Spill the Wine

A valuable skill I've learned in the past few years since becoming a wine geek is that of Mouthfart Avoidance. I've never heard so much content-free flatulence as I do when I'm in a room full of people at a wine-tasting function. "Oh my GAWD this MerLOT is FABulous. It's pbbthth pbbt thbbbt pwbt!!" This gushiness can be surprising from heterosexual industry idiots from Sherman Oaks, but when it comes to wine some people feel the urge to lapse into this mincing, florid speech pattern, as if they'd just finished a Ronald Firbank novel/cinderblock substitute and are proud of it.

Wine is simple, folks. It's rotten grape juice. There's no mystery to it, no secret insider clubbiness to it, no bullshit. Well, there shouldn't be. For as long as I've been into wines as an expensive hobby, and writing about wine on my personal site, the phenomenal degree to which wine has been very successfully marketed as a luxury beverage surrounded by mystique, wealth and snobbery is just amazing.

Consider the haute snobbe apex of wines, Bordeaux. This most famous wine region of France has for centuries been selling overpriced wine that is so tannic, mean and morose when young that it's nearly undrinkable, so we've been told for as long that the wine must be cellared for 10, 20, even 30 years before it is "ready." Well, I've had a few old bottles of incredibly expensive Bordeaux, and it tastes like crap: tired, feeble, mean, and nasty, a vinous Abraham Simpson. In fact, I think the whole business of aging wines is a scam. I'm drinking wine from 1979 right now that tastes like it should have been drunk around 1985 at the latest. All I taste is wood, tannin, alcohol and some pruny old fruit. Bleah. Maybe some of those billionaire wines like Mouton Rothschild 1929 are still fabulous, but it appears I'll never know.

Vain Spotting

You're at a wine tasting event in a nice but not too pissy wine shop. A ponytailed, balding, Boomer-ish studio exec of some sort arrives in his leased Range Rover (or Hummer, if he's really up there), parks obviously in front so everyone can see him, strolls in, asks for a few pours of different wines, gives his opinion of each in effusive, gushy language that makes noise, sure, but says nothing, then sidles up to the winery rep and makes suggestions like "you know, if you'd kept this en barrique for a few more months, it might have been a 90-pointer." He doesn't notice the major eye-rollage going on around him; neither does the attorney who swirls her Chardonnay furiously and complains that it's not oaky enough.

Here's how to score points with the wine shop staff (who, generally, know a hell of a lot more about it than you do), or the winery reps (hey, never hurts to suck up a little and get an invite to a private tasting). There's no point in trying to impress anyone else at these things, it lets them know you're not a rich idiot who reads too many glossy lifestyle magazines, and that you're someone with whom not to fuck. If you like the wine, then say so without a ten-minute discourse on the nuances of this or the subtleties of that, and if nothing else you'll have the respect of the staff who then might steer you towards the wines *they* drink, not the overpriced crap they push on the Robb Report crowd.

David Broudy, c/o staff@smug.com

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