Leave Me Some Food Wine, please!

There are two kinds of wine drinkers. One is like my friend Allan who drinks wine for itself. He once told me that the food is kind of a distraction to the wine. I can understand the feeling--he just want to drink wine. I, however, like my wine with my food. I enjoy the combination of the two. I want the best of both worlds, I suppose. These two kinds of practices require two different kinds of wine. If wine is drunk by itself, you need a more complete kind of wine, something big and full and not lacking in anything. But if wine is drunk with good food, the wine had better left some room for the wonderful taste of the food. A good food wine then is, by definition, lacking in some ways. The wine and the food are like puzzle pieces--when the sharp points and holes of each fit into the other, it is a perfect match. These two ways of drinking are not necessarily in conflict with each other. You drink yours and I drink mine. Everybody can be happy. Unfortunately, there is only one large wine market. As people, both producers and buyers, increasingly rely on “expert” ratings, my kinds of wine are becoming extinct. The result of wine rating is the product of wine tasting where there is no food, for fear of interfering with wine. This is all well and good but it does favour Allan’s wines over mine. Religious readers of Wine Spectator and Robert Parker look at their ratings and buy wines accordingly. They drive up the price of some wine and other makers start to make wine to satisfy the market. Consequently, less and less of good food wine is produced. This is a sad thing since most of the wines are drunk with food. I am not against what other people like to drink, just leave me some of what I like.