{"id":17978,"date":"2012-11-29T11:41:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-29T16:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17978"},"modified":"2012-11-29T11:41:30","modified_gmt":"2012-11-29T16:41:30","slug":"why-would-we-want-to-drink-a-wine-that-tastes-like-these-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/11\/29\/why-would-we-want-to-drink-a-wine-that-tastes-like-these-things\/","title":{"rendered":"“Why would we want to drink a wine that tastes like these things?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Wilson<\/a> is teaching a university course called “The Geography of Wine”. He’s finding it a constant struggle to get past certain descriptive words in the wine vocabulary, because they’re not at all intuitive or meaningful to a non-wine-drinking audience.<\/p>\n

But if there has been one stumbling block, it is when we leave the comforting aromas and flavors of fruits and flowers and herbs and enter into more challenging tasting territory: Minerality. Chalk. Tar. Tobacco. Animal. Farmyard. Petrol.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would we want to drink a wine that tastes like these things?\u201d my students want to know.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a reasonable and valid question. Look, I tell them, if you\u2019re happy and content with fruity, pleasurable red wines redolent of berries and cherries and plums or zippy, easy-to-drink whites with tangy citrus and orchards full of apples and pears\u2026 well, then that\u2019s what you should drink without feeling any need to move beyond that. Wine should be, foremost, about pleasure \u2014 and pleasure is personal. There\u2019s a reason that romantic comedies with happy endings, sunny, catchy pop music, mac n\u2019 cheese, whipped cream vodka, and wearing Ugg boots with pajama pants remain popular.<\/p>\n

But if we think more deeply about pleasure, we realize it isn\u2019t always so straightforward or even comfortable. After all, why do so many of us love sad poems, disturbing horror films, or intense, subtitled psychological dramas. Why am I capable of loving Bruce Springsteen\u2019s \u201cNebraska\u201d or The Smith\u2019s \u201cMeat Is Murder\u201d or Elliott Smith\u2019s \u201cFrom a Basement on the Hill\u201d \u2014 while at the same time I can enjoy T. Pain, Taylor Swift, and dancing with my kids to Psy\u2019s \u201cGangnam Style\u201d?<\/p>\n

With the arts, we inherently understand that without the darker, more confounding elements, there can be no light. Wine is no different. Just as in novels or films or musical compositions, the more complex and ambitious the wine, the more unique and potentially discomforting aromas, textures, and flavors we\u2019ll find.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Wilson is teaching a university course called “The Geography of Wine”. He’s finding it a constant struggle to get past certain descriptive words in the wine vocabulary, because they’re not at all intuitive or meaningful to a non-wine-drinking audience. But if there has been one stumbling block, it is when we leave the comforting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,73,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-randomness","category-wine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4FY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17979,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17978\/revisions\/17979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}