There are no tories here! 
I’m a white cisgender abled straight male, I do have to find something to be sensitive about in this day and age:rofl:
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And we’re very proud of you for it, and that applies quite well to me as well, but that’s not at all the OP inquiry, which is why do OTHERS seem to challenge wine as a passion or hobby more frequently than other things.
To your comment, a passage from a Robert B Parker Spenser novel spoke to me when I was about 19 in college. It was about ordering cocktails. Spenser was discussing the tragedy of men who cannot order a fruity cocktail because of the insecurities of their fathers being passed down generations. His position was along the lines of, you don’t order a pink drink because you’re afraid it won’t look masculine, but what is more masculine than ordering what you want to enjoy with the self-confidence not to worry about what anyone else thinks of your decision. I’ve always thought that was about as spot on as it gets.
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That’s why I drink white wine when it’s pleasant outside, it’s what I enjoy.
I’m not concerned at all about demonstrating my masculinity.
Who cares about OTHERS?Delving into their motivations isn’t worthwhile.
Always dug Hawk though.
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Been said any number of different ways, but it happens with pretty much all serious hobbyists.
My wife was involved with quilting for quite a while, and there were always people who would ask why not just buy a blanket - so much easier…drove her nuts.
David I think that the comparison is not spot on.
Do they ask your wife if she could tell the difference between an hand quilted blanket or a machine made one?
Do they link her a video on youtube where “blanket experts” have to feel with their hands, blindfolded, 2 blankets and guess which one is the expensive hand made and which is the cheap bought from Ikea?
Mind that in order to link a video of this type you also need to have people who at some point had the idea and actually took the trouble to do this kind of experiment, out of the blue.
It hasn’t gone quite that far, except for the hand versus machine quilted.
The questions, statements and barbs are only an issue if we buy into them.
Chat with anyone genuinely interested, change the subject with someone who isn’t, and don’t push the subject if there’s no interest from the other person.
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A while back I talked to someone who had consulted for a winery in Napa. He suggested they raise the price on their top wine substantially. No change to the wine, just raise the price. The winery saw a significant increase in demand for that wine. Go figure.
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Because there is currently a debate on another thread about apricot and peach notes and whether passion fruits and guavas are sweet, or actually not. That’s why.
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I bet you drink Sanka 
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nah, it’s all about large format ace.
@Guillermo_M, BTW I don’t think Dom or other champagne is wasted in a nightclub setting. I order Dom, Cristal Rose, etc all the time in clubs. It’s just as good as it is at home, if not better.
Yeah but those are the cheapest Champagnes you drink anyway. 
i mean, that’s not entirely incorrect.
in any case, champagne isn’t certainly the most cost effective thing to order in the club, but actually cristal rose was the smallest multiplier to retail of anything on the list.
Also, if you have, for example, a 6k minimum, what else are you realistically going to buy? You could buy 6 1.75L bottles of grey goose but then you’d almost certainly die unless you just start pouring it for everyone walking by.
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I think that the reaction to wine geeks in the US is partially insecurity on the part of people who are not wine geeks and a considerable amount of voluntary and involuntary snobbery on the part of those who are. There is a reasonless expectation that a well brought up middle class person in the US knows their way around wine enough to but wine in a store and to order in a restaurant, or, at least, when asking a sommelier, to be able to understand the answer. 40 years ago, when most wine was Bordeaux or Burgundy, or straw bottles of Chianti in an Italian restaurant, this was probably more the case. The increase in the number of wine geeks and the interest in a much larger variety of wines makes this no longer true. So there is some antipathy to those who seem to have a cult knowledge about a subject that should be of passing interest to anybody. This has been exacerbated by the insane increase in wine prices. When I was buying wine in grad school, I could get nice cru bourgeois Bordeaux for $5. That was still somewhat expensive on a grad school stipend, but something I could do on occasions. For $2-3, I could get something like a Montepulciano d’Abruzzi or something at least above jug level CA red. So it was easier not to know much.
And, on the other hand, like it or not, almost any thread will show you an attitude on the part of wine geeks toward non wine geeks that this is not just something that happens to be a hobby of theirs, but that they are missing out on something. And, of course, contempt for people who buy expensive wine without what is taken to be the necessary knowledge and respect, as if they were buying an impressionist painting to use as wallpaper.
By the way, the reason no one reasonably expects an art enthusiast to be able to tell an original from a skillful copy is that copies are so skillful that no one could tell the difference, not even the most educated art historian, merely by looking. Indeed, sorting out forgeries–not copies, but original paintings passed off as something by an old master–takes the work of an art historian doing research on provenance and a lab testing paints, canvases, etc. to see that they could have been used in the claimed period. And, even so, few would claim that there are no forgeries hanging in museums as originals. So the analogy is not exact.
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if others pay for that, sure!
Hi Jonathan and thanks for the very instresting reply.
I’d like to touch a few points, again not talking about the US because I’ve never been there.
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Here in Italy, if you venture beyond the drunkard boomers that you can find in the countryside at the bar drinking plonk, and you go a bit higher on the wine evolution scale you can find the STEMlords.
I’d say that STEMlords are actually really intrested in being validated by somms or wine experts. Many times I’ve seen a wine topic inserted in a more general context (I remember some r/italy threads or some popular youtuber that invited a somm to chat) and 90% of the requests by people (who are mostly STEMlords) could be summarized in “how cheap can I go with my wine and still have some sort of green light from you?” So it’s actually fuck the expensive wine and snobs but let me have somebody else set me a treshold so I can still appear like somebody who knows his shit. -
I’ve noticed that if you talk with wine enthusiasts with a decent amount of knwoledge and straight head (more so if they’re in the business, but that might be because they don’t want to piss off future partners) they’re less inclined to shit on cheap wine, for exampleI see them often mentioning Portugal as an area where you can find good wines for less than 10 € a bottle retail. The arrogants people who like to costantly belittle the “piss drinkers” aren’t enthusiast at all and just drink liters of Veuve Cliquot or other similar stuff.
For the art I believe the similarities stand.
Like if you wanted to copy an expensive wine (Kurniawan style maybe or not) in an age where we’re considering sending people on Mars, I’m not an expert but I don’t think it would be that hard to purposely make very similar liquid that would give even experienced somms an hard time.
The fact that taste and smell aren’t as developed in the avg human being, and so you don’t need that much effort to trick people, doesn’t detract from the actual core of this topic.
Hi Daniele
Has there been an increase in young people adopting the stupidity of getting drunk? Italy always had the reputation of a place where people would get exposure to alcohol at a very young age, but drunkenness was thought of as stupid (rather than funny as it’s often thought of over here in the UK).
I can only recall one event where people have been clearly drunk, at the little (wine) festival in Ghemme. Plenty of drinking, singing and laughter, but even when drunk, people were still very civil to each other (and to us).
The rest of the time, I can’t recall seeing a single drunk (e.g. incapable of walking / throwing up etc.), but perhaps I wasn’t going to the places where that’s common!
I think it’s a misconception that young ppl in places where early drinking occurs are more responsible with alcohol. In my experience they just have a better tolerance.