There is a trend in the wine blogging community and I have dubbed it the de-snobbing of wine. I read many blog post daily and I would say 90% claim to be bringing wine to the common folk, de-mystifying it, de-snob it, etc… Ok so this is a good thing I guess. Right? I mean wine is a complicated subject with lots of history, nuances, and regional variations. There are people who dedicate their lives to studying and understanding it. However you don’t have to be an expert to know what you enjoy. Everyone seems to want to de-mystify wine, why? The mystery is part of the allure and experience. Wines (at least good ones) do a slow reveal in your glass, unfolding with time, morphing, evolving, all the while telling you a story about the people who made it, the land that grew it, and its journey in the bottle (or 3 liter bag-in-box). To draw an analogy with the music world wine can be as simple as a Britney Spears or Jonas Brothers song or as complex and layered as a 10 minute Pink Floyd psychedelic experience or one of Vivaldi’s masterpieces. Do we want to de-mystify these too? Or is the mystery part of the allure? I fear that some bloggers and press might be confusing making wine approachable with dumbing it down, trying to suck out the mystery and complexity. We can not make the complex simple but what we can do is encourage more people to attempt to understand the complexities of wine through experience, experimentation, and open mindedness. To truly understand wine all you need is a willingness to try different wines, a corkscrew, and a glass, oh and an open mind helps too.
What are your thoughts?
Cheers,
ChrisO ‘the everyman’s wine snob”
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