At least from my perspective: Wine is a complete delusion.
If you came here for a nuanced article… you might want to hit the back button now :P.
I’m in full rant mode today, why?
Because I can!
Introduction
“If you need your wine to taste like chocolate to enjoy it… maybe you don’t like wine”
Link: https://www.wijnkennis.be/oenologie/de-aromas-van-de-wijn (Sorry, it’s in Dutch.). But even without Google Translate you’ll get the idea.
To summarize the article: There are three levels of aromas in wine?!
Uhh… WTF?!
Seriously. By the love of chr*st… again, seriously?
Fruity aromas in wine? Banana, citrus, and raspberry?
Chocolate hints, vanilla?!
HELLOOOOO!!
Acquired taste
“It’s an acquired taste is just code for: you’ll hate it long enough until peer pressure wins.”
But first – this important note: As you might have guessed by now: I don’t like wine. As stated before, I never got past the “it’s an acquired taste” stage.
I simply don’t get it.
How can people enjoy a drink that tastes like vinegar mixed with rotten grapes, mashed down using bare feet, with a slight hint of toe cheese and assorted fungi happily living between the toes?
And then we’re supposed to let it “age” in a barrel and then swirl it, sniff it, slurp it – and call that refined?
What do they do to those barrels?
They burn them on the inside.
On purpose!
To “enhance the flavor.”
AGAIN: HELLOOOOO!!!
So let me get this straight… You like standing next to a burning oak tree, inhaling all those “nice flavors” in the smoke?
Did you smell vanilla? Maybe a hint of chocolate?
Or was it just your lungs screaming: “WHY?!”
Why torment your tongue, esophagus, and other body parts with the same carcinogens found in cigarette smoke?
Healthy?
“Wine is healthy” – sure, and I’m a salad.
Carcinogens
Yep – those smoky aromas you’re so proudly swirling, sniffing and tasting? They’re known to cause cancer. But sure – let’s call it “depth.” Let’s call it “complexity.” Let’s romanticize fermented grape juice filtered through the charred remains of a tree.
Tell me more about how you “detect a whisper of toasted vanilla and forest fire.”
Not to mention doing that after the alcohol has completely numbed your tongue, killed off a few more brain cells, and turned the back of your throat into a burning wasteland.
All while your stomach quietly begins a rebellion called: “The Rise of the Stomach Acids.” Need an acid reducer now?!
So let me get this straight…
- Your mouth is fried.
- Your brain is fogged.
- Your digestive system is waving a white flag…
And yet somehow, you’re still tasting “vanilla” and something like “cinnamon”?
How do you taste all this nonsense?! 😛
Luxury
“Sipping tannin soup from a €40 bottle doesn’t make you classy – it just means you overpaid for acid reflux.”
Am I done?!
HELL NO.
There is nothing refined about wine. Let’s get one thing straight:
- Wine wasn’t invented for luxury.
- Wine wasn’t invented for “pairings.”
- Wine wasn’t even invented for taste.
Wine, for one, was “invented” because potable, safe drinking water was rare.
And another important reason:
“Originally, fermenting grapes was a sensible way to preserve the fruit in a time without refrigeration.”
That’s it.
So a few centuries ago, your options were simple:
Drink wine… or die of dysentery, cholera, or some other delightful gut-based disease. And it was a shame to dump all those grapes on the compost pile.
Yes – that’s the real reason wine became “a thing.”
- A survival tactic.
- A microbial compromise.
- A fermented safety net.
So don’t talk to me about “tertiary floral complexity.” It is all about not dying in the Middle Ages.
Sure – wine may have saved ancient lives. But you’d get a hell of a headache as part of the package.
- Dehydration.
- Pounding skull.
- Fuzzy vision.
- And a tongue that feels like it slept in a sock.
Oh – and let’s not forget: That same sock is probably what the wine went through to get its so-called “refined” taste.
But hey!
“It’s got hints of blackberry and saddle leather!”
Yay.
