Frivolous Friday, 01.15.2010: When the middle is not mediocre

My husband and I pulled out a bottle of a kit wine--allegedly an "old vines" Zinfandel--we made a couple years ago, poured ourselves a glass apiece, and unwound from the week. He's not as nerdy about wine as I am, but we agreed that it had (finally!) improved from its disappointing, caramel-tasting start. A year ago, I would have still considered it "homework wine," meaning something I wouldn't serve to company. Now it could go either way.*

While we were breaking down the inadvertent wisdom of more or less ignoring the Zin into something drinkable, it occurred to me that wine-drinking has a "spectrum." On one end, there are a lot of people who will drink just about any wine (particularly if it's free); on the other the wine snobs. But not a lot of folks in the middle. Granted, I can't give you hard statistics to quantify, but I'm unshakeably certain that the distribution of wine drinkers on the "Two Buck Chuck" to "1982 Burgandy/Bordeaux" spectrum does not in any way resemble a bell curve.

Which, to me, is very sad. Because this is one of those times when the middle is actually the place to be. Permit me to explain: If you drink Two Buck Chuck, it's easy to think that the whole smell/taste experience is an overrated figment of a snobbish imagination. But if, on the other hand, you don't consider anything that scores under $80 a bottle or 90 points (from Robert Parker, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, etc.) fit to pass your lips, you're also setting yourself up for some highly disappointing misconceptions. (Personally, every wine I've bought purely on the basis of its score has been gut-rottingly over-oaked. Seriously--I could have licked the inside of the ageing-barrel for the same effect. What a obscene waste of perfectly good grapes--and a perfectly good tree besides...)

The kicker is that the wine trade would, IMLTHO, benefit immensely from an informed--meaning self-educated--middle. To wit: On the "low" end of the scale, most of the wasted grape juice would be eliminated (except maybe for cooking wine; there's always a place for that). On the tonier end, the various Chateaux and Domaines and Crus (heck, maybe even whole viticultural regions) would no longer be allowed to rest on their proverbial laurels. To an extent, you can already see a certain backlash within the industry itself (e.g. the Meritages and the Super-Tuscans); their "push" just needs some corresponding "pull" to tip the industry in what I consider the "right" direction. For whatever that's worth...

Ironically enough, I can make much the same observations (in terms of the quality "spectrum") about my own industry. Clustered on one end of that spectrum are the folks who convince themselves that they're getting a "bargain" by contorting their processes around "free" software. At the other end are the snobs who won't touch anything not released by a company they haven't heard of--and who will convince themselves that they're actually getting what they paid for. (Never mind that the implementation team looked awfully inexperienced and the folks who answer their calls have very interesting accents.)

So, for all that the proverbial "middle" suffers from connotations of conformity and mediocity, sometimes it can indeed be the path of greatest resistance. There are situations when moving yourself in from the middle takes time and the discipline necessary to learn about the range of options and their respective trade-offs. So, as much as I prize uniqueness and passion, in this case I'll happily raise my glass to those in the middle.

Cheers, all.

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* On second thought, as I'm finishing this (first) glass, the "hot" alcohol taste is becoming somewhat overbearing. Dang...now I'm gonna have to go back to school just to polish off this stupid kit. ;-)