On 10/28/2019 at 1:50 PM, cdh said:
FFS. I said it 13 years ago, and I'll quote myself to buttress the point. Complexity can be measured objectively. Do the tests. Tell us where more different compounds are identified, the wine samples or the beer samples. There, you have your answer. All this facile "there more stuff you can put in beer, so it is more complex" vs. "nature does more stuff to the grapes so it's more complex" vs. yeast technicalities blather is getting us no place.
I'll risk jumping into an arguably pointless discussion, because it might be more entertaining that working on the deadline looming over my head.
I think you could objectively test a particular wine against a particular beer for complexity. But how would you test Wine (capital W— meaning the world of wine, against Beer, capital B—meaning the world of beer)? Like most such comparisons, it would likely devolve into a taxonomic one ("that's not really a beer!" "Yes it is!" Which has already started happening upthread).
In this case I think we'll find that the definitions of complexity reside in the assumptions and biases rooted in the minds of whoever's doing the comparison. To me this kind of discussion = Not Interesting.
We can safely say that the worlds of wine and beer are each massively complex. More than any one person can wrap their head around. For some people, this complexity may increase their enjoyment—but it's already of such a high order that a little more or a little less complexity in either world will make no practical difference. What's the difference between there 100 flavor compounds that you'll never be able to identify, and there being 1000? What's the difference between there being 100 styles of beer you'll never have time to try, and there being 500?
There are much more interesting pissing contests to bet on.
