Debunking the Wine Snob, a.k.a. the Wine Terrorist

Who doesn’t know one?

I’ll never forget the woman, drenched in god-only-knows-what-brand of perfume, who came into the Belvedere tasting room years ago, when I was pouring Belvedere wines. She looked at me from over her eye glasses. You know the look… head down just a bit, eyes now having to look up over the rim. Her shoulders were curved in a bit (body language, high self esteem built on insecurity). Her extra long, very well manicured index finger nail was tapping the wine list on one particular item. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap…

She said in her best holier-than-thou voice… I’ll have the Cab Sauuv… dragging it out.

I was thinking to myself, “Yeah, right, lady… whatever… If you really knew what you were doing, you wouldn’t have had a Chanel No. 5 bath this morning…” while I pleasantly smiled at her.

This brings me to why I wanted to write this brief one. While in Maine, and talking with cousins, I was told about one wine Nazi that one a cousin had come across in her life. The Wine Terrorist was an older guy… older than my cousin (hence, his feeling of complete authority over her). He was terrorizing her, thinking he was teaching her about wine. Instead, he made himself into someone who made wine anything but fun, completely uninteresting; in fact, it made her doubt herself. Having only been loved in one’s life, a first encounter with abuse always leaves one speechless, and wondering what he or she has done wrong. I’ve seen this more than once in my life, and the reaction is always the same… self doubt.

So, my cousin spent a bit of time doubting herself, instead of finding wine interesting and fun. Believe me, when things aren’t fun something is wrong.

I explained to her that the more one knows about wine – like the kazillion winemakers that I know – the more humble they become, for the most part.

Knowing about wine is a process similar to a lotus unfolding. Once the first layer is peeled back, you realized that that’s just the beginning of one’s ever-unfolding journey… And, the journey’s really wonderful, not one built on fear and intimidation.

Everyone who ever intimidates anyone else about wine should be taken out to the woodshed and whipped within an inch of their lives, and I’m not into corporal punishment.

So, a word to the wise should be sufficient. If you come across someone who’s a wine snob, you can measure what that person really knows by watching the movement of an inch worm, and just take everything with a grain of salt, as far as that person goes.

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