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+--- Thread: wine snobbery (/thread-13586.html)
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- n144mann - 07-17-1999
Okay guys, I need some input here. I recently have been accused of being a wine snob...more than once....and it is starting to make me uncomfortable. [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb/frown.gif[/img] I have never thought of myself, or wanted to come close to being a wine snob. Yes, I like nice wines, yes I like to be served my wines correctly, proper temp. ect, and yes, I do ask my retailers to go out of their way for me to get me what I want rather than buy the junk already on their shelves, probably more than most....but do these things make me a wine snob??? I never try to tell others what is right for their palate, always try to show interest in others opinions about wine, because I often learn something from listening to them, and I am always very polite when/if I disagree. Do I sound like a wine snob??? Or just enthusiastic about my interests???
What in YOUR minds makes a wine snob???
[This message has been edited by n144mann (edited 07-17-99).]
- Bucko - 07-17-1999
There is a very BIG difference between an enthusiastic enophile and a "wine snob."
From my perception over the years, a wine snob is a person who tends to drink trendy wines, often at high prices, makes a BIG production about serving said wines, and is horrified when you mention wines "beneath" them. I have seen this person over and over again -- I feel sorry for them because they are missing some fine wines at respectable prices.
Being selective and serving wines properly do not make a snob.
Bucko
- waxawabbit - 07-18-1999
I agree completly with Bucko. People who make a big deal out of drinking only the trendy and "In" wines and making a big show of serving them drive me crazy. For instance, I met a guy last week who said he only drinks Caymus SS And Opus One and his wife only drinks Dom Perignon Rose and La Tache. He supposedly has a cellar of up to 20,000 bottles and all he is doing with most of them is flipping. Crazy.
Drink what you like and try new things all the time. You never kknow what you may come up with, pricey or not.
Dave
- Thomas - 07-18-1999
My definition of a wine snob is simple. If a sentence begins with, "Parker says," you are dealing with a wine snob, and one who drinks only what he or she reads.
- n144mann - 07-19-1999
What in the hell(am I allowed to say that on here?) do people do with 20,000 bottles of wine in their cellar????? Host a party for a small city??? Or just go down and commune with it?? Sounds crazy to me!! But I guess to each their own.
Nancy
[This message has been edited by n144mann (edited 07-19-99).]
- n144mann - 07-19-1999
Parker says.....I like that Foodie!
- Thomas - 07-19-1999
Nancy, yeah! It came to me one evening when a winemaker frined and I visited someone we had just begun to know. He invited a few others for what was to be a wine discovery evening. The sentences about wine that flowed from one of the men attending sounded like they had been finely edited for print, until I relaized the guy was reciting what he had been reading. When at one point he began to describe a wine we were tasting by saying, "Parker says," both my winemaker friend and I jumped down his throat and asked if he saw Parker anywhere in the room with us. We asked him, "What do you think of the wine?" To which he had no coherent response, but did say he had a cellar full of the expensive stuff, bought after reading the Wine Advocate.
I've got four cases in my cellar and it is a revolving situation. I lay down few wines, figuring that life is ever too short and unpredictable to think that I could save a good bottle of wine for somewhere in the distant future. If a wine will live a few years, I consider it for the cellar but then find myself sidetracked by a wine that is so good to drink right now -- that is the one I buy, pre
- Thomas - 07-19-1999
preferring to invest in the stock market.
Somehow this computer sent the message before I had finished writing it!!!
- n144mann - 07-19-1999
great story foodie.....yes, I always have a little wine put away too, but not a lot. I prefer to buy and then drink my wine sooner rather than later....unless it needs the time to mature before drinking....but like you, I find that I don't buy a lot of those. I am likely to try a new wine that I have bought the night, or afternoon(just a little taste...grin) , the day I buy it, rather than waiting with it in my cellar. A personal predilection I guess. I have never been known for my patience....grin
Nancy
[This message has been edited by n144mann (edited 07-19-99).]
- amshih - 07-19-1999
Difference between a wine lover and a wine snob: a wine lover buys wine he likes to drink -- a wine snob buys wine he likes to talk about.
If you read about, talk about, and study wine for the love of the grape, you're a wine lover. If you do it to prop your flaccid ego, you're a wine snob. Anyone can shell out big bucks and follow Parker like a lemming, but it takes a true love of wine to develop and trust your own palate.
