Wine 7 min

Why Wine

On olfactory memory, reverie, and the real reason anyone devotes their life to fermented grape juice

I've been thinking about why people drink wine and devote so much of their time to it. Wine, like Whitman, contains multitudes. On the simplest level wine is fashion. But on the deepest level, wine is temporal.

Smelling and sipping older vintages, wine is about a very different thing — it's about a life. 1977 — infidelity, early frost and too much acidity. 1988 — export to New York, muggy subways and distracted buyers hurrying through tastings. 2001 — the loss of a parent as well as sixty percent of the crop, but the grapes remaining were glorious, and so still is the wine. Drinking wine is value-added reverie.

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