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by Putnam Weekley

In vino veritas. In vino libertas. In vino vis. In vino animus.

When a spokesman for Buy Nothing Day was interviewed on NPR last fall, he was pressed to say what he rather people would give each other when "nothing" wasn't appropriate. "Experiences," he said. Not "things." One of his examples was tickets to the opera.

'Or wine,' I thought.

"...Don't just give another bottle of wine," he continued.

'Wha-what?'

Who was this guy? I was led to believe his was a call for back-to-basics hedonism, not moralism and prudery. How can he not know that a bottle of wine is the most perfectly packaged experience ever invented? Tickets are gift certificates for crying out loud. Wine is power - In vino vis

Then there's rich guy Mitch Albom, demonstrating what a regular dude he is - really. In a recent column he claimed wine isn't worth all the fussing and blabbering some devote to it. He claimed the movie Sideways is an expression of this pointlessness.

And he makes a few good points himself:

1) "I most certainly don't want to know how it tastes before I drink it."

Me neither! Expectation and fulfillment are two sides on the coin of taste. I encounter my favorite wines when I expect something slightly different than what I get, or when I expect nothing. They surprise me. Really good ones surprise me again and again.* And perfect wine can never include someone chattering Parkerese in my ear while I drink it. That's like listening to two different stations at once. The same principle applies to all matters of taste: art, music, people etc. Call it the Hype Effect.

2) Wine: "It's like art. If someone has a painting of cow manure, but he tells you the history of the artist, the history of the canvas, how rare and expensive it all is, I'm sorry, it's still, in the end, a painting of cow manure."

Wine is like art. And if Mr. Albom's imagination had ever been stimulated by the taste of a wine, maybe he'd follow one good bottle with another. Maybe he'd politely empty his glass of manure-flavored wine served by his dilettante collector buddies and casually refill it with something of his choice.

But how can you blame him? It is a fact that some people live their entire lives, eating at expensive restaurants, hanging out with other regular guys who happen to own vast wine collections, and yet never taste a really good bottle of the yeasty nectar. I blame sommeliers.

Actually, it is surprisingly easy to encounter glass after glass of manure in well-to-do neighborhoods. Money has absolutely nothing to do with taste. Taste is about self-confidence and perception, qualities I like to think are enhanced by economy, not wealth.

There is nothing at all fun or nice about not enjoying a glass of wine with someone who is sure you should and who can hold forth at length about why. But don't assume wine and its natural complexity are to blame, nor that talking about it is counterproductive.

Myles, the Sideways protagonist, also confuses knowing about wine with enjoying it. But it's not what you know - it's who you know. Who shares your taste? Don't you like visiting with that person? A snob by instinct, Myles struggles with the "who" question. It can't be his social inferior, a mere waitress inappropriately named "Maya," can it?

Then he learns she is an even bigger geek than he is. She politely contradicts him and declares a bottle of Andrew Murray Syrah to be too alcoholic. She offers a soliloquy about the magic and mystery of every unique bottle. Then - and this clinches it for Myles - she announces that she will soon graduate with a degree in horticulture and presumably move on to become the next Mia Klein. He's in love.

Ah well. Myles found his "who" anyway. Mr. Albom? Not yet.

3) To provoke the hapless members of the wine subculture, Mitch Albom beats on their corked idol like a piñata. We urinate wine, he writes, "Same as beer."

Right again! Wine is filtered through our kidneys! Yay! And, just like wine, well-crafted beer is worth getting sentimental over, self-medicating with and dreaming about. The only difference is that good wine is better distributed than good beer.

I can't wait for the beer-lover's Sideways to be released. Myles will be a fanatic for Saison and Biere de Garde. He'll deplore American IPAs for being too manipulated with excessive dry hopping. In a field of two-row barley, he'll caress lovingly the brilliant blond kernels.

Albom's problem isn't with wine. As a syndicated columnist in major daily newspapers, many in and around the rust belt, he is pandering to Anglo-America's social anxiety about wine. Let's face it: since the enclosure movement in England, wine has symbolized property; the property required to produce it and store it. Property is power. Wine is power. Mitch Albom is a rebel.

And this anxiety is felt even more keenly by the over-compensating, status-obsessed freaks who don't drink their old bottles, who care more about impressing their peers than slurping down the divine nectar of the gods. They're in the same boat, really. Nobody wants to look stupid.

4) "...if it has to be described to be appreciated, you're wasting your time."

True again! Or at least, partly true. If it must be described to be appreciated, perhaps you are wasting your time. You could be living with wines that don't require description (like a Jean Foillard Morgon or a La Begude Limoux Chardonnay.) But whether you are drinking a wine that requires description or not, talking about it, learning its provenance, discussing its contours with friends may heighten your pleasure.

5) "...wine, in the end, is still a drink."

Thank god for that!

6) "...what food group besides wine gets its own list, is displayed over a waiter's wrist and is sampled by sniffing, swishing and then spitting it out?"

Before I answer that, let me point out that wine is not sampled by "spitting it out." Only pros at wine evaluation marathons do that. But to Albom's point about the curious thing called a "wine list," it has to do with two things: fermentation and durability. Any fermented food is worth astonishingly incremental intellectual engagement. Besides, some restaurants do have lengthy, separate cigar lists, cheese lists and beer lists (some even have beer sommeliers!).

But among all fermented things, wine is one of the most durable. This fact allows its smallest, most boutique iterations to be globally commercialized. The wine of one grape farmer, made in quantities of only a few hundred cases, may appear in Singapore and Southfield. Its language is an international language. Wine has always been and continues to be used as cultural and intellectual currency. Don't you want to see what's on the list?

Albom's is a rebellion against an emerging social cannon. It used to be that the well-educated and well-bred went to private schools where they were trained in the elaborate codes of class citizenship. They learned the great books, they learned Latin, and they learned science - this was how a gentleman of importance distinguished himself.

Our modern elites are too large and heterogeneous to be defined by such disciplines. Now its all about golf and wine.

At least Albom is consistent. On the subject of golf too, Mitch Albom doesn't like it when people use their imaginations to get in the heads of the pros. I would have thought speculating about the thought processes and emotions of the golf pro was one of the only interesting things about watching one on television. I could be wrong.

Why doesn't the Detroit Free Press give Chris Kassel and Mitch Albom a full front page one weekend to duke it out on the subject of sports and wine? I'd buy two copies of that paper.

Here's Mitch Albom's own site. Buy his books folks. And if you see him, tell him about the last great bottle of wine you drank.

How can Mitch Albom write "wine is not a religion?" Check out these links:

Macedonian wine, religion and culture - they're a package.

The pope and wine, a great combination

More wine and religion stuff from food cultists

Xers are going for that old-time wine religion too!

* I'd link to Matt Kramer's excellent column on this very subject, but it's not available.

In vino vis. The pious dames of Ipswich,
Knowing its worth and fearing lest men waste it,
Condemn its use in christening battle-ships which
Can't even taste it.
-Charles Edmund Merrill, Jr.

Previously in Putnam's Monthly:

Clos de los Siete

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