That dork with 20,000 bottles of wine is unbelievable. I hate hearing about all the lovely bottles that a collector is hoarding to show off to his friends while the wine inside is going to waste. Give those wines to the people who are actually going to *drink* it, will ya?
Once you gain some knowledge of wine, it's kinda fun playing with the wine snobs' minds and watching them put their feet in their mouths. True story: I played dumb and asked a wine-snob wannabe about what wines I should buy, and he proceeded to tell me that Chablis is a grape!
- Thomas - 07-19-1999
The best are those who believe that white is for fish, red is for beef and money is for spending on something they do not understand.
I suppose you got it right, amshish, wine loving is the thing to do!
20,000 bottles; I am trying to figure out where I would put them.
- n144mann - 07-19-1999
I think I met that person too Amshih....laugh Or maybe his long lost twin! [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb/smile.gif[/img] In this life he was a waiter....sad situation!!!
Hey foodie, this is off the wine snob subject, but remember when we were talking about getting the 20 something's to make the switch from their ales and ciders to wine?? I spent some time with my brother(he is 23) a couple of weekends ago, and he is becoming a wine drinker, as are several of his friends. Maybe there is hope for that group yet!!!! IF we can keep them out of the way of those wine snobs...laugh
Nancy
[This message has been edited by n144mann (edited 08-07-99).]
- Thomas - 07-20-1999
Nancy, one of the best things that used to happen every once in a while at my winery tasting room was when a group of relatively young people (in their twenties) came in and wanted to learn about wine. I noticed in most cases that these were truly smart young people with a taste for discovery.
I have a theory (I am filled with theories) that Smart, Thinking people can be led to wine. Now, what does that theory say about Prohibionists? Hint: upper case letters.
- Jerry D Mead - 07-20-1999
Nancy...You may be a Wine Geek (not a bad thing) but definitely not a snob.
JDM
- n144mann - 07-20-1999
Wine Geek.....that I can easily live with..... [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb/smile.gif[/img] Goes along with some of my other geek labels....... garden geek, gem geek.... ( I am enthusiastic about all my interests)
Nancy
[This message has been edited by n144mann (edited 07-20-99).]
- Randy Caparoso - 08-03-1999
I'm back, folks. Hi, Nancy. As usual, on the tail end of a rant. I understand that the 20-somethin's are into raves -- "wine raves." Kewl. I say that stubborn Xers who are only slowly getting into the wine groove will ultimately prove to be refreshing alternatives to the snobbery inherent in the grand tradition of wine appreciation. Why? Because they want wine to first fit into their outlook, rather than wine defining what they are and how they feel.
Here's something I just received in the mail a minute ago: a review of a raised print letterpress book put out by The Yolla Bolly Press called by "Two Kitchens in Provence" by MFK Fisher (didn't know she was still active). Anyway, I love MFK, but this particular 64 page quasi-three dimensional production is available for the tidy sum of $390. Is this excessive or what? Although I truly understand lovers of Petrus, 20,000 bottle private cellars, and limited edition books -- and their intense zeal to talk about it -- such things could definitely be construed as snobbism.
Or is it? I put it down as simply human nature gone amuck. What am I trying to say? Well, in a twisted way: we all have our excesses, but at what point it becomes insufferable is all in the mind. It may pain me that the guy who amasses a collection according to Parker may think of someone like me (with my drink now and be merry 'tude) as as much a little, little man as I of him, but that's life.
By the way, any one of you guys see the book called The Wine Avenger by Willie Gluckstern? It's an interesting read -- 181 pages of sermonizing to such an extent that the anti-wine snobbery tone of the book in itself becomes a pointed prickle of snobbism. All for the tidy sum of $11. So cheap, that it cain't be good!
- Jerry D Mead - 08-03-1999
Welcome back, Randy! I wondered if you were traveling again...or mad at us!
JDM
- Randy Caparoso - 08-03-1999
Just doing what I do, Curms -- chasing down the grape. Three and a half weeks in South-West France, the corridors of Germany, and Oregon. Just posted on the latter on the Pinot thread, natch.
- n144mann - 08-04-1999
Hi ya Randy, 'bout time you got back!!!!!!
- Pinotage1 - 08-08-1999
Randy-
Willie Gluckstern is an incredibly self-important person who is so wrong about South African wines I can't even begin to delineate it. In any event he is well-known in NYC and not very well liked.
Ellen V