The National Wine UnClub
Blog/Newsletter

September 2011

Just Drink It!

The culture of wine is a fascinating thing to study. Having been around for at least six millennia it's understandable that you'll find a multitude of ways of appreciating this marvelous gift of nature. The greatest spiritual texts of Christianity and Judaism are rife with both symbolic and mundane uses for this fermented juice of grapes. Jesus' first miracle involved changing water into wine and His last supper included wine which He used as a symbol for His blood that His disciples should remember when they partook of the drink in the future.

It's also quite apparent from these scriptures that wine was never meant to be venerated to the point of worship as something of itself. Because of its seemingly magic, transformed qualities (grape juice into wine) it nonetheless made a fitting symbol for religious purposes. The fact that fermentation is a process found in nature which can only be augmented by human hands is also a revealing symbol of mankind's original purpose as stated in the Bible: "to dress and keep the earth". Man could steward this process, not create it.

Wine as a communal beverage in spiritual and secular settings has continued into modern times but with a vast array of complicated social rituals added. This began perhaps during the Middle Ages when wealthy landowners (including the Catholic Church) dominated the production and consumption of wine leaving the peasants and serfs to fend for themselves when it came to strong drink. Their lot was more likely to drink barley ales or honey mead wines which were readily available in the local taverns and inns; only tasting the juice of the vine during Communion in the local church or cathedral.

This stratification between the haves and the have-nots, though not as extreme as in the Middle Ages, has also extended into modern times.  The saying we all hear these days is "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer". This is probably a gross oversimplification that applies primarily to the most wealthy and the dirt poor, however we might be surprised at the prevalence of the elitist attitude in our modern, egalitarian Western society.

The phenomenon of the nouveau riche in the United States (but also in other prosperous democracies around the world, particularly China) has been an item of recent note relative to our subject matter. Many have become wealthy almost overnight through investments in the stock market which has recently been at record highs despite the debacle of 2008. High unemployment and housing woes have affected this growth pattern as well obviously. But this hasn't quenched our insatiable desire for the finer things of life.

With increasing wealth comes the seeming need to consume conspicuously at higher levels of excellence.  This no doubt is an understandable pattern as well... up to a point. When the intrinsic value of a product, take a bottle of first-rate California Cabernet Sauvignon for instance, is far exceeded with a luxury price tag only attainable by the most wealthy of customers, then we see an elitist aberration at work. This serves in reality to once again polarize the common folk from the ruling elite.

Symbolic use of wine as a marker for how well we are doing financially (as houses, cars, and clothes are also used) is understandable, but regretable. Putting wine on such a pedestal is counter-productive to the whole idea of value. The glorification of certain rare and expensive labels is off-putting to the millions of potential new wine enthusiasts in our Western society who aren't privy to what's hot in this field and aren't interested in making fools of themselves by buying wines that might be politically incorrect. Consequently many of us drink beer because it's just a drink, not a status symbol.

Certainly there are wines that should be expensive because of their high quality and realtive rarity, plus high consumer demand, but we shouldn't allow ourselves to believe that these are the only wines worth talking about or drinking. If one is financially well-off and doesn't have the time to explore the entire world of wines available today then it can be forgiven that they buy only the top labels because these are the wines they have time to follow and remember.

In our view, wine is for everyone, not just the wealthy. The wealthy amongst us, when asked, would not wish to deny anyone the pleasures of good wine with our daily meals or as a lubricant to our social gatherings. But when an unconscious snobbish attitude rears its ugly head in a restaurant or even in some family gatherings the whole idea of having to compete with someone's vaunted wine knowledge deadens the whole affair. It is a situation to be avoided.

But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater; let's remember that it's not the wine that causes snobbishness, just an unfortunate elitist attitude that shouldn't take precedence. This is the purpose of the Wine UnClub: to make wine easily understandable and approachable to the many new wine enthusiasts out there despite relatively disparate income levels.

Cheers!

Captain Vino