On tonight's grocery run, I stopped by the liquor department to see whether anything new was on the shelves. And, to my happiness, I managed to find a grape I'd never so much as heard of before: Catarratto, which apparently hails from Sicily. I really, really like the Nero d'Avola from the same region, so I have considerable hopes. But even if it bombs, it's nine-dollars worth of a new experience, which is about the price of a movie these days.
I have nothing against French wines, you understand, but what I do like about wines from other areas is that they seem to be more often named after the grapes that go into them. When you're starting off in the adventure in a bottle that is wine nerdery, that helps a lot, actually. It's not just a question of collecting trivia, though. When you're standing in front of the wine shelves, thinking about picking up something to go with whatever else you're buying from the non-booze part of the store, it makes a difference between money well spent and money wasted.
For instance, I thought for years that because the color "burgandy" is dark, that the wine must be heavy-tasting. Wrong. If it's made anywhere other than the Burgandy area, the wine has to be called "pinot noir," after the grape that goes into it. That's a medium-bodied, silky wine--or at least it should be. (That's another thing: California and Australian wines--as a rule of thumb--tend to be bolder, so if it's subtlety you're after, try the stuff made somewhere else.) Or, for even more fun, champagne must be made in Champagne, but it doesn't have to be made from any particular grape. And don't even get me started on the Bordeaux region and its lexicon: That's an absolute nightmare for anyone starting to learn about wine.
Which brings up another point: When the wine snobs start talking about this vintage vs. that vintage, it's all well and good if they're talking about wines from a particular region (e.g. Tuscany). But for all I know 2005 might have been a terrible year in other parts of the vintning world (e.g. New Zealand, South Africa, Washington State, Chile, Argentina) But, sadly, people seem to forget that when the trade journals pronounce their verdict on an entire year's product. The industry, you understand, has a vested interest in snobbery, whether it's justified or not.
What surprises me, though, is that more computer/IT folks aren't into wine. After all, it has the arcana so dear to many of our hearts. We're the folks, after all, who memorized the stats of every D&D critter that Gygax and gang could dream up. And rolled our eyes at Original Series continuity errors in Next Gen. And know every manner of UNIX command (complete with parameters and switches) cold. And slogged through The Silmarillion (and everything else that Christopher Tolkien dug out of his Dad's desk drawers) to one-up the lazy slobs who had merely read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. And so forth.
And let's face it, you can have exactly the same kind of completely pointless jihadist food-fights over Burgandy vs. Bordeaux that you can over whether Kirk commanding the Enterprise could kick the butt of Sheridan commanding the White Star. In other words, what's there for a geek not to like?
