Life is too short to drink bad wine.
No matter how great the wine, it ends up in the same place.
We believe life is to be enjoyed. Savored. Every sensory experience should be felt through your entire body and mind, forming memories that stay, flavor, and enhance the rest of your life.
We believe that food, eating, is part of this. It is more than eating enough protiens, starches, fats, sugars to get through the next day. A meal should be enjoyed, each bite felt for its smells, flavors, and textures, from initial tasting through the last essenses that remain long after you have swallowed.
We believe that beverages, alcoholic and not, are part of this experience. We believe it is a food item, part of the sensory experience of a meal.
Our group was formed to study the myriad of presentations of alcohol as a food item in liquid form. Different fruit, different grains, different methods of growing and preparing. Different methods of combining it with other ingredients to create different mouth-textures and taste-sensations. Different combinations of foods and beverages.
We gather, monthly, to taste beverages in accompanyment with different foods. We sample, normally, six to ten different beverages. We look at the liquid, we smell, we taste. We talk about what we taste and how it feels in our mouths. We eat different foods, and we experience and compare how the beverage interacts with the food. We treat the alcohol-based beverage as a component to the meal, and get a better understanding and appreciation for both.
As a group, we meditate and experience and learn.
And that is life.