Spring Fever

This is a difficult time to be a blogger living in South Carolina.

It isn’t easy to get behind the wheel of the laptop when it’s a gorgeous spring day. This is the time of year when my mind is on everything but blogging.

Another reason I’ve slacked off from blogging is the lack of inspiration I get from the wines I’ve been drinking. They’re good – but they're often good in a familiar, homogenous way.

I was reminded of this when I read this article about the demise of California cabernet sauvignon. I would suggest that the same phenomenon is changing wines around the world – and not necessarily for the better.

Maybe we’re just getting what we’re asking for. While the United States has surpassed France as the world’s largest consumer of wine, we’re enjoying it differently than in the past. Fewer people are drinking wine with food.

I’m prone to this myself. Even though I’m an obsessive geek who agonizes over wine and food pairings, I still enjoy a big, plush, round red wine that doesn’t need food to show its stuff.

It does make me sad to see so many wines go to a New World style driven by the desire to score big ratings. Perhaps naively, I’m hoping that with more people drinking wine some of those people will start demanding something different, which will translate into more interesting wines in the stores.

I doubt, however, it will happen anytime soon, which means I won't have to drag myself off the porch to write about it.