Wine snobs are something else

"The resonance density sounds watered down. Were these grapes picked in the rainy season?"
- "No, the glass shape was chosen because it flattens the resonance to match the acoustics of the barrels. You're hearing it just as the creators intended."

So I've done a lot of world traveling. Now when I'm with my friends, who have never left the US, I ironically act snobby about dumb shit. "This pizza isn't as good as the pizza I had in Italy" "This isn't as good as German beer" "This sushi isn't like the real sushi in Japan" "if this spider was from Australia I'd already be dead"
- I hope they know you're joking otherwise you might come off as a bit of an asshole
- I bet they love it
- You call this a mugging? In Belfast, they have real muggings!
  
  Pff that's nothing like the guns they have in Switzerland!
- When I was 7 years old, we took a trip to Italy. While in Rome, near the Vatican, we saw a street cart selling pizza. Because I was 8 and all I had to eat was Italian food for days, I asked for the pizza.
  It was, and I still say this 39 years later, the absolute worst pizza I have ever had in my life.
  Do not eat American-style pizza in Italy.
  
  You are supposed to eat the Italian style pizza
  
  Were you 7 or 8?

In fairness, if someone did this I'd probably do the same... Not because I thought there was anything to it or to fit in, but I'd think "huh, now I wonder what it sounds like. Does it make a cool sound?"
I don't think it's group think so much as it's a social learning behavior. If you see someone do something confidently and appear satisfied with the result, you'll start to wonder if you should try it... It seems to be working for them
- Hell, just talking about it is making me wanna try, lol.
- And we all know some wines do make a sound, like sparkling wines, so maybe you could hear some bubbles in a less sparkly wine too? I will try it next time I'm having wine.

S-staff tastings? 😳
- Nothing boosts employee morale like gathering around a large helping of roast Doug!
  
  large helping of roast Doug!
  What did Doug do? 😰
- If you sell wine it helps to know what it tastes of, so you can authorize purchase of and recommend certain wines to customers.
  This applies mainly to restaurants and upscale wine stores, not so much to the corner liquor store where the hot seller is the box of "white wine" on the bottom shelf near the door.
- When I worked at a liquor store in the early 2000's, we were sent to liquor/wine tastings every couple of months or so. The owner didn't like schmoozing with salespeople, plus it was a good way to make sure we knew what we were selling. It was also a test to make sure you could hold your liquor and remain professional. Distributors would often regularly bring new products into the store for whichever staff was there to try.
- Sushi in one line.
  Pineapple cream in the other.

You can tell at what altitude the terrior was tilled due to minute variances in air pressure in the environment that make its way into the fruit. The feeling is similar to, if not characteristic of, the feeling of ears popping in an aircraft climbing to cruising altitude. It's nuanced, subtle even, but to the trained aural canal, not difficult to discern.
- Also notes of elderberry

This is what I don't get about wine snobs-
If it tastes good, who cares how old or new it is, what sort of grapes it comes from, what it was aged in, how much it costs, etc.? Just find a wine you like the taste of and drink that one. And yet they seem to think there's more to it than 'I like how this tastes.'
- Let me preface this - I don’t consider myself a wine snob by any means.
  My wife and I went to wine country a year or so ago and went to some wineries to do tasting tours. We learned quite a lot. For instance, I can now taste the difference between good wine and bad. It basically comes down to the complexity of the flavors. If the wine is good, you can distinguish multiple flavors. If it is not, it just tastes like wine.
  As for why people care about where the grapes were grown and that mumobojumbo it is so they can try and correlate their tastes to things they know about wine. “Oh I oiked that bottle - it was a so and so from wherever made from this interesting blend of grapes” so they try other wines from that area or made with similar grapes.
  Real connoisseurs can tell the difference. Most make shit up and can’t identify whether a wine is white or red in a blind taste test. Everyone else is just looking for something to snoot about while drinking with their buddies and show off how expensive their supposed tastes are.
  Me, personally, I like “earthy” red wines. I don’t really know what that means specifically - that’s what the sommelier said when I told him which of the bottles I preferred and the reasons why I enjoyed those particular wines. Ok. That being said, I’ll drink boxed wine and sometimes I’ll spend $60 on a nice bottle to share on a special occasion.
  
