pretty good. I nearly turned the documentary off 15 minutes in due to the smugness of the rich people being so overly indulgent in wine, but then the documentary focussed on the actual con and the whole documentary got a lot better.
Overall though, I'm just stunned that there is that sort of culture around wine - maybe I'm just incredibly naive but wine didn't seem to be such a big deal that it would go for several thousand dollars. But I guess that's just me and my lack of knowledge about alcoholic beverages.
I like wine. But it's a fragile, variable product, best appreciated as food craft in conjunction with other good food. Wine is meant to be consumed, not hoarded, preferably in the locality of origin, in company to share and appreciate an ephemeral pleasure.
The Sour Grapes culture of wines collected and stored as objets de art, as status symbols, perverts the craft. It's never a certainty that extra years of storage really improve a product that's been shipped all over the world. The differences among Grand Crus or other valued premier regions and vintages are exaggerated to the point of meaninglessness.
The joy and surprise of a great bottle (and I've never spent more than $60 for a wine - the incremental improvement after that is largely illusory) are never so extraordinary that they can't be more meaningfully achieved by giving away that money to someone in need.
It's easy to think of Rudy Kurniawan as having performed a service by exposing the fraudulence of wine as a collectible commodity, however self-serving his motives.
I just watched it now as I had literally nothing else better to do.
It's actually pretty good. I nearly turned the documentary off 15 minutes in due to the smugness of the rich people being so overly indulgent in wine, but then the documentary focussed on the actual con and the whole documentary got a lot better.
Overall though, I'm just stunned that there is that sort of culture around wine - maybe I'm just incredibly naive but wine didn't seem to be such a big deal that it would go for several thousand dollars. But I guess that's just me and my lack of knowledge about alcoholic beverages.