A recent twitter update caught my attention, as it triumphantly declared to the world that Americans are finally drinking more beer than wine.  Houston, we have a problem.  First of all, the tweeter had his facts wrong.  Beer outsells wine in the US.  Second, his source was a Canadian article from 2006 that actually stated that while Canadian wine was on the rise, beer was still in first place.

The gross misrepresentation of the facts reveals an ubiquitous arbitrary and adversarial attitude present in both the hardcore beer and wine communities.  There almost seems to be a Montague–Capulet type of feud going on between these two cultures.

No doubt, I, a beer fanatic, cannot objectively approach the situation.  I find beer the much more enjoyable and palatable beverage.  However, the fact that beer is less expensive and more widely consumed leads to an overall public misconception that wine is more sophisticated (in general) than beer…a misconception that is battled at every level.  Stone brewery has even hosted a “beer vs. wine dinner,” to elevate beers status (as opposed to denigrating wine’s).

Does such an adversarial relationship need to exist?

I’ll be honest.  I enjoy a nice glass of wine.  I have about 20 bottles or so in my basement.  My dad has a  vinyard and ferments his own specialty wines, that I can’t wait to try.  Still, I would be willing to bet that 99% of my yearly alcohol alcohol intake is in the form of beer.

The blog, Yours for Good Fermentables makes an excellent case for peaceful coexistence between the two camps, making use of an article by wine blogger, Eric Asimov:

Beer and wine are not in competition. Yet people in the wine business, who I assure you drink an awful lot of beer, don’t often take it seriously as a beverage. And people in the beer business, perhaps in reaction to not-so-imaginary slights, rarely even acknowledge the existence of wine, much less deem it worthy of drinking. <…> The enemy of beer is not wine and the enemy of wine is not beer, just as the enemy of bread is not fruit and vice versa. But the enemy of good beer and good wine, and good food in general, is bad beer, bad wine and, yes, bad food.

The enemy of good wine is the atrocious marketing that makes wine an aspirational commodity, just another luxury good to purchase for its status value.

Well said, although, in the sense of the free market beer and wine are in competition not only with each other, but with themselves:  other brewers and vintners.

In the sense that both the wine geek and the beer geek both enjoy the fruit of fermentation, the animosity is unecessary, and perhaps both parties need to learn to appreciate eath other’s niche.  In reality, the divisiveness stems from a sense of inferiority.  After all, no beer drinker I’ve met flinches when beer and whiskey are given equal accomodation.

In a bold move, brewers (including myself) have begun experimenting with grapes and even wine yeast.  Case in point, Allagash Victor Ale.  I don’t suppose that you’ll find Allagash heckling a wine connoisseur any time soon and vise versa.

Take this article however you will.  Just keep in mind, just because one says that they prefer beer over wine, or even that beer is better than wine, they are certainly NOT saying that the beer drinker is better or better off than the wine drinker; and that, I believe, is a pretty good definition of coexistence.

Now, what you think?