Connoisseur or Wine Snob?
The connoisseur does not drink wine, but tastes its secrets.
Salvador Dali
Don’t put yourself at the mercy of a snooty sommelier!
The Idiot’s Pocket Guide to Wine
On one side of the coin, wine writers recommend staying as far away from snooty sommeliers as possible. In the Idiot’s Guide to Wine, it is assumed that ALL sommeliers are snooty and should be avoided at any cost. The authors state that you should not fall prey to these treacherous leeches trying to separate you from your hard-earned money. These lampreys of the wine industry make a living off others’ lack of knowledge, making fun of customers to their face or behind the wine cart, and provide no services worth paying extra.
On the other side of the coin, wine connoisseurs have worked hard to understand the world of wine, have invested time and energy into studying and experiencing a wide range of wines, and bring a wealth of information to the tasting, judging, and appreciation of all kinds of wine. That is, except cheap, crappy wine. Most connoisseurs would readily admit they don’t drink “cheap plonk” and are more than willing to name the brands of wine they have relegated to this category. Why do you think ninety-nine percent of all wines in Wine Spectator are rated 89 points or above? Anything rated below that is not worthy of a true connoisseur’s time.
Connoisseurs or wine snobs, what’s the difference? These two terms are often left ill-defined in the wine literature. In most writings I have encountered, when the term wine snob is used it usually aligns with the word asshole. A wine snob is an asshole that knows a lot about wine and lords that knowledge over everyone’s heads, blowing their own horn at wine tastings, bragging about their extensive of impossible to find wines, and using terms no one else understands to describe the wine in their glass. I taste Lahara orange peel and cardamon. Really?
There are books that use the term wine snob in their title, for example The Reverse Wine Snob, Stuff Every Wine Snob Should Know, The Wine Snob’s Dictionary, and Wine Snobs are Boring. Each of these books intends to help you avoid wine snobs (they seem to be everywhere) by learning more about wine, which allows for you to possibly become one yourself. Whether a person is a wine snob or not depends on how they carry and share the knowledge they have accumulated. It is more about a person’s way of talking and acting than what that person knows. It is about the discourse of wine!
The subtitle on a series of wine books is, Never Let a Wine Snob Make You Feel Small. This alludes to my previous suggestion that it is more about how a person acts than what they know. And, it is further suggested that the only way to overcome this challenge is to become more knowledgeable yourself. But the Catch 22 is, what if you become a wine snob in your own quest for wine knowledge? Can you be irritating to yourself?
The other term, connoisseur, comes laden with its own forms of social and cultural baggage. The word connoisseur appears in many wine publications and in the title of several books, for example The Accidental Connoisseur by Lawrence Osborne, which includes the subtitle, “an irreverent journey through the wine world.” Osborne’s book is a series of eloquently written travel memoires, however his perspective may not be as irreverent as the subtitle may suggest. Mr. Osborne seems to be solidly embedded in the traditional world of wine, defining taste for future generations. He suggests taste is a French and English invention stemming from the 1700s, and requires extensive training and time spent with wine. Doesn’t sound too irreverent to me!
Although, I may not agree with all of Mr. Osborne’s perspectives, I do think the concept of expertise or connoisseurship is an important one and worthy of further consideration. Malcolm Gladwell has suggested experts need a minimum of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice or study in any field to be considered an expert on a particular subject. There is something to be said about the importance of experience and the most famous of wine experts undoubtedly have more experience with wine than the average wine drinker. Does this mean all experiences are of equal value on the road to becoming an expert? Is simply drinking more wines enough?
A person who owns a guzzle buddy, a glass apparatus that fits on the top of a single bottle of wine that holds a full 750 ml bottle and whose motto is “plug it and chug it” is quite different from someone that uses a set of Reidel sommelier series wine glasses to enjoy an expensive glass of rare Bordeaux. Let’s be honest, consumers of Australian Yellowtail chardonnay and people who collect uber-expensive wines like Petrus, Domaine de La Romanee Conti, or Screaming Eagle generally do not spend time in the same social orbits. And, one group would definitely not be plugging in a guzzle buddy, though it would be audacious to see one on top of a bottle of Chateau Margaux one day.
