Beer and wine

From Vin de Pays xmas show

I have been wanting to blog about my new come obsession with beer and wine for a while now and well, i have a 03 Napa Merlot in my glass and the Elliot Smith channel on Pandora so i don't know how better it could get to write.
A little history
I grew up with parents that didn't really drink. I saw my dad with a beer only on occasion. My mom has never really liked anything with alcohol so i never saw her drink. I saw other adults drink here and there, but it never had an automatic appeal. All through high school i knew kids that drank, but i never really wanted to drink with them because they just did stupid things while that drank and I didn't want to do that. In college it wasn't until i was spending sometime overseas in Germany that i found a taste for wine. I was in a little restaurant in Monterroso, Italy. I ordered a carafe of the house wine because it was cheaper than ordering a glass of water. It was great! A white, but it just was great. I told the people around me at the time, "yeah i could get used to this." That summer i had a Guiness with a buddy and i thought, "ohh...now that is good" and thus starting me off toward the pursuit of the better tasting beer.

Over the next couple of years i started to find out what i liked and didn't like. In wine i started in liking whites more, chardonnays were good, but i was still learning the different names. In beer i like Heineken and Guinness (total opposites i know). I never liked anything of the big 3 American beer (Miller, Coors and Bud), they all tasted like someone had poured some beer in water and tried to pass it off as something good to drink. Then as i started to try more beer/wine i found my tastes changing but i still didn't know what i was tasting.
When i moved to China I basically let go of the idea of having anything good to drink. Chinese beer sucks and well.........really sucks. I found a place or two to get a bottle of wine, but i all but gave up hope of finding any beer that didn't look like yellow water or any wine that didn't taste like it had fermented with a nickel in the bottle.
Coming back to the states i started off right back where i left off, not knowing much but willing to try anything. One day my sis (who is really becoming a wine aficionado) and i decide to go wine tasting. We do a little search on the internet and find Vin de Pays. We take the metro and head down to Long Beach. It is a small place with a beer wall and a flight of 8 tastings for 13.99 (good deal). It was here that i started to learn about beer. I found out that there were beers beyond what they had in the super market and it absolutely thrilled me! They were unfiltered and non-pasteurized. They were not yellow, but caramel or deep golds. I could taste hops, chocolates or spices in them. The wine had feeling. It wasn't just red or white now, but Merlot and Chardonnay. In it was cherry, oak, vanilla or berry. The world of beer and wine was now something to explore, not just look at from afar.

Today
Now beer and wine are a regular part of my life, but not dependants in my life. I have always told people, that i like beer and wine in the same way that i like art. I taste and see what there is to offer me in that sip. What is being expressed in that glass. What did the brewer or vinter try to show you in the glass that you have in your hand? Its not just because there is alcohol in the glass that i like to drink it. I really don't like being drunk. I have been drunk once in my life and i really don't ever plan on that ever happening again. When i do drink, i drink because i like or love what i have drinking. I am drinking because i want to know more about beer or wine, not because i want to mask pain or get away from it all. I will admit, there is something about a Corona on a hot summers day, not because it taste amazing, but because it is cold and refreshing. At the same time, i am never going to finish off a six pack because it is a hot day.

Now I am working out details to start playing regularly at Vin de Pays and am looking forward to being the house musician at a wine bar. I am also making my own beer, and if i may, the batches i have made have turned out really well. But i will blog more on that later.

Allan