4th of July: An Intro to Wine vs. Beer vs. Hard Alcohol

I know that in my last post I was pushing the theme “drink American” for the 4^th weekend.  I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t really keep to this.  It’s not that I had loads of French wine to intentionally rub it in America’s face on her birthday.  I didn’t have wine at all this weekend.  It was too damn hot.  Readers of this blog know that I’m mostly a red wine kinda guy and red wine isn’t generally something that you think of as being thirst quenching on a hot day.  So, did I drink white wine chilled?  No.  I was eating BBQ and was sitting on the beach so I turned to a simpler beverage, beer.  Ice cold beer.  I’ve got to say, when Coors Light is “super cold” on a hot day at the beach, it just sounds a lot better than a spicy glass of heavy Syrah.  I feel comfortable admitting that even though I pretend to be a wine writer.  And, with it being the 4^th of July, I had Sam Adams Summer Ale (he was a brewer and a patriot, it says so on the bottle), and even had one of those Budweisers in the American flag can just to be patriotic.  So, while I didn’t follow my advice by celebrating American wine this weekend, I think I did a good job in sticking to my general theme of drinking American.

My choices in beverages this weekend made me think about the beer vs. wine vs. hard alcohol debate and why some people prefer one poison over the other.  Beer is refreshing, it’s simple, and it’s cheap.  It’s a college favorite for those reasons (and drinking game reasons, but that’s another story).  Hard alcohol is just poison.  I like it in drinks every now and then but don’t understand shots and don’t like the fact that most people drink it to get drunk instead of actually enjoying what they are drinking.  Then there is wine.  It is complex, varied, mostly more expensive, and a good bridge between the two.  Wine is 2-3 times the strength of beer and about 1/3 the alcohol content of the hard stuff.  It’s a good middle ground and perfect for enjoying with a meal- it compliments food (unlike hard alcohol) and doesn’t fill you up (like beer).

Sometimes one drink just sounds better than another.  Some people have favorite drinks.  Some people like to dabble and try out all they can.  I fall into this last group and it is for this reason that I prefer wine when given the choice of these 3 types of drink.  As I’ve mentioned many times, there are more different varieties of wine than anyone could ever possibly try.  Wine is more of an adventure drink.  It’s a more complex drink.  It’s a more balanced drink and is just more pleasant in general.  When I have a minute to breathe, I’m going to do a bit of research to further explore beer vs. wine vs. hard alcohol, but my choices this weekend started to make me think about the differences in these 3 families of drinks that are all (somewhat) similar.  If anyone has thoughts or angles of this discussion they would like me to look into, let me know and I’ll be sure to add it to the list for a future post.

Tomorrow, we are back to my little competition.  One of my friends, E.R.A., a successful blogger in her own right will be taking center stage when I post her entry.  Be sure to come check it out, it’s a good one!