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/ck/ - Food & Cooking

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8022578 No.8022578[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Why are Americans preoccupied with "gotcha" stories about wine? Do they believe an alcoholic beverage exists only to humiliate them?

>> No.8022588

What? Quit being retarded mate

>> No.8022594

>>8022578
>"gotcha" stories?

>> No.8022596

>why are americans

>> No.8022599

>>8022578
Seems like you're the one who drank too much wine.

>> No.8022600

>>8022578
Until the 1980s almost all fine dining in the USA was old school French haute cuisine

During this period, mass media used the snobby french waiter as a generic stand-in for pretentious snobs, and the wine service was the epitome of confusing customs seemingly designed to ferret out the unsophisticated

Basically the average American's ideas of food other than hamburgers and coca-cola come from old Steve Martin comedies

>> No.8022603

schools out out on the east coast
underage drinking
don't do drugs, kid

>> No.8022605

for real though, what the fuck is a gotcha story

>> No.8022642

>>8022578
Your pic shows the typical American perception of wine. Beer has always been the dominant tipple in America, with cocktails in second place. Traditionally wine fell into two categories: snob wine and bum wine. Aside from certain immigrants and their children (Jews, Italians, Greeks, Spanish) the middle and working class stayed away from wine. Beer was more populist and egalitarian. Wine was both expensive and a cause for anxiety, because you could choose the wrong wine for the situation and look like a punter. But that made it appealing to the upper middle class who had the time and disposable income to get into wine as a way to distinguish themselves from the middle class. Being knowledgeable about wine became part of the trappings of success, like German luxury cars and living in the right zip code. And that caused the working and middle classes to view it with disdain, because it was symbolic of something people with a lot more money than they had were into.

>> No.8022688

>>8022605
>your sommelier hates this one cool trick
>10 secrets wine snobs don't want you to know

>> No.8022698

>>8022688
Here's the trick: If everyone at the table is ordering different things the somm is gonna recommend Pinot Noir because it's likely to sort of go with everything and it's expensive, so the mark up on it can subsidize the rest of the list.

>> No.8023085

>>8022605

Americans like to conduct """"tastings"""" that are designed to trick sommeliers and enthusiasts into saying a $5 box of wine tastes as good as a bottle of 1984 Fluefleflue or whatever

>> No.8023165

>>8023085
More like a specific stripe of American has an enormous hard on for proving wine connoisseurship is Emperor's New Clothes. (Probably due to resentment about other people having nice things, so they want to prove nice things are bullshit). They can't resist bringing up these tastings whenever the topic of wine comes up.

>> No.8023208

>>8023085
I've never heard of that happening. Guess I'm uncultured swine

>> No.8023250

>>8023208
There were blind tastings where somms couldn't tell if they were drinking red or white. Mind you these are people who when they can see the wine can tell you the varietal it's made from by smell and taste. (Which isn't as hard as it sounds). But because their ability failed them when they couldn't get any visual cues from the wine some try to push the idea that anyone claiming to tell the difference between wines is just being pretentious. These people seem mad at the idea of wine, and I think it's a class thing.

>> No.8023439

>>8023165
To a large extent it is.

Time and again it's been shown that even somms, going by taste and smell alone, can't tell the difference between $5 grocery store red and even something as 'fine' as first growth Bordeaux. Hell sometimes they can't even tell red from white without seeing it. Wine connoisseurship absolutely is emperor's new clothes, but after you've spent 50 grand on bottles of rotten grape juice, you obviously don't want to admit that, so people talk about the 'complex flavors' and 'delicate minerality that tastes like wet rocks and diesel, but in a GOOD way!', and they convince themselves and each other that there's something to it. Plus it's a good way to show how superior your taste is to those working class plebs.

>> No.8023528

>>8023250
Oh, so it's an "everyone must be as dumb as me" thing

>> No.8023579

>>8023439
>Wine connoisseurship absolutely is emperor's new clothes
I'm sure you'd find it reassuring to believe that - that everyone drinks better than box wine is just wasting their money on pretentiousness. You're not missing out on anything. No one can tell the difference between a Pinot Noir and a Sauvignon Blanc. Besides, French words make everything pretentious.
>>8023528
idk. How dumb are ya?