I almost included a spiel about the Czechs’ status as world beer champs in my beer/wine post. I’d like to visit someday. I love the sound of the language and tried to teach it to myself in college. Total failure.

But back to Rome. Many of us in Oklahoma wish we could buy good red wine for $1.00 a liter. Have fun, Dave.

As for wine vs. beer, I think I agree with you, if I understand you correctly, that it is entirely situational. We live in the Czech Republic where there is very good lager beer on tap for a Euro or less for half a litre. We don’t bother buying bottled beer in the store, though it would be much cheaper. On the other hand, we now almost never drink lager in any other country. In Rome we only drank red wine, because it was very good and inexpensive and Czech red is lousy. In Belgium we only drank Trappists, a few Abbeyes and the occasional De Koninck to wash it down, though if we’d eaten anywhere fancy we probably would have sampled the typically excellent stock of French wine. In the UK it’s real ale except in wine bars, in the US it’s microbrews unless we get to California sometime. Etc.