When have you been at your most wine snobbish?

OK, let’s admit it. Many of the people on this board, including me, have engaged in wine-related behavior that could be characterized as OCD-like/selfish/pretentious/annoying.

When have you been at your most wine-snobbish – doing something that people on this board might understand but the general civilian population would find gauche or cringe-worthy?

A good friend and his wife invited my wife and me over for dinner recently. He mentioned that he might open a wine that I had left behind at his home during a previous party – not a trophy wine by any means, maybe a Carlisle Syrah or something. Leaving to go to the dinner, my wife was absolutely mortified to see me gingerly handling my Zalto and getting it ready to bring to dinner. You see, I know my friend and wine is not an important part of his life. I knew that he’d be pouring the wine in Cost Plus-type tumblers or thick-lipped stems. It made me crazy!

But I could see my wife’s point about how precious-looking it is for me to walk into a person’s home with a single stem when the rest of the dinner party could care less … Making the hosts look like they are Philistines unable to appreciate or understand the finer things in life … It’s just one night and it’s hardly 1945 Mouton! Give it a rest …

What are some of your less enlightened moments? Either you’ve perpetrated or seen?

Does refusing a glass of Caymus 40th from your host at a party count?

Not much comes to mind. I try to avoid doing really obnoxious things like bringing wine to someone’s wedding or shouting “Oh look, Cougar Juice” when the host serves Rombauer Chardonnay.

How about:

Bringing my Durand to a friend’s house when he said he had just experimented with buying wine at a Christie’s auction he had been invited to since he was an art auction customer so he was going to open a 1976 Montrose and I knew he did not have a cork screw that would do it justice.

I generally save my alcohol snobbishness for things like what I say when people offer me a Coors Light.

That’s not snobby at all, Jay, bringing a Durand is pro-active and highly intelligent. Avoiding the thousand piece cork is always a good thing.

Just two months ago I was at Wrigley with a winemaker friend and he offered to buy me a beer. The line he was in only had Bud and Bud Light, I believe, so I said I’d pass. I felt like a total snob, but I didn’t want him to waste $10 on a beer I’d never finish. We did find a stand with other beers right after that, which was fortunate.

I can understand the Durand more than glasses or something else. Too often, I have been handed by non-wine drinking friends a bottle of cheap wine with their horrible, cheap cork screw and told, you’re the wine expert, could you please open the bottle.

Yes, for most wines a Durand is overkill (face it, these wines are about 15 minutes old) - but in many cases, I long for my screwpull.

I will turn ultra ‘snobby’ if someone is being overly critical of everything at a tasting and putting everything down. I will start mentioning all the good things about the wine. I can go into full flavor/aroma wheel mode.

Then, I try to get them to do this…

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No, only if you take the glass, then throw the drink in his face.

Maybe if you changed Paul Giamatti’s line about merlot in Sideways to “Caymus.”

I am absolutely gonna do just that in the near future. I’ll update you on how that goes over.

• Taking notes
• Swirling
• Discussing wine for more than 5 seconds (they don’t care).
• Talking about an expensive wine (they don’t care).
• Getting the wine list (they don’t care).
• Trying to keep up with a certain WB Westchester friend (he doesn’t care either).

Walking through a high end restaurant in the opulent 80’s crashing Caymus SS dinner with a partially consumed bottle of 1971 Romanee Conti in hand, label facing out and asking if anyone wanted to trade an ounce for an ounce.
(Oh yeah, the RC was corked, but it got the anticipated attention. I told takers it was not good, but some went for it anyway, the 1976 SS was the best that night)

Moi?

Nah. Mark G.

I don’t know if this counts, but someone asked if I wanted some wine, and I, of course, said yes. Then said “I’m good” when I saw a bottle with a black and yellow label with a kangaroo on it…

Cougar Juice…lmao
Had to look that one up.

I limit my snobbishness to drinking water and refusing to drink crappy wine.

I really don’t have anything to add since I sold my helicopter.

I’m usually more geeky than snobby, e.g. spending too much time with my nose in a wine list, or trying to discuss it’s contents with uninterested friends.
One snobby comment I made still makes me cringe at the memory, and it’s been years. A friend asked me what I thought of Silver Oak, and before I could stop the words from slipping through my teeth, I said something like “it’s a Steak House wine that people who don’t seem to know much about wine go crazy over.” Shut TF up

Talking about the last time I had dinner with the winemaker who’d made the wine we are consuming.

I left a restaurant that had an all South American wine list.

Telling my dinner partner that the restaurant wine list was comprised only of grocery store wines…

I’ve said that too. When it’s true, I don’t think that’s snobby.

Cheers,
Warren