I agree w/SwissCircle. I've seen Sommeliers and or wine stewards take a bottle back after opening the bottle because they knew the wine was not drinkable either due to a dried or musk cork or the wine improperly stored. Some imported wines are not maintained in a temperature controlled environment during the TATL./TPAC voyage and get 'cooked' which also impacts the wine.

Taste the wine before accepting - always. Is it useless or a waste of time? Only if you don't care what you drink, then why drink bad wine?

+1 ^

Mrs. Italy and I rarely drink a whole bottle of wine when we go out for dinner (thankfully FL allows partial bottles to be resealed and taken home), yet this weekend we had Toscana Sangiovese that was so wonderful it was gone before we finished our entr�e. On tasting the wine I knew it was good, and it was over the course of our dinner that the wine started to breath and reach it's peak.

This is exactly the sort of wine snobbery that makes so-called wine " buffs " think that anyone who doesn't wax eloquent about the intricacies of a certain wine must have the cultural taste of Fred Flinstone.

Look at the origins of wine - it was a cheap, universal alcoholic drink that even a peasant could have with their meal. It came in a jug and it was very often mixed with water. This is still how many people in countries like France and Spain consume their wine.

The wine is still exactly the same. It's only the rigmarole and nonsense surrounding it that has contrived to give drinking wine more complexity than it deserves.

For the most part wine-selling is legalised fraud and I'm still amazed that people are happy to be ripped-off by mark-ups of 300-400% ( and that's being conservative ) for a bottle of plonk in restaurants

The same is true with food. Cavemen were eating steaks millennium ago. Today we eat the same thing, it's just the rigmarole is different.

Have you ever heard someone describe a cut of beef as having "notes of cherry, mixed with a hint of vanilla and cinammon, with a light aftertaste of caramel and peach"?

And, if you have, did you really take that person seriously?

I'm with Showbizguru. Wine is pretty much nothing more than overpriced grape juice. And, in my view, people like to go and on about subtle flavors and hints simply because they like to seem superior to others. To me, they just look like twits.

Seriously...if something is really _that_ good, it shouldn't take someone several hundred dollars and many months of "developing one's palate" to appreciate it. It should be good right from the start, and you should be able to immediately say "hey, that's pretty good stuff." If you have to develop an appreciation for it, then it never really was worth appreciating in the first place.

Have you ever seen the show Top Chef?

I don't really understand this argument. Do you feel the same way about sports or the fine arts, for instance? If you look at a piece of modern art and it is viscerally unappealing, does that just make it "bad"? Is there not some greater appreciation one gains of art when one learns a little bit about it, what the artist was trying to do, what they were responding to, etc.? It seems to me that in various aspects of life we can gain appreciation for thing through time and understanding. I would say actually my position is the opposite of yours: if you don't have to develop appreciation for it then the value of the items is often fleeting.

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FWIW, I actually largely agree with Showbiz. I think a lot of wine snobbery is just about ego. But I don't go so far as to say there is "good wine" and "bad wine." I think that's just as silly as saying there is "good food" and "bad food." There are shades of gray with both. I also do think that one can develop a palate that allows one to taste nuance in flavors.

Nope.

To me, yes.

Actually, to me, most modern art is "bad." Ridiculous pieces of junk, really, appealing to those who either have too much money or those who are trying to act as if they do.


If, for example, a piece of art requires any sort of excessive explanation (beyond, say, "this piece was done in response to the bombing raids on ___ by the _____," or "the artist was particularly depressed during the time they made this"), then, in my view, the artist failed miserably.

In that show fellow chefs use very similar language, highlighting the nuances of flavor and what they taste in any given bite. Lots of people take them seriously; I certainly do.

Perhaps it is because I have learned how to cook over the last few years and I find that my palate has evolved in that time. I now can appreciate discrete tastes.



Interesting. Does this extend to sports too? Do you not like curling because it requires explanation? How about tennis or baseball?

I'll punch the first person that says that about a piece of beef! Because a piece of beef - no matter how good nor what part of planet Earth you source it from - should never taste like that! Plain and simple.

Now if you want to get into a discussion as to what is the correct and/or best way to prepare and eat a given slab of beef, then there is a hearty argument about that. We can also have a huge argument about different cuts of meat vs. price, esp. things like Kobe beef, Wagyu, Fillet Minon, marbling factors, rareness etc. etc. ad nauseum.

It's not as complex as tasting wine but it'll still send people into a tailspin.

So go drink grape juice. Sheesh - what do you want from society?

And once again I'll say: no one likes an idiot who thinks they know it all when they know nothing. It doesn't just apply to tasting and characterising wine - it's pretty much any sphere of influence or knowledge.

I don't get this.

Some people will (in fact, most will) drink up and go, "Hey, that's pretty good stuff." Some will stop there and just drink away. Some like to delve into why it tastes good, which is what characterising wine is all about, because not many wines will taste exactly the same as each other, yet those wines could all be good to drink.

If you don't understand it, stay away and live and let live. Ignore the twats that want to be uppity when they know squat, because they will never be respected nor liked in any circle of influence.


The same thing goes for tasting other kinds of alcohol (except without all the flowery hoopla like "hints of peach" etc.), such as single malts, vodka and even to a minor degree with beer (e.g. one is more malty than the other; in fact, boutique beers with certain flavours are a niche market). The flowery hoopla comes back when it comes to different kinds of cheese. I'm not even going to try and explain (because I can't!) how people interpret the moods of artists at the time of painting a particular painting when they observe it in an art gallery.

Power of the media; that is all.

People should be taking them seriously because they have good knowledge to impart, not because it makes good viewing. With so many cooking / restaurant shows on TV, I think people are more just consuming and regurgitating (no pun intended) what they see rather than trying to gain a better appreciation of what's going on.

Congratulations. You've got something that most people will never develop in their life. But at least have some appreciation and tolerance that there are others who exercise their right not to aspire to such sophistication.

You generally don't need a long winded explanation to understand most sports. And most sports do not involve a self-selecting minority of viewers "discovering" hidden things that other viewers don't "get" because they are, in the view of the self-selecting minority, and for lack of a better phrase, unrefined, unsophisticated, or undeveloped.

BTW, I don't consider baseball to be a sport.

Are you familiar with cricket?

I'm guessing not, because it'd be far too complicated for you, i.e. "it's not a sport"


I think everyone is missing the point that increased appreciation / knowledge is not equal to increased snobbery / pompousness. We are arguing about those that don't know anything but claim to know all.

Yes.

Sure, because my apparently plebian tastes must mean that I'm just a simple-minded dolt.

Folks... wasnt this thread about wine & wine tastings..??????

I think that's completely wrong. Most sports do involve a minority of viewers "discovering" hidden things. You think most of the public appreciates the subtle moves that defensive linemen make in the NFL? Or the peculiarities of Belichik's defensive schemes? Football is a great example of a sport that becomes infinitely more interesting as you learn more and can appreciate what both sides are trying to do.

But I guess the larger point is this: just because one cannot appreciate subtlety in a given endeavor does not imply that no one can.

It was, until we started the debate about whether the taste of wine is a furphy or not.

Perhaps we should consider a thread split?