Annoying trait #647 – Wine wankery
There’s a bit of an insight into my personality, but there's a lot of people who love this, me, not so much.
We were at a wine event recently and the tasting booth for one winery was manned by a young sales professional. She was doing her very best handling enquiries, pouring wine, managing sign ups to a mailing list, talking to people and dealing with an individual I will call “Jeff”. Jeff was on a date, I think, and decided that the descriptor of dry, for what was in his glass, was certainly not what he was tasting. He then showed his disagreement by Vox popping the surrounding crowd and trying to prove our friendly sales professional wrong. Jeff was clearly on a mission and in my mind clearly overthinking the wine, amongst other things.
Now because we’re in the wine business we can really turn on the weasel words like the best of them, in fact I challenge all those professional consulting firms, my friends work for, to come up with some better overthinking than what they do in the wine world. But it's our job, and there are times when we perhaps need to get down and dirty and talk an industry language.
But for our customers It shouldn’t be like that and I'm on a personal mission to change it up a bit.
This is not Jeff pictured here. But Nik Shuliahin took this pic.
So here’s my tips to not overthink and just enjoy your wine:
The word “Interesting” is a great descriptor if you get stuck
Always sniff wine, if nothing else, it looks really cool
Oh and you should swirl it first, don’t spill it though, if in doubt, skip this bit
Don’t get drawn into trying to find something that ain’t there, say “nah not getting that, but interesting you are”
If in doubt, don’t say anything but make a noise, mmmmm is always a good one
Sometimes we all just want to eat hot chips and smash 400 bottles in front of the footy, sorry drink responsibly and don't spill, but that's ok, not everyone discusses the performance of their car when they drive it
If you don't like a wine, no need to diss someone's pride and joy, everyone's tastes are different, it's ok I love McDonalds.