"Taste predominantly of blackcurrant" might mean something to me if I actually knew what a blackcurrant tasted like.
Then you have all those talk about French towns that have funny characters sitting on top of certain letters in their names. I'd show you an example here but I can't find the characters on my keyboard.
Wait a minute, maybe "cut and paste" will work... Côte-Rôtie - there, did it! Now how do you pronounce it. Kotay-Rotay? Or more like Coat-Rodie? Those French words make my eyes glaze over.
It's almost like these article are intended to make the rest of us feel like unsophisticated rubes. By the way, the same kind of highfalutin approach is taken with classical music. Has there ever been an article about classical music that made sense to anybody who did not do six years at the Julliard School?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a regular wine drinker and I love classical music (especially Bach, Mozart and Beethoven). However, I had to acquire my tastes for wine and classical music pretty much on my own because I can't make heads or tails out of articles like this.
"It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption."
Thurber died in 1961 but the cartoon may date from much earlier in his career.