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
> --
> Respond to nils dot lindgren at drchips dot se

Nils:

I am a snob about some things, but not a wine snob. What I find
puzzling (actually distressing) is that people are being taught that
they need to 'learn' about wine. Do people need to 'learn' about
chicken? About steak? Do we gather in groups at a restaurant, to be
given tiny pieces of meat that we chew briefly and spit out, nodding to
one another, muttering about "barnyard notes"? No. then why do it with
wine? Wine is nothing but a beverage to accompany food, for the most
part. If you find a recipe and try it and like it, you make it again,
right? If you open a bottle of Prima Donna Chianto Classici Preserva
1997, and like it, what more is there to say or do? Liking or not
liking is all there is to it. You buy more if you like it, and avoid it
if you don't. It is only because Americans have grown up up in a
Puritanical society, in which allcohol is viewed as an evil, that there
is any reason to be unfamiliar with wine drinking. Europe has made wine
for millennia, and it is a natural, integral part of European life,
from Greece to England. You won't find Italians or Hungraians or
Spaniards or F________ needing to be 'educated' about wine. It's
quotidian. The contadino (peasant) drinks his daily draught when he
gets home from the fields and digs into his pasta and sausages. There's
nothing special or snobbish about it. It's just wine!

In America, we have to take a class for everything. The culture is one
of cultivated stupidity. Talking heads on infomercials tell us we need
to know more about this or that, that our health care system is
suppressing truths about natural healing (utter rubbish), that we are
ugly if we are bald (I'm bald and have no hang-ups about it), etc.
There are cooking shows and exercise shows. BLAH BLAH BLAH. People are
told everything except that they have a brain of their own, and are
capable of making their own decisions. If Jenna had been raised in
Italy, F_____, or Germany, she would have never posed the question she
did. Of course, she would never have dreamed of drinking wine "with the
girls" in the way she describes: It would be inconceivable.

You don't need to be 'educated' about wine, or visit vinyards as a
tourist. I find this puzzling behaviour. You just go to the store and
buy a few bottles. You drink them. You like them or not. The ones you
like go into your cellar again. That's all there is to it. No speeches,
essays, or "tasting notes" are necessary. Only enjoyment matters.