Why Numbers Make Me Feel Cold I drink a glass of wine to feel warm in much the same way one would curl up with a favorite book on a brisk fall day. In a larger sense, a long winter has descended on us towards the beginning of the new millennium, and certain segments of the population may have more financial assets to procure trappings of the good life, but esthetic bankruptcy is universal. By opening a bottle of wine and giving it expression in my unique circumstances, however less than a projected ideal, I recreate the wine maker's art. As a reader would give voice and life to a dead poet's verse. Whatever energy I project into wine tasting comes back to me two fold from the excitement and wonder elicited by both the wines I perceive to my liking and those I obverse at a particular moment.

I am fueled by the drive to try something new; to wager on a wine that might take chances, which is by contrast to a world of flat lines and vacuous standards. And, yes, wine rating scores. Yet, it is reassuring sometimes to have my expectations trumped by a wine or a wine tasting compatriot. The drive to compel everything to make sense and line up neatly can only end up in either a desolated landscape or an internal imbalance akin to madness. From the second I touch a wineglass my fingerprints are all over it. Why make its singular contents a tyranny for many tongues. It would be a grim and foreboding experience to imbibe a world where every deviation, wine and enjoyable circumstance are taken into the accounting. An accounting of winners, losers and those who end up playing both sides of the card before their sun sets. I prefer not to drink a wine because it is reputed to be better than another wine or to feel better than another person by drinking it. Living one good life does not necessarily negate other constructions of an esthetically pleasing existence.

In a disheartening world of corporate take over bid cliché's and homogenized lowest common denominators, it enheartens me that there is still diversity in wine, in art and in life. People can appreciate difference and partake in peculiarities. We should not strive to manufacture wine any more than we should manufacture consensus; instead, we should allow fruit and people to express themselves.

By Justin Christoph

About the Writer:
Justin Christoph, wine critic for the Philadelphia Sun, has conducted wine experiments and provided tasting projects for wine related publications over three continents.