(Gasp) Pretentious Wine Behavior You Have Observed

[CFu]

@Lewis Dawson

Name dropping is always pretentious, and common here at W/B as well as face-to-face encounters. Especially grating IMO is the dropping of first names only. It’s like saying if you don’t know who I’m talking about, then you’re not cool like me… “At Jadot, the 2010’s are profound. When I visited there, at lunch with Jacques, he told me … blah, blah.” I like to reply with the question, who’s Jacques?

name dropping winemaker names is the worst. My friends and I have a running joke in regards to one particular person we met that would constantly talk about winemakers in burgundy and their personal interactions with them and pronounce it in the most obnoxious french accent.

[Thomas_Keim]

@c fu

@Lewis Dawson

Name dropping is always pretentious, and common here at W/B as well as face-to-face encounters. Especially grating IMO is the dropping of first names only. It’s like saying if you don’t know who I’m talking about, then you’re not cool like me… “At Jadot, the 2010’s are profound. When I visited there, at lunch with Jacques, he told me … blah, blah.” I like to reply with the question, who’s Jacques?

name dropping winemaker names is the worst. My friends and I have a running joke in regards to one particular person we met that would constantly talk about winemakers in burgundy and their personal interactions with them and pronounce it in the most obnoxious french accent.

Sitting here with my close, personal friend Aubert de Villaine and he thought this was the funniest post yet -

[Anton_D]

@Lewis Dawson

Name dropping is always pretentious, and common here at W/B as well as face-to-face encounters. Especially grating IMO is the dropping of first names only. It’s like saying if you don’t know who I’m talking about, then you’re not cool like me… “At Jadot, the 2010’s are profound. When I visited there, at lunch with Jacques, he told me … blah, blah.” I like to reply with the question, who’s Jacques?

Jacques?

You don’t know Jacques the Monkey?

Sorry, I couldn’t help but make a Peter Gabriel joke. I’m Gabriel pretentious.

[Lewis_Dawson]

Thomas, good snob points for that, but could do better with just the first name. Something like, “Aubert laughed so hard I was afraid he would drop the RC before even getting the cork out.”

[Lewis_Dawson]

And BTW, Thomas, please pass along to Aubert that Lalou said “Tell Berto Hey.”

[Anton_D]

@Lewis Dawson

And BTW, Thomas, please pass along to Aubert that Lalou said “Tell Berto Hey.”

Wow, she makes me call her Ms. Lee-roy.

[George_Chadwick]

So far the OP is my favorite. Pwned.

[George_Chadwick]

@paul hanna

Co-organized an old Bordeaux dinner a number of years ago.

Was opening and sorting the evenings offerings when one gent (whom I didn’t know) who was attending brought his offering up.

Saw that I was opening 2 Aussie wines with the Bordeauxs, and went on to berate me that it wasn’t good enough that he had brought an expensive Bordeaux whilst some cheapskates had brought Aussie wines along instead blah, blah whinge for 5 minutes…(I think he had a brought a '69 Mouton, which was probably the worst wines of the evening).

I explained that I had brought them from my cellar, and that they were just for comparison purposes. With the wines being blind, they would also be a bit of fun.

The two Aussie wines were both classics that also sell for serious money - a '63 Mildara (aka Peppermint Pattie) and '62 Chateau Thabilk. Both were in the top 4 wines of the night, along with the other wine I and had brought along, a '49 Latour, which was WOTN by a mile.

The look on his face was priceless when the wine he pronounced his WOTN was unveiled as the '63 Mildara…

Had to have a dig at him afterwards, saying that he should consider trading in his crappy Bordeaux’s for some good old Aussie Cabs…

When I first got really into Shiraz, that Peppermint Patty was talked about as the most legendary individual bottling ever of an Australian wine.

[Siun_O_Connell]

@Stu Fishler

@jrozes

@TomHill

Yup…definitely ITB.
I’m a big fan of the history of the ManhattanProject. Oppenheimer got most of the glory, but I think Grove’s contributions were just as important.

I’m slowly reading through the Manhattan District History and it’s just staggering to think about the speed and scale of it all, and that (relative) secrecy was maintained with over half a million employees. Groves deserves a huge amount of credit for steering that behemoth.

Thread drift risk…put on your goggles (pun intended):

I just read Joseph Kanon’s “Los Alamos,” his first novel (2005) and a very fine one. Bit of an off-center crime procedural during the build-up in late '44. Close ups of Oppenheimer, Groves, and a few others. Great read!

Expanding the drift for a second - what did you all think of the TV Manhattan series?

[TomHill]

@Siun o'Connell

@Stu Fishler

Thread drift risk…put on your goggles (pun intended):

I just read Joseph Kanon’s “Los Alamos,” his first novel (2005) and a very fine one. Bit of an off-center crime procedural during the build-up in late '44. Close ups of Oppenheimer, Groves, and a few others. Great read!

Expanding the drift for a second - what did you all think of the TV Manhattan series?

Alas…I have no TV, Siun. So didn’t watch it. But people in my wine group thought it gave a pretty accurate feel for the
times during the Project.

Last Fall, I was visiting friends up in the Sangre de Cristo mtns and hiked over to Oppenheimer’s Cabin, about a mile away. It’s now owned by his son, Peter Oppenheimer. Oppie was a terrible father & husband, but a great project director. Peter doesn’t even want to
talk about his Father I understand.
The place was all closed up, of course. But, to me, the feel of the place was absolutely electrifying. I’d seen many pictures of
it and it is pretty much as Oppie left it. Sitting there on the front porch and looking up into the mountains and across the PecosVlly
like Oppy did almost brought tears to my eyes. You could feel Oppie’s presence all the way into my bones. You could almost smell
Oppie taking a drag on his 8’th cigarette of the day and feel Kitty knocking down her 8’th martini of the day.
Tom

[Siun_O_Connell]

Tom - that’s a wonderful tale … thank you for sharing it. I need to read more on the whole time … my father apparently spend some time in the later 40s working at Los Alamos (likely in some laborer capacity) while he was hitching across the country but he never said much about that time which definitely has made it a bit more fascinating to me.

