Thursday, July 2, 2009

Latest Garagiste article on Mystification and De-Mystification of wine

An article I wrote completely out of the box. Please read and comment whenever you can.

Posted by Lyle Fass at 1:43 PM

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2 comments:

Paul Zitarelli said...

Lyle – I have been reading (and greatly enjoying) your work for some time now. This is a fascinating topic to me. As someone who is trying to get a niche wine retail shop up and running, I’m constantly obsessing over the balance between demystification and elevation. Demystification is clearly important in that, as long as a huge swath of consumers see wine as “mystical,” they won’t even dip their toes in the water and try it. But if you go too far in that direction, you run into the equally frustrating subjective-palate theory, which seems to suggest that there is no objective quality to wine. And that rings false to me. Acknowledging that there are certainly different palate strokes for different folks, I still believe that there are objectively beautiful and objectively ugly wines.

One factor that you didn’t really touch on in your exploration of American wine culture (as compared to Europe) is simple geography and density. The times I have visited Europe, I have been struck not just by the ease and comfort with which they treat wine, but also by its geographic ubiquity. In a country like France, no portion of the population is more than a few hours from a vineyard. Here in the U.S., by contrast, most of our largest population centers are hundreds or thousands of miles away from a vineyard. I think this paucity of “vineyard density” (for lack of a better term) keeps wine out of the subconscious of many Americans. Furthermore, because so many of us live far away from the producing regions, we have to use proxies for the experience of visiting the places where wine is grown. And sadly, many of us wind up with the wrong proxies, either by choice or by regulation.

July 2, 2009 4:50 PM
Iuli said...

Hey, love the article. I have two quick points.

1. you have never been guilty of dumbing wine down. If anything you are too geeky, which is a much a better tact. Always err on the side of overestimating the interest and intelligence of your audience. It's an important part of displaying your expertise and generating excitement. Joe Bastianich once watched me teaching a wine class at Otto. He seemed frustrated at my explanation of the role of sugar and acid in wine grapes. Once we got to the point in the class where the students could apply their new knowledge to the difference between wines from friuli and puglia, the light bulbs went on, the class clamored, joe smiled, and i'm pretty sure that's the day he learned my name.

2. There is a massive beer culture in the unites states. it's a true culture end very comparable to wine culture in europe. If you go to say friuli, you will not find wine from compania. Beer works much the same way in the unites states. Wine is the king in NYC, but here in philly, beer rules. There is a huge culture with many great craft brewers. You won't find most of these beers outside of the region, but they are truly among the nations and dare i say the worlds best.

Good work bud.

oh, texier blows goat ass.

except Seguret, brezeme and st gervais, and much of the other stuff

July 2, 2009 8:20 PM

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