A Starter Pack for Aspiring Wine Lovers
Here's a little secret about wine — it's great fun. It's delicious, too.
You would never know this to hear people talk about wine. Too often, it is buried under a mass of nonsense that has nothing to do with the pleasure and joy it offers.
It's discussed with painstaking precision using complex terminology and pretension, as tasters grapple with metaphorical descriptions of aromas and flavors, and conjecture about methodology and equipment. They ultimately deconstruct wine like anatomy students dismembering a cadaver.
It makes wine seem like very serious business, which, for many people, is a turnoff.
Wine does deserve academic discussion. It can be complicated, with many mysterious elements that people strive to understand. Yet it's also a simple pleasure, a great drink.
The serious, rational side of wine should not overwhelm its emotional appeal. Dry talk about learning to 'appreciate' wine obscures the fact that people deeply, passionately love it. It's the difference between fulfilling an obligation and being moved by desire.
Reconciling these two sides of wine can be baffling. It's no wonder that people are hesitant about wine, especially young people, many of whom also fear alcohol as risky. Almost everybody finds it intimidating and often more expensive than other alcoholic drinks.
Nonetheless, people are often curious, too. Perhaps they've seen people enjoying it, and they may have heard that humans have considered wine a great pleasure for thousands of years.
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