The tasting note thread got me thinking about the drivel that some people say when they are talking about wine. This seems particularly true in the case of wine merchants. For example, I was once grilling a wine merchant about his wines, and happened to mention organic wines. This moronic, rancid fool said, “Well, all wine is organic because it does not contain animal fat.” I did the only reasonable thing, I pointed at him and laughed.
Another example was when I picked up a bottle of oldish wine in a London wine merchant to check its level. The wine merchant came up to me and said, “Don’t pick up the wines, you’ll bruise them.” The level was fine but I couldn’t bring myself to buy it from such an arse.
Have you had any experiences of wine merchants, or any wine people, talking absolute rubbish? Let us all know so we can have a good laugh.
Wine Merchant: “You know, Syrah and Petit Syrah arent the same grape.”
Me: “Yeah, Petit Syrah is duriff”
Wine Merchant: “I’m not familiar with that, but no, I dont think that’s right.”
Me: [middle-finger.gif]
Funny thread, for sure. This makes me want to be really uncharitable about some of my customers when I was working in one of London’s best wine merchants. I’ll repeat the most depressing thing I was regularly asked.
People would come into the shop and say, “I’ve got this friend who is really into wine, he likes the good stuff and I want to give him a present he’ll enjoy. So what I want is a really good bottle of red Bordeaux, from a really famous producer that he’ll definitely have heard about. The absolute maximum I want to pay for it is £10 (~$14), that’ll get me the best, won’t it?”
I got asked this countless times, and usually people didn’t even want to pay £10 for their grand, famous wine. I found this to be woefully depressing. Not only do I hate and despise cheap Claret, so I wanted to sell other wines that I thought would give people more pleasure, but also someone who really likes wine is not going to be impressed or get much enjoyment from a ‘no name’-Chateau purchased by their cheapskate friend. The ‘famous’ part of the Claret I’d sell to these people would be a bottle with the word ‘Medoc’ somewhere on the label. Most people have heard of Medoc wines and so they thought they had done well to get such a well-known wine.
Right, that is enough whining about people who don’t understand wine.
Cheers,
David.
PS. Yes, he really thought that was the meaning of organic. No animal fat, indeed; I was right to laugh.
Last night I was eavesdropping on a rep pedaling his wares at a Catskill Restaurant. “This wine really shows off that expressive Spanish Terroir”. Not sure they use the word “terroir” in Spain? Never mind the differences between say Jerez-Xeres, Rias Biaxas, Ribera del Duero and the Penedes.
I had a server on Wednesday tell me about how bad the 2007 vintage was in California I mean, it’s one thing to not know, it’s another thing to be definite and wrong…
Apparently they are the same…and according to the link that you provided that wasn’t proven until late 2003. The label that I provided was off of a wine from 1978.
Many years ago I was in a discount liquor store attached to a discount chain (BJ’s). I noticed a stack of Beaulieu Vineyards Cabernet in the center of the store.
At that time BV had 3 levels of cab. The top was the George de la Tour, the bottom was called “Beau Tour” and the middle was identified as “Rutherford”. It was typically very good cab for the money, around $12 at the time. At the top of the large stack was a sign indicating the Beau Tour was on sale for $2.99, but there was no sign for the Rutherford, and there was lots of it there as well as the Beau Tour.
I stopped a young clerk passing by and asked him how much is the Rutherford. He looked at me like I was an idiot, pointed at the sign and said “$2.99.” Being the honorable gentleman that I am, I pointed out that this price was for the Beau Tour, but I was asking about the Rutherford. He looked at me this time as though I was an idiot and a jerk and said “Look, cabernet is cabernet.”
I said, “OK, I’ll take 3 cases.”
That stuff drank well for years. And every bottle had a little extra satisfaction in it.
Hilarious, Ken! The staff in wine merchants cannot simply be check-out-bimbos. Wine is a specialised and esoteric subject, which often customers need detailed advice about; if they employ people with no knowledge of wine, or fail to train their staff, they deserve everything they get.
At a trade tasting I had a middle aged guy, who apparently had been working for an importer of French wines for quite a few years, tell me “Cote d’Or” is “basically just another term for all of Burgundy”. If I recall correctly, he was saying a Chablis he was pouring was sourced from vineyards “all over the Cote d’Or”. I politely mentioned that I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case and that I thought the Cote d’Or is a small, specific area within Burgundy and Chablis is a different area. He insisted that he had been correct and made a condescending remark about how I was obviously just starting to learn about wine. What an ass.
I’ve told this story before, but there was a wholesaler rep pouring Italian wines in the supermarket. He poured me one that I liked and I read the back label. “It says this wine is made from Primitivo, Cabernet Sauvignon and Negroamaro. Interesting blend.”
“Yes,” he said. “What you have there is BURGUNDY, which requires at least three grapes.”
On a related note, I share a story told to me by a few of my favourite Burgundy producers. They say one question regularly asked of them when showing people around their wineries and giving tastings is, “What blend of grapes do you use in your red wine?” The polite reply to this, I’m told, is to say that only Pinot Noir is used, but there are different clones of it in the vineyards each of which brings a different character to the final wine. The more general result of asking such a question is a curtailed tasting with none of the top stuff being shown. If I were tasting for the first time at a place like, for example, Roumier in Chambolle where his most basic wine is priced (direct) at €30 (~$42), I’d find out a bit more about them before visiting so I could ask pertinent questions and not make an arse of myself.
I mean, it’s one thing to not know, it’s another thing to be definite and wrong…
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