Wine Fictions

 As I start writing this post I have just finished reading  Drunken Comportment   by Craig MacAndrew and Robert Edgerton. Besides my criticism on how the whole studies that were presented were mainly based on the effects of alcohol in non-western societies and from an outdated anthropological perspective, there were some questions that jumped out. How different people react to alcohol is one of them. Even though there is an attempt to establish a pattern, they do fail to do it. This sends me more to the personal field, saying that it is more dependent on the individual than on a certain culture.  Still,  I do believe that certain moments in certain societies can condition people's reactions to alcohol.  But I do not have a concrete conclusion on the theme due to the amount of thoughts that are still popping up in my mind in a rather chaotic way and that is something typically mine. What I have quite clear is that there is a very strong connection between co...

 The other day I decided to organize a wine tasting with some colleagues from work  and when asked about which wine each person should bring, I have decided to leave it absolutely free and be surprised with the choices of my colleagues.  This was planned with the main goal of clarifying how you can settle a tasting order without any previous knowledge of the wines you would have in front of you. When we all sat at the table I could not be more impressed with how well everything seemed to have been planned: two crémants (a white and a rosé), three whites (of which two were Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough), three reds (of which two were Reservas from different years from la Rioja) and a desert wine.  I am not sure whether I would have managed to get such a perfect setting if I had planned it throroughly. Even though the level of the wines chosen has been satisfyingly good, there was one that particularly called my attention: the NED Sauvignon Blanc has seduced from th...