Re:Science saved me from pretending to love wine
by jaggederest on Monday October 02, 2017 @02:18PM
(#15386368)
There are a couple hundred varieties of orange, and if you extend it to citrus more generally, there are thousands of varieties.
Compare that to the varieties of grapes - there are certainly more strains of grapes in total (5k-10k), but if you restrict yourself to only wine grapes, they are of similar complexity, and the entire grape industry is based on Vitis Vinifera and Vitis Labrusca, whereas Citrus has at least 4 original species.
And Citrus reacts just as well as Vitis Vinifera to terroir, as well - Citrus grown in volcanic soil vs limestone soil vs california loam has a distinctly different composition and flavor.
You're going to have to face it, wine is special because humans have declared it special, not because it's not similar in complexity to dozens of other agricultural, natural, and fermented products :)
Re:Science saved me from pretending to love wine
by xapata on Sunday October 01, 2017 @05:31PM
(#15379927)
Fermentation produces many things, but grown things also have great variety. Tomatoes, for example. Picked fresh, some have such intense flavor.
No, wine is a bit special here. It's somehow similar to cheese - there is a whole universe of tastes and subtastes based on many factors. You can of course ignore it completely and treat these foods like eggs (or put any other uniformly tasting kind of food here). That's perfectly fine. Or you can discover that there are so many flavors of cheese, with some of them particularly appealing to you - and just let yourself enjoy these.
Of course there are snobs who make a show out of everything, but don't let that spoil the genuine joy of tasting some good wine (or any other food that may or may not be expensive at that moment).