A Brilliant Piece on Fashion

Anyone who’s tried to learn to enjoy coffee, beer, or wine after not liking
their first encounters with them has probably come up against the phrase,
“You just have to learn to like it…”

We are taught to believe there is a linear scale of difficulty from cheap to
expensive, i.e. you have to learn to tolerate the cheap stuff before you can
possibly appreciate the higher quality offerings. Well, that’s total
rubbish.

In fact, nobody likes the cheap stuff. It’s garbage. People who drink
the common brands either drink them for their effects (see
Folgers/Starbucks), or they are
countersignaling
(see PBR).
The truth is that the better (usually more expensive) beverages are
actually the easier ones to approach and enjoy.

I stumbled upon this knowledge while experimenting with coffee and wine. I
have never liked red wine (or so I thought) because I’ve always tried the
cheap stuff, which was invariably acidic and overpowering.

Several years back, I decided to get adventurous and try a $20 glass of red
wine while enjoying a nice steak. It was phenomenal. It was extremely mild,
but with subtle flavors jumping out from all angles. At the time I just
thought it was an aberration, but I’ve since tried this repeatedly and it’s
always the same: It’s the higher quality wines that taste the best–even for
beginners.

Doesn’t this seem grossly counter-intuitive? Shouldn’t the “advanced”
beverages be less approachable? That’s what we would expect.
Beginners on a bike get training wheels, right? And why? To make it easier
to ride. So shouldn’t it be the same for beverages?

It’s not.

And it’s the same for coffee. The next time you are in a decent coffee
establishment, try a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain. It’s fairly expensive
($7 for a small in SF) but it is worth every cent. First of all, you can
drink it black. Nay, it must be consumed black 1. You seriously don’t
want to violate this experience with additives, as it’s just too good to
spoil.

The above statement sounds like it’s coming from a coffee snob, right?
Drinking expensive coffee black? Surely this is just signaling, right? No.
You’re talking to someone who’s never been drunk (which has been
embarrassing in many situations) because he doesn’t like the taste of
alcohol2. This coffee literally tastes brilliant, that’s why I drink
it black.

Conclusion

Forget what you’ve learned about disliking coffee and wine. You don’t like
them because the common wisdom of “start cheap and then grow into expensive”
simply doesn’t apply. These timeless beverages are too rich to ignore in our
short lives, so go out and see what you have been missing. ::

TL;DR: You shouldn’t learn beverages by going from cheap to expensive,
because the cheap stuff will turn you off of the drink altogether. Try the
better stuff; you’ll be happy you did.

P.S. If you have any coffee, beer, or wine suggestions for me
I’d love to hear them.

Notes

1. If you don’t drink your coffee black, you’re not drinking coffee; you’re
   drinking a coffee beverage. If you need to load it up with a
   bunch of crap then you either don’t like coffee or you haven’t yet had
   any that’s good.

2. Yet. I haven’t studied it like I’ve studied coffee.

3. Check out my
   coffee primer
   for learning the basics.

4. Beer and wine are next on my learning list.