Becoming a Connoisseur
I would suggest the following four components are necessary for becoming a connoisseur of wine, or any other topic or field of inquiry for that matter: 1) opportunity, 2) focus, 3) research, and 4) communication. To truly become a connoisseur of wine, you have to spend time experiencing the world of wine, focus on various aspects about wine, study it, and be able to share what you have learned about it.
Experience seems to be at the forefront of the characteristics necessary for one to be considered a connoisseur, and the primary component of experience is opportunity, which is composed of time and access. You need to drink a lot of wine to become a connoisseur, but not in the way an alcoholic drinks wine. As suggested in other chapters, you must focus on the taste of a wine to experience it fully, not simply drink it. Experience is required to have sampled enough wine to assemble tasting profiles of various wines, usually so you can appreciate the nuances across vintages, vintners, and vineyards. Experience also is associated with travel, visits to famous vineyards and wineries, and meeting other famous wine drinkers.
Reflection is just a fancy word for thinking. It usually refers to thinking about something that has already happened (we don’t reflect on the future). There is no use in having all these wine experiences if we don’t think about them, deeply. While defining what it means to think deeply has its own set of challenges, it requires a depth of knowledge coupled with some level of cognitive processing at a minimum.
I use the umbrella term communication as a category that includes writing, talking, lecturing, and other modes of sharing ideas. It doesn’t matter if someone has had experiences if they are unable to share them with other wine drinkers. In fact, an investigation into the various processes of communicating about wine is the primary focus of this book. In other words, it is vital to think about how we use words and other modalities to explain what we know about researching, growing, purchasing, and tasting wine.
Jancis Robinson, one of the most respected wine experts in the world (it says so on her book cover) has written a book called The 24-Hour Wine Expert. I don’t think she truly believes that it is possible to become a wine expert in 24 hours, but it's a catchy, suggestive title. She asserts that the book will only focus on the essential qualities necessary, concentrating on what really matters. I think the word expert is used in this instance in much the same way as connoisseur is but it’s not as fancy a term. The dictionary definition of connoisseur is “an expert judge in matters of taste.” Whereas, experts seem to have acquired technical skills, connoisseurs have aesthetic prowess and other more worldly attributes.
Another important disagreement in the field is whether experts are born or made. Gladwell firmly falls into the made category, where James Beard (the food award guy) stated in his book Delights and Prejudices that being an expert taster of wine is an innate, God-given talent. Now, I don’t want to argue with someone of his stature, but I tend to disagree with Beard’s statement. Otherwise, why would I have spent so much time studying the world of wine? Though I may not have any innate or God-given talents, my hope was to improve my abilities in the tasting room through extensive studying and wine tasting experiences.
As humans, we are each given particular tasting abilities and sensory apparatus, that is true. But, it takes experience and time to understand what it is one is sensing. You may smell perfume, soap, and flowers in a white wine, but you would not be able to identify the wine as Torrontes if you didn’t know what a Torrontes smelled like or probably if you haven’t tasted a few previously. Matt Kramer, in an article in Wine Spectator (2017), also came down on the side of nurture over nature. And reasonably so. It would be hard for Wine Spectator to survive if we all needed natural gifts to be able to sense wines and only a few people had them. Too bad, so sad for you mediocre tasters is not a good motto for a wine magazine.
Without seemingly blowing my own horn, I am considered an expert on elementary literacy education. Schools and educational institutions regularly invite me to speak to and work with teachers and literacy educators. I have written numerous books about literacy education. However, no one refers to me as a connoisseur of literacy education. Maybe in the sciences you are considered an expert, and in the arts you are considered a connoisseur. I don’t know.
So What?
Wine enthusiasts should think of themselves more as wine “docents” (like tour guides in a museum) than wine judges. The job of the Wine Docent is to help experienced and inexperienced wine drinkers develop a deeper appreciation of a particular wine than they would have drinking it on their own. I want the wine docent to help guide me through the world of wine’s when I am selecting one to go with a meal, and help me talk about it with my friends in more useful ways. Any many excellent wine writers do exactly that. Their writing is helpful. It’s pragmatic and useful. This should be the criteria we hold wine writes to. Simply stated, is their writing helpful to us as wine drinkers? Here are three ideas for being helpful as a wine enthusiast:
• Be pragmatic – does your description or tasting note sound useful or overly dramatic?
• Reveal your subjectivities – I like these kinds of wine…and maybe you will too.
• Be humble – Only use language other wine drinkers can relate to.