erilar wrote:
> In article <1ncepi4chy1of$.21i53b8xi3wl.dlg@40tude.net>,
> "Mike....." wrote:
>
>>Following up to Dave Frightens Me
>>
>>>>no less or more so that wine. Or for that matter food. Pretention is bad by
>>>>definition, taking a great interest in food and drink is fine.
>>>
>>>Wine is far more complex than beer in terms of flavour, colour and smell.
>>>Beer is much more simplistic on the palate, although by no means any
>>>lesser.
>>
>>
>>Hmmm, is it, or is just more bolox talked about it?
>
> there's some of that, too 8-) However, wine varies more from year to
> year even from the same place, and there's an enormous number of places
> to make even more differences, so it's more of an adventure than beer.
> Of course, there are many people who prefer predictability.
What I see is that some people don't seem to be familiar with some of
the more idiosyncratic specialties from Belgium, particularly authentic
lambics (and I don't mean those sugary-sweet commercialized ones,
either). Lambics and lambic-based beers are easily comparable in
complexity with wine. Flemish sour brown and red ales are comparable
too. And simple, dumbed-down cheap lager is about as complicated as
simple, dumbed-down, mass-produced cheap white wine from steel tanks.
In other words, the generalities don't work so well. Part of the
reason is that beer is far more-associated with mass-produced cheap
fizz than wine is associated with mass-produced cheaply fermented
g. juice.
Beer works in ways with food that wine can't hope to match, too, but
that's another subject for another time. You enjoy your coq au vin
or beef bourgignonne, but I'll go for the stoofvlees (carbonnade
flammande) or kip met kriek instead. We all win. I just win more. ;-)
--
dgs |