Crocodiles and Collio

Around his rustic country table in Cormons, Italy, Kristian Keber, a 28-year-old winemaker, poured his family’s 2013 Collio. Perhaps Kristian could sense that my mind was racing for adjectives and metaphors to describe the chilled white wine swirling in the glass. He began to recount a story about Luigi Veronelli, one of Italy’s most respected wine connoisseurs and writers from the last 40 years. A reporter asked him, “I have the feeling that if you are really knowledgeable about it, there are just four ways to classify a wine: white, red, good, or not good.” The wine expert, with a smirk, responded, “Ah, you are so young! There are only two: it is good… or not good.” On music, Duke Ellington would have agreed. When asked which genres of music he liked, he stated simply, “Well there are only two: there is great music, and then there is the other kind.”