Vol. 2 No. 58 March 16,2007
The Bogus Economist
Drink Up

To the almost seven thousand languages spoken on earth that I do not understand, I have lately added three, the first of which is Winish. This is not to say I do not like wine, nor that I do not drink it fairly frequently. It's just that I never learned the ins and outs of comprehending things that a true wine-lover would grasp, like the significance of “a wine that emits a grassy and herbaceous nose.”
Now I have never willingly fooled around with anything that emits noses, herbaceous or not. Emitting noses sounds dangerous. Who knows, you might be walking innocently to your table when you'd run into an emitted nose and then what? How would your nearest and dearest look with an herbaceous nose? As to grassy, while I have known some elderly men who might have benefited from a light mowing of the ears, I have only met one guy whose nose hairs were long enough to braid and thus could come anywhere near being considered nasally grassy. Frankly, the image is disturbing.
The whole Winish language is disturbing. At any meeting of oenophiles, I'm as out of place as Dick Cheney in a charm school. For instance, I've heard wines referred to as “amusing. If I ever fall down from drinking wine, it will not be from laughing. Then there are qualities of wine like balance, body, bouquet (that one I know) and butter. Yes, butter. It's something people who know wine can smell and taste in white wines. I can't. No matter how hard I try, I can't even smell margarine.
As to finish, legs and chewiness, I made the mistake of asking somebody sniffing a glass what they meant. An hour later, I knew more about brix (a measure of grape solids), bottle stink (you guessed it), phylloxera (a kind of vine louse) and shoe polish (a taste or odor caused by a yeast infection – brettanomyces ) than I would ever use this side of a bottling plant. I did learn, however, to avoid wines that are too woody, vinous, stemmy, prickly, musty, harsh, green, corky or dumb. Instead, I was to look for wines that were foxy, austere, brilliant, clean, complex and robust. By this time, I was ready to throw myself into a tub of must ( a mixture of grape juice, skins, seeds and pulp).
If a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, a lot of knowledge can be incredibly boring, at least as far as wine is concerned, so I turned to another of my favorite beverages, beer. This is a beverage with which I have been acquainted since college because, unlike wine, drinking beer requires very little advanced study but a near all-consuming thirst, which is why few people have been known to chug-a-lug a pint of Merlot.
Beer, I reasoned, has got to be simpler to understand since the names of beers are usually a lot easier to get your tongue around than those of wines. Whereas a wine might spout a moniker like “2004 Macon-Milly-Lamartine,” a good beer might be called “Dead Guy,” “Brutal Bitter” or “Yellow Snow.” I recently bumped into a great ale called Arrogant Bastard. On the label, it said, “This is an aggressive beer. You probably won't like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth.” You won't find this on a bottle of wine. They might think it, but they won't write it down.
You can imagine my shock when I read a description of a beer called Utopias, produced by the makers of Samuel Adams. Utopias has a 24% alcohol content by volume and was described as “silky, rich, creamy with slight caramel notes.” I was then treated to a discussion of bottle conditioning, brew kettles, mash tun (the first vessel used in the brewing process) and top and bottom fermenting yeast. By the time I finished, I was ready to throw myself into a vat of wort (like must, only composed of a mash of malt and often hops and sugars). I don't understand Beeric, either.

O.K, then, there's always coffee. What can be complicated about putting some grounds in a basket and running hot water over them? Plenty. Some guy I met at Starbucks gave me my first lesson in Coffian. Here I found out, for a start, that French Roast is “taken at the end of Second Crack, flavor is diminished, body is thinned and a charcoal flavor dominates.” (Industry Jargon, Arizona Coffee). So what's a crack?
Well, coffee has two of them, the first one sounding like popcorn and the second like Rice Krispies. These happen during roasting. When the roasting stops determines the character of the particular beans you're using. Waiting until the end of the second crack is too late. Clear?
So I added Coffian to the list of languages I don't speak. Nothing is simple anymore. Gone are the days when people got together to swap stories over a bottle of homemade wine or asked a bartender for “a brew.” We're in the grip of globalization, industrialization and technology. Oh, well, I guess all that's left is water......chlorine, particulates, salt, pH, ISE, conductivity, dissolved oxygen and all.

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The Bogus Economist © 2007