What underlies the disorder?

K

Ken Schramm

Ken Schramm
I am curious to know (if you are willing to share), what you feel underlies the obsession? I understand that, like sex, wine is fun, and we just want to repeat the pleasure. I know there is fear of missing out, which is exploited by the commercial side of this business extensively. Is it a quest for some elusive perfect wine experience? Is it a desire to have a comprehensive knowledge of the subject? Or a desire to collect guaranteed joy bombs, that can be called upon to unleashed their blessed treasure of restoration and renewal when needed? For the makers, is it a desire to reach some all caps "truth" in transforming what comes from the earth into what feeds the soul? All of the above?

What keeps you in this game, and keeps driving you deeper into it?
 
Interesting questions.

originally posted by Ken Schramm:
...I understand that, like sex, wine is fun, and we just want to repeat the pleasure.
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That is most definitely part of it, and similar to food, as both provide gustatory pleasure. But, unlike food which is necessary for nutrition, the alcoholic kick that is pleasurable at first is also an increasing downside for me as I get older. So my consumption has slowed in the interest of maintaining a healthy body.

originally posted by Ken Schramm:
I know there is fear of missing out, which is exploited by the commercial side of this business extensively.
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I never had this. There is so much wine and they're making more of it every year! Once I accept that I can't taste/know everything, it is simpler to focus on enjoying whatever I do taste.

originally posted by Ken Schramm: Is it a desire to have a comprehensive knowledge of the subject?
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This is closer to it for me. There are so many levels to appreciating wine, and I find the journey very rewarding, as trite as that may sound. Plus, even if I don't want to do it every day, it is a lovely component of a nice meal, and meals are truly at the center of life!
 
Camaraderie, sharing with friends, meeting new friends.

Exploring a part of cultures that interest me and meeting people who are part of those cultures.

Exploring in depth the aesthetic aspects and possibilities.

A connection through time and space with the people who produced the wine.
 
In part, it’s something to have with dinner. I don’t drink sodas, fruit juices don’t match well with savory foods, coffee and tea likewise (and I eschew caffeine past teatime) and water is adequate but nothing more. Wine enhances the meal if well chosen. It also provides both gustatory and intellectual stimulation in a way that cocktails and beer can also sometimes achieve. To Rahsaan’s point, I currently try to limit my daily consumption with a mind to maintaining bodily health. Lastly, I will cop to having the collector’s bug. In earlier life it was stamps, coins, comic books, albums and it is currently books and wine. In recognition of my advancing years, though, I’ve curtailed my purchases of vins de garde and limit myself now to Cru Beaujolais, Muscadet and NV Champagne (though a recent offer of ‘22 Jouan Gevrey Aux Echezeaux sorely tested that resolve).

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
(though a recent offer of ‘22 Jouan Gevrey Aux Echezeaux sorely tested that resolve).

Mark Lipton
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Nothing wrong with drinking Burgundies young, and the 2022s in general are spectacular.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
A connection through time and space with the people who produced the wine.
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This.

An additional kick in the teeth from 9/11 was that the Windows on the World wine cellar was destroyed. It does not compare in loss the human lives, agreed. I view wine as consumable artwork, though. It is a way that artisans can speak to us, as Claude says, through space and time, and the bottled voices of countless artisans were silenced that day.

I will also cop to Rahsaan's joy of the journey. It's what keeps me going in music and fly fishing, too. There is, blessedly, no bottom to any of those wells.

Finally, one more vice: In the 2025 world so filled with stress and chaos, living in a body that has let me down a few times of late, I rely on the retail therapy of researching, buying and anticipating new experiences to buoy my spirits. It may not be cheaper than a shrink, but it drinks better.
 
I'd have to say it's primarily the camaraderie.

If there was a silver lining from the pandemic, it was a group of us who had been jeebusing for several years who through a year or so of zoom tastings once a week, became friends. Eventually, the SOs and spouses of this group also became friends. We gather fairly often as a couples group, not just the guys (and occasional gal) having a jeebus.

Just last Saturday, we had a baby shower for a couple. My wife was the main organizer. She never would've become as close to them as she is now if it hadn't been for Andy being in our jeebus group and later, my wife meeting his. What's great is age difference doesn't matter. My wife and Andy's wife are almost 40 years apart in age. They've become good friends. They're both artists so they have that in common.

Age range in our group is from 35-74. Friendship knows no vintage.

None of this would have happened if it wasn't for wine.
 
In addition to all of the above in differing degrees, for me there's a (quixotic) quest to distill, more and more with every passing year, yet still elusively, what might be my own personal preferences, if such exist, out of the muddle of influences acquired (especially in the beginning) from critics, magazines, friends, and board colleagues.
 
originally posted by Larry Stein:
I'd have to say it's primarily the camaraderie.

...My wife and Andy's wife are almost 40 years apart in age. They've become good friends. They're both artists so they have that in common.

Age range in our group is from 35-74. Friendship knows no vintage.

None of this would have happened if it wasn't for wine.
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This is one of the babies that the neo-prohibitionists want to toss out with the bathwater.

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
An unexamined life, etc.In addition to all of the above in differing degrees, for me there's a (quixotic) quest to distill, more and more with every passing year, yet still elusively, what might be my own personal preferences, if such exist, out of the muddle of influences acquired (especially in the beginning) from critics, magazines, friends, and board colleagues.
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Touché. Not quite as bad as the Aerosmith and BTO albums of adolescent tomfoolery, but from the same mould.
 
There appears to be no lack of fellow travelers on this bored who've taken the road less traveled and wound up here. When I was a musician my passion was wine and when I burned out on music and went into wine for a living it I liked the dopamine rush of descending ever deeper into the wine underworld, buying wines I couldn't pronounce that I couldn't afford from places I'd never heard of (I'm from the west coast, so didn't grow up with all the cool Wine Therapy faves). Hanging out with other winegeeks was fun until it wasn't. Rudy Kurniawan always asked questions but rarely answered any. Way more fun spending time with the NY people winebored constituency drinking Vouvray and Chinon, and the Austrian folks who had an unendlich quantity of multisyllabic wines with umlauts. That sort of thing kept me thinking about wine as a romantic pursuit over and above just drinking to be classy and dizzy.

And then a buncha years into the wine biz I started burning out. Grand Cru became less important than "interesting" and I started getting back into music. I buy more used records these days than new wine, but am back into the weird, marginal stuff (both enologic and musical). Counterintuitively, it has rekindled my appreciation for the classics and fortunately, I have friends with large cellars and nobody to enjoy them with, so I'll bring bottles they didn't know existed and they open wines I couldn't afford. Everybody wins. And that keeps me interested in wine, and I stream a lot of new music and never pass by a $1 bin of LPs, because there's lots of stuff to be found. And I'm performing regularly and having fun with music again. And I will soon be selling off a chunk of the albatross that my wine collection has become, and who knows, maybe I get so reenthused that I start amassing another one? How much Cru Beaujolais or oddball Greek wines can one person drink? Only one way to find out I guess.

-Eden (proceeds of the fancy wine defenestration will probably be blown on paying taxes, buying another car, and maybe even upgrading the hi-fi)
 
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