Shopping: Beer vs Wine

Observing, as I am prone to do, a customer spend a better part of 15 minutes browsing for a nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, my muse started to tickle the back of my head. As they left, vintage bottle in hand and their wallet much lighter, I considered what had just conspired.

I am sure (well, hopefully) that that one bottle in question will be a smashing indulgence of tasteful ecstasy. A few glasses later and the moment is over, leaving only a wonderful memory and nothing else to follow with.

So where does the beer connoisseur fit in all this?

For the same value spent, a beer connoisseur would bring home multiple bottles of smashingly indulgent tasting ecstasy, each bottle a new discovery, an old friend, an irreplaceable experience. Given the same amount of time and the same money to spend, the beer connoisseur easily emerges the more blessed victor of liquid pleasure.

As a beer geek and connoisseur myself, my opinion is of course biased, and that is OK. But let us not also forget that each moment of quaffing nirvana, beery or vinous, is an experience unique to the individual.

Being a unique experience, it can reasonably be argued then that the beer connoisseur, even the everyday quaffer, has more choice, opportunity, and quality to choose from. For one bottle of sublime wine, I can buy anywhere upwards of a dozen different bottles of beer that are equally sublime and soul-stopping. Maybe even more so...

Is one better than the other? Each have their own merits so I would have to say no. Does one have more to offer than the other? To this I would have to say yes, and the victor would be beer.

Final product is key, but beer is also every facet of recipe preparation, brewing, timing, skill, artistry, and inspiration along with a sprinkling of godisgoode. It is beer's sublime blend of human influence and Mother Nature's touch that pushes her beyond wine's burgundian reach. For all that various wine varietals offer under mankind's watchful eye and guidance, Mother Nature is still the ultimate giver of life and harbinger of death. Wine faces an impenetrable glass ceiling of fruition which beer does not, and if beer should, tis far above and beyond.

It is beer with her immense dedication to quality, diversity, complexity, ingenuity, artistry, cellerability, and taste evolution that makes beer the ultimate master of burgundian pleasures.

(an original written work by Kristyn Lier. plagiarism is not tolerated)