February 9, 2005
Sharing Stories About Sharing Wine
Drinking wine with a snob or a geek never bodes well with me.
I believe that wine, a healthful beverage when consumed in moderation, should be enjoyed by everybody. It should not be viewed as a beverage of the elite, to be consumed by the few, by the rich. The son of a friend of mine prides himself in putting down wine, declaring he doesn’t like it, as he gets buzzed on his MGD or Miller Lite, or whatever it is he swills down. How low grade can you get?
What has prompted these thoughts was a recent dinner with some people I know who live in Santa Barbara. The one person comes off as very pretentious, and other people I know don’t like to drink wine with him.
The night we had dinner, we had two bottles of wine-a French Rhone wine, and the wine I brought, a pinot noir from San Luis Obispo County’s Edna Valley. We graciously shared the wines with the restaurant owner. He didn’t charge a corkage fee.
The other person, upon tasting both wines said he wanted to prefer the French wine, but actually liked the wine from the Edna Valley better. An honest response.
After dinner, the other person puts both bottles in paper bags to take home. We’re chatting with the restaurant owner on the way out, and I grab the bottle I brought, gave it to the owner, and said, “Here, I want you to finish this off when you get off.”
Isn’t that what wine is for? To share?
This whole scene really embarrassed me. And I thought the fact I was leaving the bottle I brought would shame the other guy into leaving his bottle too. But it didn’t!
That embarrassing evening has been haunting me. It makes me think his mother never taught him any manners.
Last week, over a wonderful lunch at Chef Rick’s in Orcutt with Lane Tanner and Ricki Hill, I brought up the topic of wine snobs and wine geeks.
Lane Tanner thinks snobs are geeks.
“I group them together because they’re people I wouldn’t want to sit with,” she said.
“They don’t want to talk about themselves or you. They always live in the past. They want to tell you about the last time they had a La Tache in France when the chef came out and talked to them.”
Ricki disagreed with Lane. He said snobs and geeks are different.
“A snob is a ‘score whore,’” a term I had never heard before and like a lot!
“Geeks are passionate without bounds,” he said, adding, “They are obsessed and have no ability to talk about anything else.”
“Drinking a label” would be a snob Lane said.
I think it all goes back to what our mothers taught us as kids. Lane and Ricki and I know another winery owner who drinks labels, usually in magnum bottles or larger. And I would guess this guy has all the money in the world-but he’s downright fun to drink with!
(I asked somebody once how he made his money, and was told, “You don’t want to know.”)
He knows his stuff, and best of all, he knows how to share! His mother did right by him.
To your health!
Times wine columnist, Bob Senn, lives in the Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
