Posted on 05/25/2009 9:13:16 PM PDT by smokingfrog
It’s happened many times before: You take up a hobby or enjoyable excursion, like coin collecting or participating in Civil War Reenactments, and someone from the fringe comes along and has to ruin the fun for everyone. This can be said especially for wine drinking, where morons from all walks of life seem to find their way across the universe and stake their personal neurotic claim to all that is good about wine.
These people all play a different role when it comes to diluting your experience, and today’s Number One Culprit brings about a familiar soullessness to the otherwise pleasurable world of wine.
The Wine Snob
Wine of Choice: The '04 Clarendon Hills Bakers Gully Shiraz - $55
Throughout the collective history of winemaking, it's arguable to say the The Wine Snob has done more to hurt the industry rather than to help it. This is because a lot of people make a direct association with the enjoyment of good, pleasurable wine with these types of pretentious twits. Just like a lot of good things in this world, The Wine Snob will obstruct our innocent pursuit by using words like, “Transcendent, “ and “Effervescence,” to describe a glass of Syrah, and thus “distance themselves from the ordinary.”
And being perceived as ordinary is what The Wine Snob fears most. How The Wine Snob can detect asparagus along with a flutter of limestone in a $5 bottle of Smoking Loon remains a mystery, much like how they believed a college degree in Art History would provide them a career of wealth and prestige. There’s one Wine Snob at every party, and their insistence that they engage the lot with intellectual and philosophical conversation makes them slightly more obnoxious (but not much worse) than the Party Guitar Guy.
Where You Will Find Them: At social gatherings, leading an existential discussion around a semi circle of doey-eyed college girls. Later in the evening, The Wine Snob will try to one-up you in front of your girlfriend by scoffing at you for having no idea what Dadaism is, let alone its relevant, cultural impact on contemporary art.
Why You Hate Them: It’s quasi-intellectual idiots like this who scared a lot of middle-class people away from voting for Kerry in 2004, and now you’re working 14 hours a week at Petco while your house is on the brink of foreclosure.
Honorable Mention: The Rich Guy
Wine of Choice: Montrachet 1978 from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti - $23,929
Congratulations, Rich Guy. You single-handedly ruined Napa and ran up the average price of quality, estate-bottled Chardonnay to $200 a pop. That’s all well and good, except that The Rich Guy has no intention of actually drinking the wine. Much like his shallow, socialite Trophy Wife, he keeps his expensive wine collection locked away to acquire dust in a mansion and only shows it off during cocktail parties.
Where You Will Find Them: Buying up the entire real estate market in the Napa Valley with billion dollar homes, installing stone fountains and Zen gardens on the property, and then later that month selling the home back to the market for profit.
Next Article: The Dinner For One
If you live in CA there are even better deals available intermittently.
Dollar stores there often sell wine, sometimes even in the 1.5 liter size, obviously for $1.
I’ve gotten some very decent stuff from Chile, France, Oz, Italy, NZ and of course CA. The only factor they have in common is that it didn’t sell well at the liquor store.
I used to buy a bottle. If it was okay I’d go back and buy out their stock.
Sometimes it was pretty bad stuff, though.
I also remember going to St Thomas in 78 or 79. I bought a ticket for a ship arranged tour of a near by island we rode a ferry to. The tour it seems was a trip to a park on the beach where about a dozen or so of us were to share a case of Rum they left there when they dropped us off.
BTW do you remember Texas Jacks in Palma and the Texas Fireball? LOL
Texas Jacks? BUT OF COURSE! My signature is on the wall somewhere up high...:)
Heh, now THAT's a party!
I didn't have time to write earier, but my wife and I went on our honeymoon to Mallorca, and went back for our 10th Anniversary...:)
Oh, how I loved port call in Mallorca...
On a related subject, Since you and I had somewhat the same stomping grounds for a while, I thought you might be interested in an account I wrote of a singularly...odd, weird and downright memorable night in Barcelona at the link below:
LOL I hit Barcelona several times but not the place you describe. That I can remember anyway :>} More details in mail.
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