question about alcoholic drinks
randomly wondering: why do people age wine for decades but beer only for a few weeks max?
re: question about alcoholic drinks
@Felthry some beer ages for years, I think it strongly depends on the yeasts used
also "it is estimated that 90% of wine is meant to be consumed within a year of production, and 99% of wine within 5 years" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_wine
re: question about alcoholic drinks
@noiob huh, I guess the wine aging for decades thing is just a thing for ridiculously fancy wines for people to be snobbish about
re: question about alcoholic drinks
@Felthry I think a lot of the wine that's for people to be snobbish about is also aged way too long, like look at these times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_wine#Good_aging_potential
re: question about alcoholic drinks
@noiob 50 years? surely it has to go at least a little bit off in that time, it can't just keep getting better and better
re: question about alcoholic drinks
It doesn't.
Over-aged wine turns into acidic vinegar.
This is entirely a snobbish thing. The taste might get subtly better with age (though I seriously doubt that's even perceptible if you compared it to a modern batch since they would be made by entirely different grapes grown with potentially different circumstances) , but the rarity of the bottle being intact is what makes it more valuable, and therefor more desirable, to rich uppity folks.
I mean, they literally make food coated in visible gold for rich uppity folks, so the idea that their tastes are somehow refined is qvestionable, at best.
re: question about alcoholic drinks
@JulieSqveakaroo @Felthry @noiob Yeah; given the stuff they'll grok as long as they can show off with it, trust me, rich people have no taste.
Even a totally unbroken bottle is going to be nothing but vinegar after going undrunk for many decades if not a century, and drinking a glass of that anyway would -probably- give you the shits much like drinking any old vinegar in such quantities would.
re: question about alcoholic drinks
@Thaminga @JulieSqveakaroo @noiob yeah I guess any food or drink associated with rich people is going to have pretty much no concern for what actually tastes good, not nearly as much as what is expensive and showoffish anyway
this reminds me of how rich people decided that they would stop using spices pretty much the moment poor people started widely using spices because they got affordable
re: question about alcoholic drinks
@Thaminga @JulieSqveakaroo @noiob never did get why french food was so renowned for being good when it's all like. lump of meat with no seasoning whatsoever and maybe a snail or two and a single leaf of parsley. you are not allowed to add any sauce whatsoever unless you want to have it au jus, which just means they put back in the stuff that dripped out while it was being prepared
I guess it's just Rich People Snobbery
re: question about alcoholic drinks
@Felthry @JulieSqveakaroo @noiob Yup. Which is why European food outside the Balkans and like, Italy and Spain tends to be bland as hell to this very day.