wine.
Over the past few years, I have become a bit of an oenophile. I’ve never much liked beer, except with pizza, and rarely drink hard liquor at all. However, there’s something about wine. Mainly, it just goes really well with food - and as my wife will tell you, I sure do like food.
Wine has a number of ways in which it enhances the flavor of food. First, it contains acid, which stimulates the taste buds. Second, the fermentation process breaks down some of the sugars into myriad other chemicals, many of which are involved in taste. When someone says that a wine smells like tobacco or tastes like citrus fruits, it isn’t just imagination - well, okay, some of it is imagination, sure, but there really is a chemical basis to all those flavors that tasters say they taste. Finally, most wine also contains at least a little sugar, which also enhances the taste of foods.
What this means is that there really is a lot of variation and delicious flavor to wine. It also means that there’s a real art to trying to pair wines with different kinds of foods. If you’re lucky or persistent enough to try lots of different kinds of wine, then you get to the point where you can do this reasonably well - and it’s a lot of fun. And if you are so very lucky as to have a wife like mine, who not only is a great cook but adventurous and constantly trying new cuisines to boot, then you get the challenge and fun of trying a lot of different wine pairings. It’s a great hobby!
In short, wine is one of the great pleasures of life, and as such, should not be missed.