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At a wedding this weekend a friend approached me with the questions "So what's with this wine thing?" It took me a second to realise that he was curious about the Wine Rambler. More than that he actually wanted to know if I was one of those people who can tell the vintage, vineyard and region of a wine just be sniffing it.

When I pointed out to him that I am most certainly not one of these people (even though I might manage to recognise a Riesling by Theo Haart, a theory that may need to be tested one day), he seemed very pleased. "Good!", he said with quite some emphasis, especially when I told him that our website project was all about the fun. Turns he almost distrusts wine experts and prefers to go for simple reds.

This reminded me of an amusing article I read a while ago in the Observer, entitled Why I hate wine snobs. Judging from this article, it seems that Julian and I do still have a long way to go before we are proper wine (and sparkling) snobs:

But there I was, surrounded by people of some distinction (and, I have to say, considerable pretension) who were tasting six different marques of champagne. One of the tasters, a man with an impressively tinted nose that suggested a long and close relationship with the grape, suddenly held up his hand for silence. He raised his glass to his ear, tilted his head, and listened. 'One can always tell Krug from Roederer,' he said, 'by the sound of the bubbles.' I know when I'm out of my depth. I left the tasting and headed for the nearest bar.