Why do many wine lovers past a certain level of knowledge seem to insist on talking about wine in absolute? This wine is good, that one is bad. "Industrial" wines are bad, "natural" wines are good. This one is 91 points, that one 89 points... Do these wine lovers rate their sex lives in the same way?

To me, wine is made to give pleasure. Full stop.

If that means to enjoy cheap plonk with a piece of bread and some stinky cheese together with your girl-friend while sitting on the steps of some wonderful church in the middle of some old town in Italy at 4 o'clock in the morning on a full moon night, why not?

When that happens, who cares about the score of that wine? Who cares about its wine making technique or any other mood destroying "winespeak"? No... That wine at that magical moment is the best in the world!

Of course, one does not only drink wine in such occasions. But come to think of it, most of us actually do drink most of our wine in such conceptual situation: on the spur of the moment. We just want to drink something that will match the mood and the occasion we are in at THAT moment.

And so, why not look at wine in terms of occasion rather than in terms of absolute?

For example. I have in my cellar of bottle of DRC Grand Echezeaux 1995 (about usd 800+ in value). Naturally, I have been waiting for the occasion to drink it. Today is my birthday. Is it not the occasion to do so? If it is, then, naturally, I will ask the questions: whom with? where? with what food?

Certainly, I will not open such a bottle while cooking on a monday night while waiting for Maria to return from Guangzhou. No. At that moment, I might finish up some samples left over from some tasting classes I had the week before.

If I invite my client over for dinner at my home on a Saturday night. We will surely not drink bag-in-box or other generic wine. Yet, the same generic wine might be exactly what I want to drink alone on a wednesday night in front of the TV to tune out completely...

I really beleive that we choose our food and our drinks based on our mood and the situation we are in at that particular moment. For that, the wine market absolutely offers wines that can match every single mood we are in.

Why not create a new scoring sytem: this wine is perfect for monday night football, that one perfect for a hot date with your wife... That one for a wedding, this one for your parents' 50th anniversary. That one to forget a bad exam day...

And so, let's consider wine in another light. Let's match it to the occasion and let's not fuss so much about it in absolute terms. Let's have at home a bottle of DRC as much as a bag-in-box. Let's have whites, sparkling franciacorta, and a sweet passito in the fridge. Let's have some Beaujolais, some malbec, and some pinot noir on the counter. Let's have some expensive and some cheap wines at home at any moment. Because we never know what mood we are in at that moment and there is no point of making this too complicated...Wine is for pleasure and most likely the occasion will dictate the type of pleasure we want at that particular moment...