Not a wine snob, but i am going to be petulant.
Waverley’s excellent comment on trying a bottle at a restaurant:
“delightfully fruity petulance,”
I think should be “delightfully fruity petit-lance”
And apparently when sampling the wine you’ve just been brought, the classy person will of course smell the wine before tasting, dahling.
Jarbaby,
Don’t let this whole wine snob thing get to you. In a past portion of my life I was a bit of a wine aficionado. I bought bottles of wine and at times even a case. I got pretty good at finding good deals on middle to high quality wine, and kept everything in a well-controlled environment. (No not a cellar, but a dark and moderate temperature closet.)
I ran a little taste test with a group of friends, at their request. None were frequent wine drinkers, most were complete wine novices. I used an inexpensive pinot noir from Romania, of the most recent year, a Chateau Lafitte Rothschild '76, and a bottle of screw top Gallo Mellow Red. Of six of my friends, none preferred the wine designated by some onophiles as the premiere vintage of the century, and four preferred the Gallo.
Of the twelve bottles of one vintage I bought (A Chianti Classico Reservia of 1975, also a notable wine.) two were distinctly less desirable after storage for a decade. One was completely undrinkable. That bottle would have sold for sixty or more dollars at a wine merchant, well over a hundred at a restaurant. I would have sent it back. I would have drunk the other two (Hell, I did drink them.) but would have been disappointed to have had to serve them at a dinner party, and would have left them for another time, given a choice.
I love the taste of good wine. I have never refused a vintage at a restaurant, but then I don’t do a lot of restaurant dining. I would like to assure you that the Greeks like their wine with its distinctive pine tar overtones, just as the French prefer their burned oak, and Americans their sterile stainless steel. Of course it makes them feel much better to know that everyone else in the world is an uncultured barbarian. It’s all rotten fruit.
The need to be approved of in your tastes is a weakness of character, which surrenders your own preferences to the review of anyone willing to pretend to know better. Fuck 'em. Gimme a glass of the mello red, over ice, please. And put a dash of lemon juice in it, OK?
“When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” ~ Eric Hoffer ~