Wine Poseur

Haven’t you always felt inferior when your friends who are big wine drinkers speak so knowledgeably about specific varietals, or chateaux, or vintners, or prized years, etc?  Are you the sort of person that defers to the wine person at the restaurant to make the choice, secretly cringing at the thought that they may pick the $150 bottle of Mouton Crouton, or whatever, hence sticking you with $75 for a wine you care nothing about?

Have you spent hours at the wine store, getting a little stoned on the free samples, then feeling obligated to buy the wine they are hawking even though you can’t tell the difference between that beverage and the cheap stuff you buy for your family at Thanksgiving every year?  Do you skulk down the aisles, secretly reading the helpful fact cards they have available, then essentially buying the third lowest priced bottle and hoping for the best?

Paul Giamatti making an ass of himself in Sideways, a movie about a wine snob who is also a schmuck

I urge you, my fellow wine dunces, to step into the light.  For you see, your ability to differentiate between one wine or another is as good as the most highly paid wine snobs in the world.  The studies are in, and science proves that the whole wine aficionado world is nothing but a bunch of cheap carnival grifters, whose expertise is built on nothing but foundations of spoiled grapes and bullshit.  You, who have spent way less time and effort learning how to appreciate wine, are one of life’s winners.  Those who spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on their passion, KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING MORE THAN YOU.  Actually, that is not true.  They know how to fake it WAY better than you.

Lest you fear my petty anti snobbery has caused me to make yet more stuff up, here is an article from the Guardian, a British newspaper.  Remember, these words are theirs, not your favorite wise-ass anti-snob Billy B.

“Experiments have shown that people can’t tell plonk from grand cru. Now one US winemaker claims that even experts can’t judge wine accurately. What’s the science behind the taste?”  You can read the article in its entirety below.  The article says that basically wine experts and judges are making it all up.  They are, in fact, provably worse than carnival fortune tellers or governmental economists in presenting their non existent “knowledge” as real, rather than hokum.   The experts have been repeatedly outed as shams at blind taste tests.  See the quote from our helpful Guardian article.

“The first experiment took place in 2005. The last was in Sacramento earlier this month. Hodgson’s findings have stunned the wine industry. Over the years he has shown again and again that even trained, professional palates are terrible at judging wine.

“The results are disturbing,” says Hodgson from the Fieldbrook Winery in Humboldt County, described by its owner as a rural paradise. “Only about 10% of judges are consistent and those judges who were consistent one year were ordinary the next year.”

“Chance has a great deal to do with the awards that wines win.”

Charlatanic wine judges pretending to know better than you

There was an experiment done with wine students which showed they could not even distinguish red from white wine if the white were dyed.  Wine experts in France were told that the el cheapo was a grand cru, while the grand cru was the el cheapo.  So they of course said the bottle falsely identified as expensive was better.  Officially, wine judging is all BS, the FACTS ARE IN.

Why do I point this out?  Not to insult my wine loving friends, (yes I actually have one or two).  No, I point these facts out to improve the lives and economic fortunes of my readers, all twenty of you.

You can now confidently stride into your local grocery chain, or Costco, hold your head high, and buy the CHEAPEST BOTTLE OF WINE ON OFFER.  You can do this knowing that you are drinking wine that probably beat a $200 bottle of Stag’s Leap pinot in a blind taste test.  And, you can be smug in the knowledge that your dinner guests will have no way to tell the difference, either.  If you really want to feel superior, think about the pinheads drinking $10,000 bottles of wine.  HA HA HA HA HA!!!

How will this story enable you to retire richer?  By my math, if you spend $5 per bottle less than before, times two bottles a week, over a forty year span, and put the money in a conservative mutual fund, you will retire with almost $37K (5% interest compounded) more than if you pretended to know the difference and bought more expensive stuff, like before.  You will have gotten as drunk as the boob who bought the $200 Stag’s Leap, and will be able to have a healthy laugh at his/her expense EVERY TIME YOU SAVOR A SIP.  Since you can afford more wine than before, you may blow some of your savings on additional bottles of wine.  You will be happier, therefore, for having been able to justify snozzling yet more wine.  And your memories will be better because let’s face it, everything looks a little better when seen through an alcohol based lens.

You are welcome.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis