The mysteries of the world.

How did it get decided that wine and cheese were the things that people would discuss the taste of? Why are these discussions so full of subjective, unquantifiable ideas that seem to have come from dreams, like the impression of the taste of oak or the smell of ashes? If the taste of oak can be isolated chemically, and someone tested every wine in the world for it, how many wines would be oaken, really?

Why isn't it whiskey and chocolate which receive this variety of attention? It takes years and fermentation to make wine and cheese, and this does lend them a mysterious air - but that eliminates only the chocolate from consideration as a Vaguely Eldritch Cultural Touchstone. Whiskey yet remains. Does whiskey lose because grapes and milk are edible in their raw state? Maybe we imagine that by tasting them, and then tasting their products, separated from them by time and mysterious processes taking place in the dark, we bracket alchemy.

(I assume that the reason's actually somehow economic in nature.)

This post is to commemorate the fact that I have had some wine and, four years after I first bought a bottle, I still don't actually like it. I should stick to the whiskey and chocolate.