I’m not sure people don’t care about wine, at least in the way I think you mean. I see it more as those that care about wine don’t necessarily need to have others know how much they care. This disqualifies as you rightfully point out, those in the trade. They may have cared about wine before they got paid for it, but certainly care about it now, lest their children go hungry.

I like to think that the beverage has become such a mainstay in life that no fanfare or neon sign need go above anyone’s head who happens to be drinking it, nor would any of these people feel the need to protect it. In that case, Joseph is on the money when he says that’s the job of the “serious drinker.”

And to his point, I’m in a writing class where the subject of genre fiction versus literary fiction came up. I wondered whether any of the writers working on their books thought of themselves as writing anything other than literary fiction. It seems to me that the two terms were made up in publishing house conference room, where the powers that be annoint those that will win awards and those that will hit the NYT Best Seller list (hopefully)…

Wine can be discussed by those that care but perhaps it’s best enjoyed as a compliment to something better going on, say, conversation.

Me thinkith I may have deepened the abyss as well…

A discussion that I had in class this week had a similar tenor. I’m an English grad student and we asked, “Who is in charge of what we read [that is, the canon]?”

The heft of the responsibility fell almost entirely on critics and scholars.

It seems that that’s the heft of your question as well. “Who is in charge of what we drink?” I think the answer is very similar In literature, serious literature, casual readers have a small (though significant) influence in this issue and the serious readers (students, professors, etc.) carry the bulk. In wine, we have our “scholars”(usually the magazines, no? or people like Parker? though I use the word scholars with a handful of salt). But we also have our serious drinkers: bloggers, wine stewards, wine clubs, etc.

It’s all very democratic and a result of user participation. Thus it is a crisis to find that there aren’t many users. Here we come upon the thin ice: how do we persuade others, based on the way we feel about wine and what it has done in our lives, to incorporate it in a serious way into life in general?

I have not answered any of your questions, perhaps, and might have only deepened the abyss. But, again, I share your sentiments and was urged to comment upon them.

Welcome back, by the way.