"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."

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!

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.

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.

Nothing boosts employee morale like gathering around a large helping of roast Doug!

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.

Also notes of elderberry

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.

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"

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.