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10 Reasons Beer is Better Than Wine
10 reasons beer is better than wine
Wine's brief moment of glory in the sunshine of the Gallup Poll is done. After inexplicably tying beer last year as America's drink of choice and exciting the napkin-waving emotions of newspaper food editors across the nation, wine has slipped back into its proper subservient place.
In the annual Gallup booze poll for 2006, beer reigns supreme once again the first choice of 41 percent of Americans and continues to be the biggest seller in volume and dollar sales, accounting for almost 60 percent of all booze sales.
In celebration, a list of reasons why beer is better than wine.
ONE
If you drink beer from the bottle instead of pouring it into a glass first, youre just a guy. If youre necking a bottle of wine doesnt matter how expensive it is, doesnt matter how "exquisite" it is youre a drunk. Why do you think they call them winos?
TWO
Beers cheaper. Dont tell me thats not a good reason. You cant pay much more than $25 for a single bottle of beer, maybe $40 in a good restaurant, and thats going to be a big bottle of some rare Belgian specialty thats so good your toes will curl. You can easily get two glasses of exceptional beer for under $15 anywhere. A $40 bottle of wine in a restaurant? At best its drinkable, but it will probably peel the paint off the walls when the waiter unscrews the cap. Wine is so stupid pricey it can even cost you your job.
THREE
Germans make beer; the French make wine.
FOUR
People know beers good without having to be convinced of it by some snot with a wine column. Easy to figure this one out: What do more people start on, beer or wine? Beer tastes like bread and spices and snappy citrus zest and a hundred other things, depending on how its made. Wine? On first taste, good wine tastes like fruit gone bad. You need someone to explain to you what it is about wine thats actually pretty good. Because it is, Ill admit it, but
it took me a while of wanting to like it before I did.
FIVE
Beer makes you sing AC/DC. Wine makes you sing opera.
SIX
Beer comes in smaller bottles; opening one is an easier decision. That seems like a trivial thing, but wine marketers are pushing smaller bottles lately. Smaller bottles cost less and theres not as much in them, so people will make the decision to buy wine more easily. Beers already there. And weve got the whole draft thing, too. Point to beer.
SEVEN
Five percent of wine corks are undetectably bad and turn the wine in the bottle to crap. Thats why the waiter will give you the cork to sniff or he did until too many ignorant people made fun of the practice. But thats not the real reason that makes beer better than wine. Thats because even if a bottle of wine is corked, most people will drink it anyway, because they know wines not supposed to taste "good." Beer doesnt usually go bad, but when it does, it turns skunky or sour or has floaters. This is natures way of letting you know that the beer is not good. Thanks, nature!
EIGHT
Wine drinkers always go on about vintages and great years and wines of the past. Hey, too bad for them. Vintages run out; the brewer can almost always make more beer thats just as good as the one you loved.
NINE
Beer goes better with barbecue. And Thai. And ham. And cheese. And salads. And sausage. And bread. And crabs. And tomatoes. And waffles. And so on. In fact, if you read most wine books, there are a lot of foods an honest wine writer will admit just don't go well with any kind of wine. You can always tell when beer goes better with a food than wine does, because theres an easy test. Ask a wine expert what wine goes best with the food. If they say Riesling or Gewürztraminer, beer tastes better than wine with that dish.
TEN
Beer is a much more direct drink: When a brewer wants beer to taste like fruit
he adds fruit. If he wants it to taste like smoke, he smokes some malt with real smoke and he adds that. Wine makers get different flavors by adding suggestions, imagination and hints: Youll taste smoke and hints of fresh herbs, with a flinty, mineral back splash of firmness. And if you dont, goes the unspoken subtext, youre stupid. Surprise, surprise everyone says, Yeah, I can really taste the herbs! Fresh herbs, wow!
Submitted by Glen J.
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