Intimidation and shame are holding wine back

Helen Rosner, food correspondent for the New Yorker, stirred up the wine Twitterverse last week by complaining about a page on a wine list.

Her actual complaint, which wasn't clear from her first tweet, wasn't that she couldn't understand the list. Instead, she is irritated when she calls a wine something (i.e., "the Benoît Ente") and the server responds by calling it something else ("Oh, you mean the Aligoté.")

I am an actual professional restaurant eater and I still have no ducking clue which of the many many words on a wine list is the one word I’m supposed to say to indicate that this is the wine I want a glass of pic.twitter.com/NyINumC6Fz

— Helen Rosner (@hels) January 16, 2020

Let's put the reach of this tweet, and all wine Twitter, in perspective. This was, for wine Twitter, an enormous tweet. She got 2900 likes (as of Saturday). Also in my Twitter feed as I write this, Congressman Ted Lieu got 191,000 likes for telling Devin Nunes to shove it. (Not enough likes.) The Hill got 7,100 likes for announcing that Donald Trump was repealing Michelle Obama's school lunch rules on her birthday. (People like that?) And Professor Snape (@_Snape_) got 2600 likes for posting, "Recent studies show I hate everything." Wine Twitter is still a fishbowl.

That said, Rosner took a blender to the fishbowl with her tweet, and her subsequent aggressive stance in arguing about it. It is the latter that strikes me.

Rosner is no shrinking violet. She's fully capable of having a conversation with a sommelier, obviously, because she's willing to argue with dozens of people simultaneously. What bothers her is that she doesn't want to experience in person, however briefly, the feeling of a server correcting her.



The problem, one could argue, is hers. I get that sort of "correction" all the time too. I hadn't thought of it until her tweet. But sure, I order, "the Syrah" and get corrected to "you mean the Wind Gap?", or vice versa, all the time. I just say yes and get the wine, and I'm not offended.

But people are different in how willing they are to be embarrassed in public, and how much it takes to embarrass them. In this case, Rosner is speaking for a huge, silent population of people who don't like being shown up in restaurants.

Rosner is a food professional. She knows something about wine. She's obviously not going to have her own confidence shaken by anything a server says to her about chashu pork or grilled brassicas. But there's something special about wine, and not always in a good way.

Why is wine so intimidating? Why do people care about how strangers rate our wine knowledge?

People who aren't reading this post, I mean. Many wine professionals are willing to admit the gaps in our knowledge. (The ones who are not are insufferable and should be avoided.)

I haven't tried any of the 20 wines listed in Rosner's tweet and I don't know what I'd order from that list. And I'm not ashamed to admit it. I have some clues, sure. But I don't have any idea what grape variety the three wines from Alsace are, and I'm not ashamed to say it. Very unashamed, because I could have looked them up on Wine Searcher in less time than it took to write this paragraph. The shame, or lack thereof, is the point. Why should I feel shame in asking, "What grape variety is that?" But people do. Even an obviously confident, knowledgeable food professional.

If Rosner feels shame, even for a moment, imagine the intimidation and shame felt by the average diner. This is why, if you read the comments on practically any Eric Asimov or Dave McIntyre story, several people will say, "I just drink beer." They want to shift the conversation in a way that makes them feel in control again.

These are not new observations. Many smart people who sell wine, and write about wine, are aware that as a whole, the wine industry needs to be less intimidating. But we still aren't very good at it.

I often wonder whether the emphasis on formal wine education is a good thing. Nobody takes classes to learn about what kind of beer or vodka to drink; they just order. Wine is a good deal more complicated, sure, but I wonder if we're telling people that you can't just order something if you don't know what it is.

With wine sales in the U.S. actually dropping for the first time in 25 years, and millennials not buying into wine as much as previous generations, people on the front lines of selling wine need to think about intimidation and shame. They should thank Rosner for saying something that thousands of possible wine consumers are likely thinking. What do I call this wine? How do I pronounce it?

The idea that "people should just talk to the sommelier" is misguided.

I love talking to the sommelier! Because I am confident in my level of wine knowledge, but the sommelier knows more about her wines, and that doesn't intimidate me in the slightest. I am unusual and I know it. I have plenty of friends who are not in the wine business who would prefer not to consult with a sommelier because of intimidation and possible shame. It's best to gradually disabuse them of that notion by being approachable, as most sommeliers are.

But there are many dining circumstances when nobody at the table wants to show that they are not a wine expert. On a date, or a business dinner, or even when dining alone, it's not necessarily that somebody needs to show off that they know wine. It's that they don't want to be exposed as not knowing wine -- and they fear talking to the sommelier will show that, because it kind of does. This is why so many non-wine sites recommend simple strategies for dealing with a wine list that have nothing to do with the wine and certainly nothing to do with the sommelier; i.e., order the second-cheapest bottle.

A good wine list should give enough information so that no conversation is necessary -- at least about entry-level wines. Wines by the glass should have brief descriptions. Some of the bottles should too, so people who don't want to feel exposed can feel confident in ordering something. If a restaurant has a 200-bottle list, it doesn't need descriptions for all of them. But it should put, say, 25 bottles that are friendly to the cuisine up front with brief descriptions. This is friendly to many diners who otherwise might just order beer.

And let's listen to Rosner on this. Why not put in bold text how the wine should be referred to? Like Ridge Geyserville (Zinfandel-based field blend). And train servers to use it: if I order the Geyserville because it's in bold, don't say, "You mean the Ridge?"

Rosner irritated some people with her tweet, but it's possible those are the people who most need to hear it. Those of us who aren't easily intimidated about wine knowledge should be more aware of how unusual we are, and more accommodating to everyone else.

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