My husband has standing orders to shoot me in my sleep if I ever become a wine snob. I mean, it's all well and good that I can acquire a taste for oddities like retsina and bang on about the factoid that chardonnay and chablis are made from the same grape and all that hoo-ha.
But I also can't help but remember being barely in my twenties and thinking myself quite elegant for specifically requesting Inglenook in the airport bar while killing time between flights. 'S'matter of fact, it wasn't that long ago that I thought I was getting a bargain on honest-to-Pete Vouvray...before I took a slug and said, "Yep--that tastes just like the cheap chenin blanc I grew up on." And was happy--a silver lining kind of happy, but happy nonetheless--that my taste buds actually remembered that flavor from twenty-odd years ago. (For whatever reason, my family switched from cheap chenin blanc to cheap sauvignon blanc and asti spumanti for the holidays of my later teens and early twenties.)
But.
But. The line between appreciating merit and being a "snob" is not--I repeat, not--necessarily a fine one. Not in the least. In that spirit of that, I was thrilled to read about "pirate" Canadian wines besting their French and California rivals in a Montreal tasting. In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that, during tonight's grocery pit-stop, I picked up a particular (French) brand of pinot noir--because the label's sauvignon blanc rocked the house--to go with the beef and broccoli stir-fry my husband made for dinner. The label claimed that the pinot noir was un-oaked--meaning that it was not aged in oak barrels. I call BS--and now will have mixed feelings even about the sauvignon blanc. Which is sad.
So if a vineyard closer to home can produce something better--even at a modest premium--I'm all over that.
I say that because I'm (almost) always rooting for the underdog. I also say it because the interlopers and the parvenus and the upstarts keep the vested interests on their toes. Grant you, it's a fine line to walk: On one hand pushing back against the know-nothing-ism that has been elevated to a quasi-virtue in American culture, but, with the other hand pushing back against the "establishment" resting on its laurels. Of course, that's a story as old as civilization itself. It just seems to play out closer to the surface in the wine industry. Which is just a part of what makes being an armchair wine-nerd so very, very interesting.
Cheers!
