Vincent Vega wrote:

>
> In my experience, I am defining a "wine snob" as a person who pretends to
> know more about wine than they really do.

Aha. I term that sort of person as a poser, a much easier creature to spot in the
wild.

> Exactly,, subjective is the key. There are specific and scientific flaws in
> wine that can make them inferior. A wine with no chemical imbalances can be
> rated from 70 - 94. This score range is "subjective".

I have no idea what meaning you're ascribing to the term "subjective." To me,
subjective is the opposite of objective and all sensory information is by definition
subjective.

> Take for instance a
> few years back a Pennsylvania champaign manufacturer submitted one of his
> sparkling wines to a local award show. He won a bronze medal. He then
> submitted the same sparkling wine to an international competition in Paris.
> He won best of show. . Either the PA judges made a mistake or the French
> judges made a mistake, or there isnt much difference between a 70 and a 90
> rating. Examples like this are common

All this means is that the judges in Paris liked it better than the ones in PA did. So
what? It'd be a dull world if we all had identical tastes, and the wines I like would
be more in demand than they already are. De gustibus non disputandum est.

> Sorry,, you are wrong. Obviously you havent had any HONEST conversations
> with French winemakers. Next thing you are going to tell me is that they
> dont use sulphites.

No doubt there's a vast conspiracy of silence going on in the Loire valley, with all
those vintners surreptitiously dumping tartrates into their Chenin Blancs to lower the
pH to -1. Right... My point is that in many places there's no NEED to acidify as the
natural acids are present in abundance, year in and year out. Get it?

> If you understood the complex reasons for acid
> additions you would realize why it cold be necessary from year to year in
> all parts of the world.

That must be it! I disagree with you because I'm ignorant. Oh, and winemakers lie to
me. Thanks for clarifying.

> Not sure what you mean by that. Its the winemakers whom I am defending. It
> is their market and their critics who turned the industry into giant ruse.

There are certainly greedy and fraudulent winemakers, too. I try to avoid them, by and
large. Remember that it wasn't a distributor or importer who put ethylene glycol into
wine to sweeten it, or who added tankers full of wine from the Southern Rhone and
Algeria into more prestigious bottlings. The rest of your statement I find a bit
perplexing, however.

Mark Lipton