Making A Case For Wine Versus Beer
Wednesday - August 19, 2009
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I love a good beer every once in a while. In fact, I crave beer at times.
But this weekend when I was watching the Ultimate Fighting Championship, I chose to drink wine, not beer.
Why not wine? Isn’t it masculine enough for you? (I know I’m going to upset beer lovers, but here goes anyway.)
Here is why wine is better than beer.
It has more health benefits. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard about resveratrol, procyanidins and antioxidants and their beneficial effects on the human body. All are found in wine.
It has a broader array of flavors. Beer doesn’t even hold a candle to the array of flavors found in the great wines of the world. If it did, I would drink a heck of a lot more of it.
Wine is simply the product of grapes. That’s it. There are many that have oak, but there are just as many that do not. If beer is so natural, why does it need hops?
Jesus’ first miracle in the Bible was turning water into wine, not beer.
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It’s not for chugging. It’s not how much you drink but the quality of what you drink.
Wine increases in value as a commodity. I haven’t heard of any beer that is worth more than $100,000 a bottle, have you?
It doesn’t have to be carbonated. Champagne gets its bubbles from a secondary fermentation in the bottle, not from some machine stuffing it with gas.
Wine lasts a lot longer than beer. Madeira can last for generations.
It ages; it changes and can even improve. Rare is the beer that is aged for an extended period of time, and rarer still is the beer that improves after being bottled.
Wine has a sense of place. It has terroir, a distinct fingerprint of where it comes from.
Wine is the ultimate social lubricant, not beer.
Wine does not need scantily clad bikini models to help sell it. (Although it might work.)
Recommendations: 2006 Numanthia Termes Numanthia ($70) This Spanish wine reminds me of a rock star performing live and loud in concert. It has so much energy with thick and rich black fruit, and a huge mouth-coating viscosity. This is not for the finesse crowd, but more for the bang your head with flavor one. 2007 Le Poussin Rose ($11) This super-quaffable dry rose is another porch pounder. Chill it and wash it down with a beautiful sunset. It bursts with strawberry, watermelon and rose fragrances.
Roberto Viernes is a master sommelier. E-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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