But lest you go too far and pull some kind of Sandy Dumbrowski shameless self-abnegation makeover, we’re here to stop you from total surrender. Not to Danny Zuko, but the world of wine snobbery.
Once you know a bit about something - wine, Star Wars lore, the 7-Day forecast - it’s really, really hard not to share it with everyone. But with wine especially, the path from novice to snobbery is actually a pretty slippery slope. If you’ve already caught yourself dropping wine-savvy with reckless abandon, you should definitely check our list to make sure you’ll never again be found guilty of these most snobiferous acts.*
*To keep things entirely scientific, we’ll grade things on a level of 1 to 10 monocles, the universal symbol of snobbery.
Over-Swirling Your Glass
This is an easy, and early, kind of wine snobbery - swirling your glass like you’re a Whirlpool on the Spin Cycle. Beyond danger of splashing, there’s the needlessness of it all. A simple swirl will do just fine.
The Silent Sniffer
You know those commercials where someone makes a cup of International Café or Maxwell House, closes her eyes, and sniffs with a subtle, but richly gratified, smile? If that’s you when you taste wine, stop it, you’re creeping us all out. Unless you’re having a Proustian Madeleine moment, no need to keep your eyes closed while inhaling for a weirdly long amount of time. Same goes for eyes closed while swishing wine in your mouth. The only good thing about it is you might miss your friends giving you the finger.
Oprah Wine-Fry
Like to go around the table and ask everyone what they thought about the wine? Well stop. You’re not a kindergarten teacher, and you’re not Oprah. You don’t need to interview each of your companions on how they felt about the wine they just drank. If they’re drinking wine, and they want to get verbal about it, maybe tear up over it, they will. If you still want to be able to annoy people, just keep asking them about their jobs or relationship status.
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