Let Us Praise the ‘Wine Snob’
By Tom Wark
Look around the wine Blogosphere and youll see a consistent message from wine bloggers: This blog is not about wine snobbery.
I think Id like to come to the defense of wine snobbery not only as a self-identifying moniker, but also as an approach to wine appreciation. But, since wine snobbery is a notion that really has no certain definition, Id like to come to its defense on my own terms.
Wine Snobbery: a relationship with wine that embraces the idea that wine is more than a drink and that there is a wine knowledge base and wine vocabulary one can only appreciate and wallow in after considerable study.
Notice that this definition of “wine snobbery” does not include those dreaded people who simply name-drop or dismiss certain pedestrian wines for the sake of self-aggrandizement. They give a bad name to wine snobbery. They are in fact commonplace boors, a condition found among people who often have appreciation for nothing other than their ego.
However, the true Wine Snob is something much more.
My contention is that certain wine lovers get branded with the derogatory Wine Snob label by those who simply dont understand what the snob is talking about. This is as much a defensive position of the label slinger as it is anything else. We simply dont like finding ourselves in a conversation with others in which we dont understand the vocabulary, and hence the ideas, that are being bandied about. And wine appreciation does come with a set of fairly arcane ideas as well as a specific vocabulary.
Yet, so do Egyptology, physics, baseball and most other avocations that people find themselves involved with. Yet, when the baseball lover starts talking about On Base Percentage or swing velocity vs. the Williams System Swing you rarely have these aficionados branded as Baseball Snobs. When you overhear two people discussing intricacies of the middle period vs. late period in the ancient Egyptian mummification rituals, you again rarely hear these people called mummy snobs.
Why are the wine lovers who dismiss Yellowtail as pedestrian wine manufactured to a formula that dismisses terroir and plays to our basest palates considered wine snobs?” Why, when you hear wine lovers dismiss any desire to delve into over extracted, high pH, New World wine, do you brand them wine snobs?
Its likely because you simply dont understand the conversation.
Yet wine still carries with it the unfortunate perception of being a drink those other people consume. This is changing in America, but it is a notion that still wields considerable weight with the people.
Yet here on the Internet, in the blogsphere, there remains a considerable number of sites, perhaps the majority, that claim to be the wine blog for the masses; the place where you can get information and recommendations about wines that dont come with ’snobbery’ . Im tempted to suggest that many of these bloggers take this stand simply because they dont have the wherewithal to be genuine wine snobs and in the end write down to themselves and with the hopes that they will be providing information to a collective of readers who also dont have the ability to be true and genuine wine snobs. I dont think this type of person really wants to spend much time on a wine blog.
In the end there is a great deal to admire in the genuine wine snob. Theyve pursued their interests with a depth of consideration and thoughtfulness we apply only to those subjects that truly captivate us.
Lets hear it for Wine Snobs and Wine Snobbery!
You see, Tom, I usually use “wine geek” to describe people like myself (who you would define as a snob in your original definition).
I think snobbery IS about those snooty fools!
Great post…