It's pitting Joe Six-pack vs. Jacques Corkscrew, salt of the earth vs. snob of the cellar, Bud vs. Margaux.
Or is it? This stereotype of beer drinkers vs. wine drinkers is behind the speculation that President Clinton's proposal to raise liquor taxes will exempt beer. He doesn't want to risk alienating the middle-America, working-class constituency that beer represents, or so the Beltway buzz has it.
Until any new liquor tax increases are announced, though, drinkers won't know how much more it will cost them to raise a stein or a stem. But in the meantime, we wondered: How accurate are the beer-guzzler-vs.-wine-sipper stereotypes?
"With beer, you think of a big ol' bowling guy. With wine, you think more of a sophisticated, academic type," says Heidi Lautenschlager, a grain trader enjoying a glass of wine recently at the Corner Bar at the Omni Hotel in downtown Baltimore.
"There are sophisticated beer drinkers," counters her colleague, Steven Mohr, an accountant. "See -- I'm drinking out of a glass."
"We don't sit around and sniff our bouquets, we just drink," notes another Corner Bar beer drinker, Louie Kirby, nonetheless swirling her Miller Lite bottle under her nose and inhaling its non-vintage aroma.
At this and most other bars, you're more likely to run into beer drinkers. There are simply more of them -- an estimated 80 million as opposed to 53 million wine drinkers. Additionally, 75 percent of wine is consumed at home, mostly at meals, according to the wine industry. Besides, beer drinkers say, their brew attracts more convivial types.
"We like the bubbly taste, the effervescence of beer. It's like our personality," says Jack Bell, a management consultant drinking a Miller Lite.
"The wine drinker tends to be more astute, intellectual, quieter -- maybe he'll quote Walt Whitman," says Ron Roberts, supervisor of the Corner Bar, where 60 beers and 20 wines are available. "The beer drinker tends to be more down-to-earth, possibly friendlier, less stressed, happier -- and probably rowdier, too."
"Beer drinkers are more likely to hit someone and make a mess of themselves," says Larry Armstrong, a bartender at McGarvey's Saloon in Annapolis. "Never in my life have I seen a wine drinker start a fight. They might get shoved if a fight breaks out near them."
But he and others in the drinking trade say the stereotypes only go so far: With the increased popularity of microbreweries, which produce small quantities of specialty beers, a beer is not a beer is not a beer.
