The Wine Snob

 

   The wine snob possesses a superhuman nose for aromas and a godlike talent for tasting good wine. Such a person knows how to describe the start, middle, and finish of a wine with remarkable elegance. The palette of such a snob is like a super-fast computer able to crunch enormous quantities of particle physics information in nanoseconds. The nearby hill that grows currents or blackberries can be tasted in the wine or the amateur attempt to produce that illusion through additive syrup can be unmasked. As long as the wine at table is good, there is no better companion. When polite conversation rides the current of good wine, it can inspire and irrigate many fruitful fields of intellectual discourse and result in amusing digression, and so produce that ideal event—the symposium, a legendary event that sometimes happens. When it does, it appears to make life miraculous. The world smiles as intimacy and laughter envelopes the whole table. A glowing aura descends upon the host. The host or hostess has now become a mythic figure in the mind of those who attended the event.

   Yet if the wine’s finish possesses a tang too dry, sweet, or acidic, then a tempest of disgust may erupt and spoil the evening for everyone. The new bottle at a restaurant gets sent back not once but two or three times. If such a person happens to be lounging in a chair at your house, you may not have an acceptable bottle in your cellar. The dinner becomes a surreal, tragic quandary—Sophocles meets Salvatore Dali directed by Jean-Luc Goddard. The party should end as soon as possible. You have run out of wine.

   The best way to handle a wine snob when he (usually a he because men have much larger livers than women and also possess a special hormone that aids in the digestion of alcohol, a trick women don’t have) falls off track is to bombard him with random questions. Although the average wine snob has something like 50,000 bottles rattling around in his head, he cannot locate them all at one go. His central nervous system doesn’t have enough mental waiters to attend his commands. Inevitably, he will be not be able to recall the year of the best grand cru from Chateau de Seguin he ever tasted. He will admit that that it is not his favorite Bordeaux, but will meditate silently on this deep subject.

   Confusion and calm will descend upon the party as the wine snob settles into a narcissistic, senile reverie while his neurons search for the missing file folder. Others will take over leadership of the party. Table talk will be diverted into less obscure topics like the recollection of past lives, etymological ambiguities, the proper way to fall off a horse, how to best arrange clematis on a wall or shed, or the whimsical gaffs of famous philosophers. The wine snob, a narrow specialist, cannot understand such subjects, much less pontificate upon them. Holding his glass at an angle, he will need a refill. Now the only problem for the host is make sure that he does not sit at the driver’s wheel when he departs the house.

 

—Gonzo Lorenzo

 

Gonzo Lorenzo’s columns are inspired by William Thackeray’s humor columns on the gentle art of snobbery that appeared in mid-nineteenth century Punch.