  That being said, I’ll drink boxed wine and sometimes I’ll spend $60 on a nice bottle to share on a special occasion.
  That sort of supports what I'm saying though. You drink wines that you think taste good, not wines that are supposed to be special just because of their pedigree. Those are the wines that get sold to wine snobs for $10,000. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about.
- The trick to it is to generate a vocabulary so you can describe what you like and then get more. For example, I like a red with a lot of tannins, cherry flavors, very smooth, and maybe some pepper to it. Usually some kind of Cabernet or Merlot. I've tasted both $5 and $75 bottles that I like. I can go to a wine shop in a new town, give them the description above, and they can point me to something like that.
  Don't have to be a snob to do this. The description I gave might not be your preference, but going through the same process will find you both $5 and $75 bottles that you like. Don't worry about ratings in web sites or wherever. They're useless for finding what you like.
- I guess it kinda makes sense for the people who can actually taste the difference, which is almost nobody. That's pretty impressive to me, like they clearly trained for that.
  So, someone who can actually prove they can tell the difference, I'd let them snob all they want, they earned. But most people are faking it, they have no clue. They just see an expensive price tag and go "oh, remarkable"

No one was kicked out of a winery for laughing too hard.
- I would bet it was not for the laughing. More likely it was for spilling wine all over one's self this making them believe you to be too drunk. Or at least that's the excuse, I bet the real reason was they were made to feel stupid by the listening to booze thing.
- I believed the story until they spilled wine everywhere from laughing and got kicked out. It was an entertaining story until they went too far and blew it.

I've stopped listening to my wine. It kept telling me to kill people.

That is what we describe as "pretentiousness". Professional wine tasting is full of it.

If I see someone doing something weird I'm not against trying it to see if there's something to it.
Maybe the wine is extra crackly? XD

Tbf if I saw someone do that with their wine I’d wanna do it too, simply to answer the question of “what the fuck is she doing, is there some kind of purpose? What is she trying to hear?”

- You're missing out. Your ears are connected to the back of your throat and your nasal passage. By doing this and sniffing in and out very fast you get the scents directly to the olfactory system, bypassing your already over exposed nose. Just make sure you clean out your ears first.
  
  Your ears are connected to the back of your throat and your nasal passage. By doing this and sniffing in and out very fast you get the scents directly to the olfactory system
  This ruptures the ear drum.
- You accidentally double commented
- Wine complains too much for my taste.
- I have a very serious problem listening to alcohol. Usually it's whispering "do some dumb shit, you drunk".
  
  No, it isn't
  Yes, there are some people who do "wine tasting" just to get shitfaced. But if you go to any ACTUAL wine tasting (whether it is in the back of a Total Wine or at a fancy vineyard), basically everyone is expected to spit out the wine. Depending on the "methodology" you may swallow a small amount, but it is really like one sip per glass/wine.
  And the person who does just chug each glass? This isn't Parks and Recs where everyone bows to the almighty prankster. They get their asses thrown out.
  Now, whether people can tell the difference between six different syrahs whether they spit or swallow is a very different topic entirely. But if the goal is to get drunk, "wine tasting" is a horrible way to do it.
  As for the why? Alcohol tends to deaden tastebuds. Wine and beer (and sake and the like) tend to be a low enough ABV with a high enough "flavor" level that ti tends to complement a meal. But the more you drink, the less nuance you can taste. Its (arguably) a big part of why the Japanese drink sake from small cups and hoity toity rich people tend to have staff refilling wine glasses to a fairly low level. The idea is you sip throughout the meal to complement the flavors without losing the ability to taste them.
  It is also why you should IMMEDIATELY side eye anyone who encourages hard liquor as an accompaniment for a meal and raise an eyebrow if they are cooking with it for any delicate meals. So whiskey plus a slow cooked pork shoulder is one thing (and usually involves using a torch to burn off the alcohol at the start) whereas whiskey and a steak is a whole different one.