Grape Juice As A Cultural Marker

 Several years ago my wife and I were bicycling in Languedoc.

Among the other features of the place that make it a must go to before you die destination are the grapes.

Having all those grapes must mean that they make wine in Languedoc, I thought I heard someone say.

They do.

Among them is corbieres.

I sat one evening in the garden of our lodging with a bottle of  corbiers - first ever bottle of that sort of wine that I had ever drunk - and became gradually aware that that bottle of wine might be the best bottle of wine I had ever drunk.

So we were biking in a wine region.

One of the things that occurred due to that fact was that we often rode on roads that had a stripe of grape juice down the center, having drooled out of the grape trucks taking the fruit to the pressers, or wherever they take grapes in Languedoc.

A few years later we were driving to New Mexico to go on a bike trip around the Taos area.

Somewhere en route in the intermountain west, on a road very similar to those in Languedoc we got behind a truck with a bunch of cows in it.

It was streaming semi liquid cow manure down the center of the road.

If I hadn't had that experience I probably wouldn't have known what that brown stripe down the center of all the rural roads that we were traversing was.

And I might not have drawn a cultural preference: I'll take Languedoc.