If it tastes good, who cares how old or new it is, what sort of grapes it comes from, what it was aged in, how much it costs, etc.? Just find a wine you like the taste of and drink that one. And yet they seem to think there’s more to it than ‘I like how this tastes.’
Let me preface this - I don’t consider myself a wine snob by any means.
My wife and I went to wine country a year or so ago and went to some wineries to do tasting tours. We learned quite a lot. For instance, I can now taste the difference between good wine and bad. It basically comes down to the complexity of the flavors. If the wine is good, you can distinguish multiple flavors. If it is not, it just tastes like wine.
As for why people care about where the grapes were grown and that mumobojumbo it is so they can try and correlate their tastes to things they know about wine. “Oh I oiked that bottle - it was a so and so from wherever made from this interesting blend of grapes” so they try other wines from that area or made with similar grapes.
Real connoisseurs can tell the difference. Most make shit up and can’t identify whether a wine is white or red in a blind taste test. Everyone else is just looking for something to snoot about while drinking with their buddies and show off how expensive their supposed tastes are.
Me, personally, I like “earthy” red wines. I don’t really know what that means specifically - that’s what the sommelier said when I told him which of the bottles I preferred and the reasons why I enjoyed those particular wines. Ok. That being said, I’ll drink boxed wine and sometimes I’ll spend $60 on a nice bottle to share on a special occasion.
That being said, I’ll drink boxed wine and sometimes I’ll spend $60 on a nice bottle to share on a special occasion.
That sort of supports what I’m saying though. You drink wines that you think taste good, not wines that are supposed to be special just because of their pedigree. Those are the wines that get sold to wine snobs for $10,000. That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about.
The trick to it is to generate a vocabulary so you can describe what you like and then get more. For example, I like a red with a lot of tannins, cherry flavors, very smooth, and maybe some pepper to it. Usually some kind of Cabernet or Merlot. I’ve tasted both $5 and $75 bottles that I like. I can go to a wine shop in a new town, give them the description above, and they can point me to something like that.
Don’t have to be a snob to do this. The description I gave might not be your preference, but going through the same process will find you both $5 and $75 bottles that you like. Don’t worry about ratings in web sites or wherever. They’re useless for finding what you like.
I guess it kinda makes sense for the people who can actually taste the difference, which is almost nobody. That’s pretty impressive to me, like they clearly trained for that.
So, someone who can actually prove they can tell the difference, I’d let them snob all they want, they earned. But most people are faking it, they have no clue. They just see an expensive price tag and go “oh, remarkable”
This is what I don’t get about wine snobs-
If it tastes good, who cares how old or new it is, what sort of grapes it comes from, what it was aged in, how much it costs, etc.? Just find a wine you like the taste of and drink that one. And yet they seem to think there’s more to it than ‘I like how this tastes.’
Let me preface this - I don’t consider myself a wine snob by any means.
My wife and I went to wine country a year or so ago and went to some wineries to do tasting tours. We learned quite a lot. For instance, I can now taste the difference between good wine and bad. It basically comes down to the complexity of the flavors. If the wine is good, you can distinguish multiple flavors. If it is not, it just tastes like wine.
As for why people care about where the grapes were grown and that mumobojumbo it is so they can try and correlate their tastes to things they know about wine. “Oh I oiked that bottle - it was a so and so from wherever made from this interesting blend of grapes” so they try other wines from that area or made with similar grapes.
Real connoisseurs can tell the difference. Most make shit up and can’t identify whether a wine is white or red in a blind taste test. Everyone else is just looking for something to snoot about while drinking with their buddies and show off how expensive their supposed tastes are.
Me, personally, I like “earthy” red wines. I don’t really know what that means specifically - that’s what the sommelier said when I told him which of the bottles I preferred and the reasons why I enjoyed those particular wines. Ok. That being said, I’ll drink boxed wine and sometimes I’ll spend $60 on a nice bottle to share on a special occasion.
That sort of supports what I’m saying though. You drink wines that you think taste good, not wines that are supposed to be special just because of their pedigree. Those are the wines that get sold to wine snobs for $10,000. That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about.
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The trick to it is to generate a vocabulary so you can describe what you like and then get more. For example, I like a red with a lot of tannins, cherry flavors, very smooth, and maybe some pepper to it. Usually some kind of Cabernet or Merlot. I’ve tasted both $5 and $75 bottles that I like. I can go to a wine shop in a new town, give them the description above, and they can point me to something like that.
Don’t have to be a snob to do this. The description I gave might not be your preference, but going through the same process will find you both $5 and $75 bottles that you like. Don’t worry about ratings in web sites or wherever. They’re useless for finding what you like.
I guess it kinda makes sense for the people who can actually taste the difference, which is almost nobody. That’s pretty impressive to me, like they clearly trained for that.
So, someone who can actually prove they can tell the difference, I’d let them snob all they want, they earned. But most people are faking it, they have no clue. They just see an expensive price tag and go “oh, remarkable”