Evolution of Wine Enjoyment

There was a time not too long ago when if you wanted some wine you simply uncorked a bottle and poured yourself a glass. Today there are more closures in wine bottles than Trump has hotels and glassware has become a science, not merely something to sip your vino out of. There are special wine chillers, aerators, vacuum utensils to suck air out of bottles, inert gas in cans to preserve wine, thermometers, specially designed carafes and God knows what else to supposedly enhance your wine experience. In fact, the act of preparing a wine to sip and save it seems to have become more important than the sipping itself. It makes me wonder if we’ve become much too anal and cerebral about the enjoyment of the nectar of the grape.