(Gasp) Pretentious Wine Behavior You Have Observed

Jayson Pahlmeyer must have been pleased, back in the late 1980’s, when he was invited for the first time to participate in the prestigious MacArthur’s California Futures Barrel Tasting. Four of us attended, including my wine neophyte sister.

As Pahlmeyer poured our samples, he explained that he owned what was probably the best vineyard in Napa Valley. He gestured grandly at the 40 other wineries in the room, and intimated that, “95% of them buy grapes from me, because they know that adding even 3% or 5% of our grapes will improve their wines.” My sister sniffed, and sipped, and looked straight into Pahlmeyer’s eyes. She pointed at the table we had just left, William Hill Winery, and said, “The grapes you sold to that guy, you should have kept them for yourself.” She dumped her remainder into the spit bucket, turned on her heel, and walked away. I went with her, of course, but the look on Pahlmeyer’s face was priceless. He knew he had rung the “Snob Gong.”

What pretentious (and amusing) wine behavior have you observed, whether by consumers or those ITB?

I saw someone drink a bottle of Screaming Eagle once. [wink.gif]

FIFY. neener

Sadly far too many to mention.
I suspect it’s down to wine being so intimidating for so many, that so much pretentious twaddle gets peddled. I’m sure I’ve done my fair share as well over the years.

Telling people that they wasted their wine when they didn’t drink it at the “approved” time or with the “approved” preparation rituals.

If they enjoyed it then it wasn’t a waste.

This thread is like asking for weird fetish stories at a Furries convention :wink:

Well, Berto… what’s your story?

I literally Lol’d.

I was working a table at SF Pinot Days a few years back – it was near the end of the day and the weather had been warm. Things were winding down when a gentleman walks up with a little thing in his hand that looks like a key chain laser pointer. He presses the point of this thing on the side of one of our bottles then pulls it back and looks closely at it. He grimaces, looks at me and says, “73 degrees! How can you pour that?!?”

By the time I realized that this guy was actually rolling around Fort Mason checking wine temperature during the last hour of Pinot Days and expecting optimum serving temp, he had already skulked off… Too bad, I was honestly curious if he had figured out yet why he was still a virgin.

At a small bistro in old town Alexandria, Va. our petite chateau BDX was served at kitchen temperature, something over 80 F. The wine was flat and muddled. I plopped the bottle in a nearby ice bucket that had an empty Champagne bottle in it. The proprietor was instantly in my face. “You can’t do that. This is red wine.” I explained the kitchen temperature, and 5 minutes to cool down the wine. She sneered and sniffed and left our table. A few minutes later, she was back again, and silently put two more bottles of red wine in the very same ice bucket, before serving them at another table. (Good for her!)

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+1

What is the F in “Italian Bikes & F?”

Post your pretentious wine story first. Then I’ll tell you.

This story happened as a direct consequence of wine :wink:
Several years ago my buddy and his wife came with my ex and I to Napa for a week of tasting. We ended up at David Arthur one morning, never having been there before. There were about 15 people there this morning. Luckily several of them knew what happened there on most ocassions so some of the groups had large baskets with all kinds of food and a party soon broke out with David stealing wine from their own bottling line while his counterpart complained. My buddy has a penchant for the pretentious when he drinks and at some point he ended up talking to a guy about his z06 corvette that he had just bought and how he would love to ride it up the path to a gigantic house that sits next to David Arthur’s property. He prattled on about how tight the curves to the house probably were and how his corvette would handle. The guy looked at him with a bored face and said “there is no road to the house.” “How do you know?” My buddy asked. “I own the house” the guy replied. Not skipping a beat, my buddy asked, “how do you get there then?” To which the guy replied, still looking bored, “my helicopter, would you like a ride?”

Bazinga

i don’t understand who is the pretentious one here

My buddy. Three times during the trip he got pwnd like that :slight_smile:
I kept telling him to shut up about his new car and his job. The two other times were by a guy who turned out to be a submarine designer and engineer for the navy. That was at Ramey. The other time was at Phelps during a blending seminar. That guy had his silver wraith in the parking lot.

The most pretentious wine people I’ve ever met were also guests at a local winery winemaker dinner. They couldn’t stop going on about how they’d been to every upper Midwest winery and how they were planning on starting a winery based on the knowledge gained in their travels up and down the Mississippi. (Actual winemaking experience consisted of two days spent picking grapes during a local winery’s harvest festival). The pretentious part was how they turned up their noses at every other wine region. They HATED Napa, never been to oregon, but the wines were Gross, all french wine except champagne was Bitter and undrinkable, etc etc etc.

It wasn’t just that they didn’t like these regions’ wines. It was that Minnesota, Wisconsin and iowa were the greatest wines in the world. Every variety paled in comparison to Frontenac Gris or Edelweiss. It was entertaining at first, but their act wore so thin over 2 hours sitting next to them.

Well they were correct on all counts.

That’s not pretentious, it just a birth defect.