On the Pursuit of Greatness

I wish everyone at some point in their life to experience what it feels like, tastes like, smells like, to drink truly great wine. It is right up there with the top transformative experiences in life--having sex for the first time, having a child, family members and close friends passing away, seeing the artist's work in real life--and it changes you. Forever.

In the realm of alcoholic drinks, wine clearly stands at the pinnacle. It's the most difficult to make, it is the most transformative in bottle, it offers the greatest variety across its narrow genealogical plant spectrum, and it is not merely refreshing and tasty(like beer and spirits, never mind what the "mixologists" will claim), but has the ability to transcend the known flavor spectrum entirely...on occasion.

Our generation has turned toward wine consumption in a way that no modern generation has--which is exciting, because as a response to our demand, more and more wines are becoming available from the Old World from year to year. But that's also the problem. For every good wine that finds it's way to America, there are ten that have no business ever being consumed.

In a fine country like ours, new trends are exploited with lightning speed, and while the gettin is good, the good, the bad and the ugly are all there, trampling each other, trying to get their piece of the pie. At the bottom, bad wine proliferates, and only the trained eye can avoid making bad decisions (and that's not always the case). At the top, wine prices sky-rocket, and the "cult" phenomenon makes the top echelons of wine producers virtually unattainable by 99 percent of the drinking population.

So for all us poor but discriminating, intellectually curious wine drinkers, its tough not to conclude that one always gets pretty much what one pays for, and we follow the market blindly into our buying decisions.

DO NOT TRUST WHAT THE MARKET IS SELLING YOU!!

Good should never be defined solely by price tag. And when good wines are expensive, there is usually a (semi) plausible explanation one can accept.

Bottom line: Good wine is one of the great pleasures of the earth, and great wine is one of a very few good things that transform us, that when we drink it inspires in us beauty, creativity and art. The nature of our society wants to charge us fair-market for the promise of this experience. It is what it is. And sometimes it happens, most times it doesn't. I have spent many thousands of dollars chasing this particular little beast down the rabbit hole...and sometimes I look around at the bottles I have consumed and then have kept and put on the shelf as trophies; and I think, was it a waste?

But then I realize that I am posing the question in the wrong way. The question, after all, is not whether I wasted money on fermented grape juice in a pretty French bottle (the answer to that is, yes, of course I have), but whether I sought, spent, and consumed in the right spirit. In the spirit of discovery, of wonder, of curiosity and passion.

Only the truly great things in life, pursued in this way, can, at the end of the day, when there is no more money left in our coats and the cupboards are bare, leave us with a sense that it hasn't all been a waste of time after all.