Part 3 of my “Tasting Beer” series. The first two posts are here and here.

Thing one: wine-ification is a terrible word. Thing two: I’m pretty sure my first exposure to wine was out of a box, so it took a while before I understood the idea of wine being fancy. That is not to say that beer ever had a “fancy persona” in my mind either, but I guess that’s kind of the point to all of this.

Lately, thanks to the rapid growth of craft beer in America, there has been an increase in restaurants that feature craft beer, and programs like Cicerone have been getting more attention. This is of course is when the opinions start to come out about craft beer’s role, and often times, it is compared to wine. The New York Times had an article associating beer bottle sizes with “wine-ification,” Food & Wine compared beer glassware and food pairing with snobbery, and NPR recently discussed Cicerones.

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I read several articles today relating alcohol to health:

http://goo.gl/xcdp – Beer contains nutrients that make bones stronger and it is suggested that moderate drinking will reduce the risk of osteoporosis and other diseases

http://goo.gl/WbWe7 – Red wine prevents cavities.

The above articles are related to the chemistry of alcohol. The below articles are a bit more vague:

http://goo.gl/pbUFq – People who drink more, are more likely to exercise longer and more intensely.

http://goo.gl/2I7T9 – Women were monitored for 13 years. The non drinkers gained the most weight, the moderate drinkers gained the least weight

These articles, on their own don’t offer much of an answer. But then there’s this article:

http://goo.gl/LAQh – People with higher intelligence drink more than those with a lower intelligence. 

I think that because those that drink typically have a higher intelligence, they are also more likely to have the knowledge to want to keep themselves healthy and in shape. But then the real question is, why is there a correlation between intelligence and alcohol consumption? 

“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with fools.”
—Ernest Hemingway 

Or, it could just be that those with intelligence have a taste for the finer things in life, like a glass of red wine or a pint of craft beer!