Wine is so “great”.
Djeez.
Tasting
“Wine tasting is just a socially accepted way to justify facial expressions you’d normally reserve for spoiled milk.”
A few years back, I took part in a wine tasting. I believe around 15 different wines were passed around for us to try. Of those 15… I liked one.
Yes. Actually one.
Can you guess which one?
It was… drumroll… an extremely sweet dessert wine.
Yes, that one. The one everyone else in the room hated. Apparently, my taste buds prefer something that at least admits it’s sugar water with a buzz – instead of pretending to be “complex.”
Sure, I can taste the differences between the various wines. But they all share the same foundational profile:
- Fermented grapes.
- Mixed with battery acid.
- Aged in a burned barrel.
- And somewhere along the way, it picked up a few carcinogens.
- Filtered through centuries of social delusion and foreign vocabulary.
- Seasoned with just enough smugness to make it ‘complex’.
- Served with a lecture and a guilt trip if you say you don’t like or get it.
- Finished off with a headache, a dry mouth, and a burning regret
Cheers to that!
Aura
“Wine’s aura is 80% marketing, 10% smoke, and 10% people too proud to admit it tastes awful.”
And to be honest?
I think that “intelligent aura” around wine is what puts me off the most. That smug, pseudo-sophisticated theatre of pretending to detect:
“a touch of vanilla… a whisper of oak… a note of chocolate…”
You’re not tasting complexity. You’re just reciting poetry over rotten grapes. And everyone claps because they’re too afraid to say:
“Guys… this stuff is disgusting and just tastes like expensive vinegar.”
Experiment
“Let’s strip the labels, dye the liquid, and watch the experts collapse under their own ego.”
And yes, some of you readers now think I am a barbarian or a Neanderthal ( or both? ).
You might be right. But let me ask you this…
You know what would be an interesting experiment?
Grab a few bottles of the cheapest white wine from the local supermarket. Strip off the labels. Print a fancy new one with a gold crest and some elegant Latin nonsense. Backdate it to, say… “1892 – Estate Bottled in France.” Oh – and for maximum mischief?
Add a few drops of red food coloring.
Now invite 100 self-proclaimed wine experts to a tasting. Watch them swirl, sniff, slurp – and confidently describe:
- “bold notes of blackberry,”
- “tannins that only come from long oak aging,”
- and maybe even a “hint of truffle, forest floor, and tobacco.”
Meanwhile…
They’re drinking budget white wine with food dye.
My guess?
Most of them will fail the test. How many will actually detect it is not a red wine.
Not because they lack a tongue – but because they’re too deep in the theatre to taste reality anymore.
Transparent
And even if you made the test completely transparent, most would still fail.
“Hey there, here are 50 white wines. Now here are those exact same 50 wines again – except with random fancy labels and a few drops of red food dye added.
Your task?
Match them.”
GOOD LUCK.
The wine pairing myth
“Nobody pairs soda with fish and calls it art. But wine? Suddenly it’s Michelin-star behavior.”
Ah yes – another fairy tale: Certain wines pair perfectly with meat or fish.
Yeah… right.
Let’s be real.
Alcohol knocking out all your tastebuds and alcohol running your stomach into an acid overdrive. “Acid Overdrive“. Good caption on a mug or T-shirt BTW!
“Because nothing says ‘refined’ like digestive warfare.”
How does that enhance what you eat?!
Nobody says a Coke “elevates” your fries or your broccoli – so why the hell does wine get away with this nonsense?
“Have your overpriced fish fillet with a side of tannins, and tell me you taste ‘balance’.”
Yeah, I’m done ranting now 😛
I hope this little sarcastic rant put a smile on your face, whether you like wine or not 😛
Brain out!
“Avoided dysentery, got a hangover that made me wish for dysentery instead. Thanks, wine.”
P.S. No sommeliers were harmed in the making of this article. 😄
Love this article! Glad I’m not the only one who only likes an extremely sweet dessert wine.