Dave Barry on wine:

The wine is then bottled and transported to the Pretentious Phrase Room, where professional wine snots perform the most critical part of the whole operation: thinking of ways to make fermented grape juice sound more complex than nuclear physics. For example, at one winery, I sampled a Pinot Noir (from the French words ”pinot,” meaning ”type of,” and ”noir,” meaning ”wine”) and they handed me a sheet of paper giving many facts about the wine, including something called the ”Average Brix at Harvest”; the pH of the grapes; a detailed discussion of the fermentation (among other things, it was ”malolactic”); the type of barrels used for aging (”100 percent French tight-grained oak from the Vosges and Allier forests”); the type of filtration (it was “a light egg-white fining”); and, of course, the actual nature of the wine itself, which is described — and this is only part of the description — as having “classical Burgundian aromas of earth, bark and mushrooms; dried leaves, cherries; subtle hints of spice and French oak”; and, of course, the flavor of “blackberry, allspice, cloves, vanilla with nuances of plums and toast.”

Yes! Nuances of toast! I bet they exchanged high fives in the Pretentious Phrase Room when they came up with that one!

At another winery, I stood next to some young men — they couldn’t have been older than 22 — who were tasting wine and making serious facial expressions and asking a winery employee questions such as: ”Was ‘93 a good year for the cabernets?” I wanted to shake them and shout, ‘What’s WRONG with you!? When I was your age, I was drinking Sunshine Premium brand beer (motto: `Made From Ingredients’) at $2.39 a CASE!”

Needless to say, these young men also had cigars. You have to worry about where this nation is headed.

Read the whole thing. :)