Wine Snobs Aren’t More Advanced. They’re More Attached

Identity masquerading as expertise.

I met a guy at a tasting a few years ago. I remember the first thing he told me wasn’t his name.
It was what he didn’t drink.

“No California,” he said, already smiling. We were standing at a tasting table with paper towels soaked through and glasses stacked like evidence. He leaned back a little, arms crossed, like he’d just drawn a boundary line on the floor. “Too ripe. Too obvious.”

I poured him something anyway. He nodded before tasting it. Approval pre-loaded.

That’s the tell.

Wine snobs aren’t defined by what they like. They’re defined by what they’ve already decided they are. The glass is just there to confirm the story.

I’ve seen this a thousand times, usually from people who know just enough to build a costume and then refuse to take it off. Burgundy-only guys. Natural-or-nothing girls. Anti-score absolutists who still somehow know every score by heart. The attachment comes first. The tasting comes later, if at all.

He finally tasted the wine and frowned. Just a flicker. Something didn’t line up.

“What is this?” he asked.

I told him.

He took another sip. Slower. The smile faded. He was working now. Not tasting—reconciling. Trying to decide whether his reaction was allowed.

“I don’t usually like that style,” he said, gently, as if apologizing to himself.

That’s not expertise. That’s loyalty.

Real tasting is unstable. It makes you change your mind in public. It puts you at risk of liking the wrong thing. Attachment hates that. Attachment wants rules, teams, safe words you can hide behind when the wine doesn’t deliver.

Beginner drinkers get this wrong less often, by the way. They don’t have anything to defend yet. They drink forward. They say things like “I like this” or “this feels heavy” without checking whether those thoughts are permitted. They’re not advanced, but they’re available.

Snobs confuse attachment with progress because it looks disciplined from the outside. They’ve narrowed the field. They’ve “refined” their taste. But refinement that can’t bend isn’t refinement—it’s fear with better posture.

The industry encourages this because attached people are predictable. Predictable people buy narratives. They don’t ask dangerous questions like “why does this taste like that?” or “who is this actually for?” They ask safer ones: “Is this typical?” “Is this correct?” “Does this belong?”

At some point, wine stops being something you drink and starts being something you are. That’s when curiosity dies. You stop listening to the glass and start listening to yourself talk.

I watched the guy take another sip. He was quieter now.

“It’s… better than I expected,” he said.

That sentence took effort. You could hear it. He’d loosened the grip just enough to let the wine speak, and the wine took advantage of it.

That’s the crack. That’s where taste actually grows—not by adding rules, but by shedding allegiance.

If you want to know whether someone is advanced, don’t ask what they drink. Ask what they used to hate and now secretly love. Ask when they were last surprised. If the answer is never, or not since 2014, you’ve got your answer.

Here’s the move if you want to stay unattached, even as you learn more:

When you’re handed a glass, don’t ask yourself, Do I like this?
Ask, What is this trying to do—and is it doing it honestly?

That question doesn’t care about region, price, trends, or whether you’re supposed to be impressed. It puts you on the wine’s side, not your own reputation’s.

You don’t need to drink everything. You just need to stay light on your feet.

The guy eventually smiled again, this time without armor.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. I get it.”

He didn’t. Not fully. None of us ever do. But for a moment, he wasn’t attached. And the wine had room to breathe.

Confidential note: The most dangerous sentence in wine isn’t “I don’t know.” It’s “I already know what this is.”

Cheers,
Bruno