Mayo & Mustard

Mayonnaise is French or Spanish in origin. Mustard-based condiments may have originally been invented in ancient Rome, but since then, Germany has developed a lot of different kinds of mustard. 

 

They also have lots of different kinds of sausage. Often a sidewalk food truck will have just one or two kinds of sausage, maybe with just one or two kinds of mustard to put on it, and there are also regional specialties, but if you add up everything in Germany, it's an amazing variety of sausage. And mustard.

 

And of course, Germany has beer. Great beer. A small amount of bad beer compared to Murrka, but also huge amounts of amazing beer that doesn't cost much at all.

I used to tell people that beer was invented in Germany, but I was mistaken. (I used to tell people all sorts of things which were inaccurate, and you know what? I probably still do!) People in the Middle East were drinking beer 10,000 years ago, in the earliest towns built from stone. By 2000 BC there were huge beer festivals in Egypt, where everyone would get very very drunk and dance maniacally and have sex in public. The attitudes of ancient Egyptians about sex were very different than ours today. Don't get me started. 

 

Knowledge of beermaking doesn't appear to have gotten as far north as Germany until 800 BC.

But mead remained the most popular northern European drink well into the Middle Ages. Generally speaking, beer and wine moved north alongside the Latin language, reading and writing, and Christianity. And in some areas it didn't replace mead as the most popular booze for a long, long time after that. And, as you may know, there are still people who make mead and grow beards and sing wimpy folk songs.

 

I've never had mead. Unless I have, and I was so drunk that I don't remember it, which is possible.

On Not Being a Wine Connoisseur, Featuring Pinot Noir

At first I thought I might start this post by saying, "I like pinot noir." 

 

But then I thought for a minute, and realized I've had 3 glasses of wine in the past 15 years or so, and they were all pinot noir, so how do I really know whether I wouldn't have liked some other variety much better? Also, each of those 3 times, I was in a bar which seemed well-stocked with wine, and I asked for a glass of their best pinot noir. So perhaps all I really learned was that I like expensive wine. Perhaps I'd like expensive glasses of other types of wine about as well, and maybe I'd find cheap pinot noir disgusting.

And if the local Kroger is any indication, it's easy to find pinot noir at all price points. The pinot noir section of the wine section of the local Kroger is -- it is huge.

What or who exactly first made me interested in pinot noir, I can't remember, not at all. I think the chronological sequence was like this: I heard or read something which made me interested in pinot noir -- I REMEMBER NOW! I saw a documentary movie about wine, and in this movie, some authority on wine held forth in an interesting way on pinot noir, suggesting that the variety held vast rewards for connoisseurs. I don't remember his exact words, and I may have misunderstood him, but what I took him to be saying was that, more than any other variety, pinot noir was the wine for the connoisseur. That's what made me interested in pinot noir. Perhaps at some point I'll even remember the title of the movie.

Since watching that movie, I've certainly spent more time reading about pinot noir than I did actually slowly sipping those 3 glasses of it. Even if you don't count the time I've spent reading labels on bottles of pinot noir in the local Kroger, which itself is more time than I spent drinking those 3 glasses. 

I read somewhere just recently that western Michigan -- relatively near me. I'm in eastern Michigan, near Detroit -- is a notable pinot noir region. I have no idea how seriously I should take that. Maybe that's an accurate statement, or maybe some local enthusiast got carried away in comparing local efforts to the whole big world of wine. I don't know. Perhaps someday I'll know.

Unbeknownst to me until a few days ago, more recently than the most recent glass, the film Sideways, released in 2004, has had a lot to do with making pinot noir more popular. When the film came out in 2004 I noticed some reviews of it, which made it sound like the sort of movie I wouldn't like. To summarize the movie's plot: two friends, a has-been actor and sex addict and an alcoholic unsuccessful writer, take a trip to Santa Barbara wine country, as a sort of week-long bachelor party celebrating the sex addict's upcoming wedding. Among the vineyards and tastings, the sex addict harms people with his reckless sexuality and the alcoholic gets drunk. And then maybe uplifting things happen near the end of the movie, I don't know.

A few years ago, when I still had premium cable, Sideways made a return run on premium cable, and I saw a total of no more than 15 minutes of it, which confirmed my opinion that I didn't want to watch the whole thing. 

But I still hadn't noticed the movie's connection with the worldwide wine market, until, a few days ago, reading about pinot noir, I was informed that the alcoholic character in the movie is constantly praising pinot noir and trashing merlot, and that this has led to a great increase in demand for pinot noir and a great drop in demand for merlot. After reading that, and before remembering the wine documentary with the wine expert extravagantly praising pinot noir, I assumed, for a little while, that my interest in pinot noir must have come indirectly from Sideways, from someone who saw the movie, or from someone who listened to someone who saw the movie, etc. Now, for all I know, it might be exactly the other way around: maybe the author of Sideways got his interest in pinot noir from the very same wine critic who gave it to me.