On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 18:40:04 GMT, "Nils Gustaf Lindgren"
> wrote:

>Hello good gentles all,
>The last few days have seen (in the wake of a perfectly legitimate and
>courteous question from a lady wishing to learn more) rise the spectre of
>wine snobbism. The possibility has been mentioned that so and so is a wine
>snob - others have embraced the term with sincerety.
>Of course the group is heterogenous. It contains francophils and
>francophobes, cork dorks and screwcap fans. There are members from New
>Zealand to Norway and beyond. Newbies come and all too often go, whether in
>pain and anger, or wonder and mystfication, or, having found out that it is
>preferable to get a life, they being, apparently , very useful to many
>things, some of which has nothing to do with wines whatsoever.
>
>I wanted to look into the matter. To start with, what is a snob (I know what
>wine is)?
>Google-san-wa anata-no tomodachi-desu as I always say - and found that the
>roots that I had heard, that it was short for "sine nobilitas", i e, without
>nobility (which would have meant we were ALL snobs [1]) was, in fact, false,
>and that it apparently originally meant shoemaker. I am not aware of anyone
>on the group having proclaimed to be a shoemaker.
>
>A snob is, then, "a person that adopts the world-view that other people are
>inherently inferior for any one of a variety of reasons including supposed
>intellect, wealth, education, ancestry, etc".
>
>Do we do that? Does anybody here consider other people "inherently inferior"
>because of their taste in wines? Harsh words, dangerous grounds ... Anybody
>tempted to share their thoughts?
>
>Cheers
>
>Nils Gustaf
>[1] Except Lord St Helier of course

G'day Nils.

Wine snobbery in itself seems to vary depending on where the speaker
hails from, and who is doing the listening. There also seems varying
degrees of "snobbery", some quite acceptable, some pretentious clap
trap.

I do see plenty of "wine snobbery" in this Ng, most of it leaning
towards the acceptable, as the majority of wine discussions in this
forum happen to be regarding French wines, by folks I respect and
admire for their knowledge. Over the years I have learnt so much
regarding the mysteries surrounding certain appellations and the
blends used in producing them. French wines and the consumption of
them are considered "snobby" by Australians, (acceptable snobbery
however, and really only reflects the low level of knowledge of "frog
- juice" to Aussies), yet to wax lyrical about a specific patch of
dirt combined with a specific vintage in respect to a wine which we
would not even know the varietal(s) used to make it, is considered
snobbery. It becomes real wine snobbery (and perhaps prompting a
direction to the exit door...:>)) if the speaker infers his colleagues
are stupid for not knowing what the speaker had stated. Snobbery is
often claimed by those who are simply envious of the speakers
knowledge, however, the opposite can be applied, when a speaker is
talking way over the levels of knowledge of the listener(s), in a "See
how clever I am way".

Wine however is not the only topic that reveals these types of
characteristics.... it is simply a human trait.

hooroo from the "Roo"....