Many of you have seen my wine article series "I Love Italian Wine and Food, " similar French and German series, and my travel articles with a focus on local wine and food. It's true; I really do love fine wine and food from Italy, France, Germany, and other countries as well. But I also hate wine and many unpleasant aspects of the wine scene. Let me explain my top ten reasons for this love-hate relationship.
The unconscionable expense. Don't let anybody kid you. Good wine is expensive. Great wine is even more expensive. There are surely bargains out there, but finding them is like kissing scads of frogs to find a prince.
You have to kiss a lot of frogs (yechh) before you get to kiss a prince. Believe it or not, I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to kiss any princes. I do, however, want to drink fine wine. And I find that the more fine wine I drink, the more fine wine I want to drink. Before I started writing wine reviews, twenty dollars was more or less my limit for a bottle; now I almost feel like apologizing when I spend less than twenty. Having tasted some excellent wines in the forty-dollar range, I am dying to know how sixty-dollar wines taste.
Needless to say, some of them will be disappointing. But in some ways it is worse to find an excellent sixty-dollar wine. As much as I want to, I can't spend sixty dollars a bottle on a regular basis.
My wife gave me her generous permission to buy a single one hundred dollar bottle of wine per year. Such a bottle will cost me at least two hundred dollars; my wife is not a wine lover, and she will want a one hundred dollar item for herself. But that's by no means the end of my wine expense problems. One of the most wine-savvy people I know recently described the pleasures of a $600 bottle of Chateau Petrus; a top of the line French red wine.
I asked him if it was worth the money. His response was short and sweet, absolutely. I haven't yet gotten near that price point, but. Here are the other reasons: The embarrassing lack of knowledge No wine cellar I can't get the . bottle opened The insomnia Food problems Wine snobs Those smells and those tastes Those colors Home brew One more problem and yes The Solution.
Over the years Levi Reiss has authored or co-authored ten computer and Internet books, and yet he prefers fine Italian, German, or other wine, accompanied by the right foods and good company. He knows what dieting is, and is glad that for the time being he can eat and drink what he wants, in moderation. He loves teaching a variety of computer classes at an Ontario French-language community college. Visit his new wine, diet, health, and nutrition website www.wineinyourdiet.com and his Italian food website www.fooditalyfood.com.