I have a tv but got rid of cable but Manhattan can be streamed via Itunes if you ever want to view it … an odd mix of fact and not, it might be hard to view in some ways since it is more interpretive but it was very well done.

[jcoley3]

@Kevin M L

@AlbertH

The beginning showing construction of the glassware and the box is actually quite nice to see… the craftsmanship is more than solid. The pain comes at around the 6 minute mark when Suckling starts his diatribe.

To be clear, we’re talking about a case – for wine glasses – that The Suckling is pitching on his website for $8,500. (And no, I won’t even discuss that red thing around his neck in the video.)

http://www.jamessuckling.com/lalique-100-points-by-james-suckling---leather-briefcase-by-salvatore-ferragamo.html

Suckling = Homeless Man’s Hannibal Lecter/(Fredo Corleone + ShamWow!)

[Curtis_Chen]

I think the weirdest situation I’ve been in was seeing a prideful older guy (won’t call him out) get insanely butthurt because a number of us used the term “earthy” as part of our tasting notes for Marcassin Pinot Noir. I think insanely butthurt would be putting it softly, because some people I know still use it as an inside joke to poke fun at him. He persists that we could not possibly use such a term and it pretty much shows we’re clueless. Whatever, dude.

[Rick.T]

@Curtis C

I think the weirdest situation I’ve been in was seeing a prideful older guy (won’t call him out) get insanely butthurt because a number of us used the term “earthy” as part of our tasting notes for Marcassin Pinot Noir. I think insanely butthurt would be putting it softly, because some people I know still use it as an inside joke to poke fun at him. He persists that we could not possibly use such a term and it pretty much shows we’re clueless. Whatever, dude.

What bottle/vintage of Marcassin did you think was earthy?

[CFu]

@Curtis C

I think the weirdest situation I’ve been in was seeing a prideful older guy (won’t call him out) get insanely butthurt because a number of us used the term “earthy” as part of our tasting notes for Marcassin Pinot Noir. I think insanely butthurt would be putting it softly, because some people I know still use it as an inside joke to poke fun at him. He persists that we could not possibly use such a term and it pretty much shows we’re clueless. Whatever, dude.

Earthy is a descriptor I don’t think I’ve ever heard for a marcassin pinot

[Curtis_Chen]

I hear that at times, but once I just searched it, seems like earth/earthy was a pretty common descriptor (different contexts, of course). But even if it wasn’t proper as can be, is it really something to go crazy over? If it is, news to me. We just laughed it off and forgot about it.

It was an 07.

[Craig_G]

@Curtis C

I hear that at times, but once I just searched it, seems like earth/earthy was a pretty common descriptor (different contexts, of course). But even if it wasn’t proper as can be, is it really something to go crazy over? If it is, news to me. We just laughed it off and forgot about it.

It was an 07.

I demand an apology. Otherwise I will challenge you to a duel.

[Ken_V]

@Craig G

@Curtis C

I hear that at times, but once I just searched it, seems like earth/earthy was a pretty common descriptor (different contexts, of course). But even if it wasn’t proper as can be, is it really something to go crazy over? If it is, news to me. We just laughed it off and forgot about it.

It was an 07.

I demand an apology. Otherwise I will challenge you to a duel.

Magnums at 10 paces?

[Lewis_Dawson]

I was probably pretentiously smug a couple years ago when served a wine double blind, I called it 1990 Penfolds Grange, and it was…

But my favorite blind tasting story was from circa 2000. My good friend Jim Wagner dearly loved 1978 Mondavi Reserve Cab, a wine Bob Parker rated 89/100 with lukewarm comments. Jim was travelling to San Francisco on business, and via the Mark Squires BB he set up a small offline in SF. It turned out Parker was also going to be in California at the same time, so he got added to the offline, an intimate group of 7 or 8 winos. My friend decided to blind Parker on the '78 Mondavi, as he was sure the wine deserved at least a mid-90’s rating.

So during the main course, Jim pulls out his mystery wine and pours it around. RP sniffs, sips, contemplates, and then he says “This is 1978 Mondavi, excellent but not a great wine to me.” Jim asked for the score, and RP says, “About 89.” Jim admitted defeat and pulled off the bag. (Hopefully an amusing story, but nothing pretentious.)

[CFu]

@Lewis Dawson

I was probably pretentiously smug a couple years ago when served a wine double blind, I called it 1990 Penfolds Grange, and it was…

But my favorite blind tasting story was from circa 2000. My good friend Jim Wagner dearly loved 1978 Mondavi Reserve Cab, a wine Bob Parker rated 89/100 with lukewarm comments. Jim was travelling to San Francisco on business, and via the Mark Squires BB he set up a small offline in SF. It turned out Parker was also going to be in California at the same time, so he got added to the offline, an intimate group of 7 or 8 winos. My friend decided to blind Parker on the '78 Mondavi, as he was sure the wine deserved at least a mid-90’s rating.

So during the main course, Jim pulls out his mystery wine and pours it around. RP sniffs, sips, contemplates, and then he says “This is 1978 Mondavi, excellent but not a great wine to me.” Jim asked for the score, and RP says, “About 89.” Jim admitted defeat and pulled off the bag. (Hopefully an amusing story, but nothing pretentious.)

Nice job by parker!