Wine Consumers Need Information NOT Condescension

In trolling the Internet for our daily inspiration on wine and the wine business we saw an article on a fellow wine blogger's site the Wine Curmudgeon.  The gist of the article was that wineries could be helping themselves if they realized that most wine consumers are under-educated about the product they enjoy and that they need to make the selection decision dead easy for the average consumer and not worry as much about things like appellation and vintage.  At least that is what we got out of the article, and frankly, we can't argue too much about that.  That said, the comments below the article were interesting.  There were some wine folks who took great exception to the fact that anyone would consider 'dumbing down' things like terrior and vintage to promote wine to consumers, many of whom don't even know what those words mean.  Given the fact that some of the comments were so diametrically against this that we just had to submit our own (and we quote):

"Anyone who enjoys wine enough to do more tasting and research beyond shelf tags knows that vintage, place, and wine making techniques make a difference to the quality of wine. We also see through the marketing and understand what is on the shelves in supermarkets. Trouble is, us smarty pants folks make up about 25% of the wine drinking public. For the other 75%, the only things that make a difference are the price, their friends' opinions, and if the label looks cool (and maybe if the back label tells them a story). Wine people should quit looking down their noses at the less informed consumer. Yeah Malbec from Argentina tastes different than it does from Cahors vintage over vintage, but to the vast majority of consumers they could give a rat's ass. One wine is $8 and one $18...suddenly Argentina wins. If you care about terrior and vintage then that makes a difference in your buying decision and tasting experience. If you don't then it doesn't; plain and simple. Wine people need to take a step back and realize that for most folks if the bottle looks halfway decent or unique then the wine is sold. If it tastes good to them they will buy more. The goal should be for them to enjoy the product enough to want to learn more and move from Argentina to Cahors on their own. We as wine people need to help them get there by informing and encouraging them to try new things and not make them feel stupid for picking the $8 Bulk Malbec Reserva."

We said 25% of wine folks but that may have even been a bit generous for percentages.  We encourage you to click on the link above to judge for yourself, but the whole reason we do this blog is to help folks who are interested in wine understand it better.  We want to provide another opinion on the wines they/we are drinking.  Ultimately (if we may be so bold) we want to educate those people, who would very rarely consider buying a bottle of wine north of $30, on what's good out there.  Which, BTW, is the vast majority of wine drinkers.

Pretension and taking yourself way too seriously does everyone a disservice, including the wine snob.  It makes you look like a horse's ass.  To be clear, being serious about wine and being a wine snob are two very different things.  Serious wine people are those that want to learn everything there is about the product/region/grape they love.  The snobs want to do the same and then rub it in your face if you aren't able to speak with the same vocabulary and comprehension or even worse think that real wine only comes with a price tag over $30.  We HATE that, and we definitely consider ourselves serious wine people.

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So to the wine snobs out there, it's okay to be seriously in love with wine and the business of wine just don't make everyone feel stupid for not being up to your standards (or wallet size).

Keep on tasting!

Chris & Shannon