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?CheersNils Gustaf[1] Except Lord St Helier of course

"Nils Gustaf Lindgren" wrote innews:8GUSg.17953$ A serious post from someone who clearly views the world in a reasoned and reflective manner. We should always strive to show such intellectual honesty and integrity.I can think of only one person currently posting that would seem to fit this description. I suspect we can all recognize intolerance and radicalism when we see it.John

Are we wine snobs?

Sep 28, 2006 104 Replies

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UC 19 years ago

Not at all. I simply want to explore regional Italian cooking and regional traditional wines. I'm not a "typical American" who might want to explore Italian-made wine.

Because they are often made by the same producers. Brunello is traditional and Sangiovese; Super-Tuscans are non-traditional and often Cabernet.

Not what I said. I don't like a lot of wine made from that grape.

Not what I said. I prefer northern and southern wines of late, but in the past I have enjoyed some stunning Tuscan wines. Perhaps the sheer number ofTuscan wines overwhelms. I like Morellino, Chianti Rufina, and VNdM.

That is true, but labelling is still a challenge for non-Italians.

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Lawrence Leichtman 19 years ago

There is such a major difference between being a snob about wine or simply having a good palate and trying to get others to expand theirs. I have friends who like box white Zindfandel so I always try to get them to at least taste other wines to see what they may be missing. I still buy the white zind for them.

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UC 19 years ago

Some people never 'get' wine. Pity, that.

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Lawrence Leichtman 19 years ago

Scoring only helps you get into the range of what you might like. Typically, based on the Parker system wines are routinely over-scored for what reasons I don't always know but mostly to improve sales I think. The only palate that counts is yours so you can score a wine or not on a 50-100 or A-F like Dale or anything that suits you and still be valid. Personal scoring is good so maybe you won't make the same mistake twice at the store or at the restaurant.

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Lawrence Leichtman 19 years ago

You do it by tasting as much as you can and comparing your taste with the reviewers. If you are in agreement most of the time you might be a bit more reliant on their reviews than others.

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