It's really true; I love wine and food from Italy, France, Germany, and other countries as well. And who among us can reject a bargain? But I also really hate wine, especially many aspects of the wine scene. Let me explain my top ten reasons for this love-hate relationship. Previous articles discussed the unconscionable expense, the embarrassing lack of knowledge, no wine cellar, I can't get the ... bottle opened, insomnia, and food problems. This article discusses those obnoxious wine snobs that infest the wine scene.



Ask any hobbyist. The nicest people are his or her fellow trap shooters, crap shooters, tiddly-winks players, 18th Century fountain pen collectors, or you name it. Don't be shocked, I can't believe wine fanciers (snobs?) are nicer, more cultured, and even more generous than trap shooters, crap shooters, your run-of-the-mill plonk imbibers, or, perish the thought, abstainers. They may not be worse, but they are certainly not better than the others. Wine fanciers are probably richer or at least start richer than most others, and they do have some special, shall we say, gifts. Who else beside wine fanciers can somehow find ten different aromas and twelve different tastes in three ounces of dross? And the haughtiness, "You thought it was a 1982, any fool... ". To be fair I never heard those exact terms. But I do know what they were thinking.

My apologies to my betters; I do not and absolutely can not remember every glass of wine that I ever emptied. I do remember some of the best and I cannot forget some of the worst. But as far as the vast middle ground goes, why should I bother to clutter my precious store of memories? I am no psychologist, but I have heard of a weird mental disorder (don't take this as a technical term) called total recall. An individual blessed, or should we say cursed, with total recall can remember every word of an insignificant conversation that took place two or twenty years ago. This brings certain wine snobs to mind. To them I say, why don't you get a life. The ability to recall and in some ways regenerate pleasurable memories on demand is great, if you don't overdo it. Here are the other reasons that I hate wine, to be explored shortly: Those smells and those tastes, Those colors, Home brew, One more problem and yes, The Solution.