Seeking Advice: To be a snob or hold my tongue?

WINE TALK
21

No one likes a proselytizer, you’re wise to not go down this road. I also think you’ve already chosen a great path by thinking about what they’d enjoy with the food. My father and mother, RIP, and I while having different wine budgets seemed to bond a bit over experimenting with wine/food pairings. I’d inquire about the meal then bring a couple of wine options. Ever the engineer, my father I think enjoyed the food/wine interactions and exploring different pairings. Soon he was making varietal recommendations for pairings which of course I’d indulge. Things with family are rarely a sprint, often more like a marathon but thats ok and usually more enjoyable.

About the price- I have two (mostly) truthful but boilerplate answers when asked how much a wine costs but I don’t want to reveal it. “More than it should have!” and a variation of the following which I used with my parents: It’s a sunk cost- this wine was bought and paid for years ago and has just been sitting in my cellar waiting for the right occasion, the right food or the right people. This occasion is perfect and it would be almost criminal to allow it to continue to languish and not enjoy it now. No Epicure can argue with that.

1 Like
22

Lots of good advice above. The key sentence for me is that they really liked the Muscadet. So don’t try to change them, don’t preach that your way is better, but do bring bottles that you’ll like and you think they might really like when you go over there for a meal and hopefully you can all enjoy them together. Try to minimize or brush off the price talk. It’s hard to remember exactly what you paid, anyway, right? Especially if any price sticker has been removed before you arrive.

If at some point they initiate discussions about going down your path (unlikely), then you can start a little proselytizing, but otherwise let them drink the good stuff they enjoy with you and the other stuff they also enjoy the rest of the time.

23

Serve whatever people want.
After several glasses of whatever, neither your parents nor you will know or care. Sounds just like a high-end wine tasting…

24

I’m not going to try to change whatever makes someone else happy to conform to what makes me happy. Spin it into a positive: when you have them over for dinner, you can serve them Barefoot with a smile and have more of the good stuff for yourself and others who appreciate it.

25

Serve them what you want without judgement - and let them enjoy what they want without judgment.

Cheers.

1 Like
26

Send them a mixed case of wines all under $30/bottle. Red and white. Don’t make a big fuss about it. Mention these are not expensive wines. Include some fatter styled wines they are used to.

27

Maybe prepay a years membership for a wine club that has auto shipments to them as a holiday/birthday/anniversary present. It comes as a gift, so the price stigma is not as large. My dad LOVED a bargain on anything and got joy in paying next to nothing for something, and your folks sound the same.

1 Like
28

This is brilliant. Just order some good wines, tell them you have an exclusive “source” for these at deeply discounted prices. Then get some $10.00 labels, slap them on the wines, and let them enjoy the wines. Doubt they are the kind of folks who will be on winesearcher anytime soon to detect your harmless deception. If they eventually call you on it, remind them that they used to lie to you about there being Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny when you were a kid. Have a great meal and a tremendous laugh together!

Treasure the moments you can have like this with your parents. I have missed mine for a couple of decades. With kudos to Afterlife…

“One day you will eat your last meal, You will smell your last flower, you will hug your friend for the last time. You might not know it’s the last time, that’s why you must do everything you love with passion” #Afterlife - Ricky Gervais.

I would append “You will drink your last glass of fine wine”

Happy New Years to all!!! champagne.gif



"

29

Chuckle [thumbs-up.gif]

30

Let them be. You have already tried and they did not want the better wines. Bring a better bottle for special occasions and just call it a special occasion wine. They are not going to change.

31

[scratch.gif] [scratch.gif] [scratch.gif] The 60s were a tremendously prosperous time. Much better than today for an average Joe (as long as the average Joe was white and male and did not go to Vietnam). Times really changed for average people after the horrible economy from 1973-1983 or so, but the 60s were boom times.

32

Bring a bottle of Dr. Loosen “Dr. L” Riesling. This is a gateway wine to better wines down the road. My neighbor who hates wine and only drinks things that are sweet loves it.

33

Sunk cost - I always use that approach. I may sometimes, if the conversation goes that way eg friends asking can they get some, indicate a wine is scarce, or it’s my last bottle or whatever.

It’s like any hobby. Boat owners can relate (a hole in the water into which you pour money)

In regard to the OP, the muscadet reaction suggests it may be worth exploring simple wine food pairings with them (evading price discussion). And certainly don’t out down their beverages. I have a friend who tends to drink red with everything but in fact really enjoys whites when I bring them. It’s just comfort zones.

34

Yes. And decent Beaujolais for red. Or fully mature reds with tannins evolved.

35

I recall as a teenager in Britain observing the change in the food and wine scene in the mid / late sixties and early seventies. Not sure which was chicken and which was egg but the development of general interest in food and wine, fancy restaurants etc, cooking classes etc, wine clubs, coincided with the advent of credit cards and weekend colour supplements in the newspapers. This was combined with increased affluence.

36

Well, if they live on a fixed income from only Social Security that is below poverty wages, then you can understand why they are so cheap.
However, if they have the wealth to live and eat well, they by all means be snobby and point out to them the errors of their ways. After all, they are your parents and I’m sure you had plenty of arguments about what was “right” growing up! [cheers.gif]

37

I think things were very different in the US and Great Britain in the 1960s. The UK and the rest of Europe were pretty devastated by WWII. This left the US as the only major industrial power intact and we had pretty much great times in the late 1940s through much of the 1960s. I was born in 1955 so only remember the 1960s part of this. My sense is that Europe started to recover a lot more in the time period you are discussing.

Despite what I said about prosperity in the US in the 60s, my sense is that the real food and wine scene here did not start until later. I was a kid in the 1960s and did not live in a major metropolitan area, but my sense is that food was mostly a lot simpler. A great meal was a steak or prime rib, nothing fancier. To the adult generation having lived through poverty during the Depression and then through WWII, the luxury was having enough food. Large portions were the luxury.

A high-end drink was Chivas Regal or Crown Royal, not single malts or small batch bourbons. There was a much smaller portion of the population drinking fine wines - I saw them in Savannah in the 1970s as my father owned the only store in the city that sold fine wines. And, he was able to get first growth Bordeauxs and Burgs as high as La Romanee without much trouble for his store.

38

Perhaps, as I and many of my still-living friends have found, some tend to lose their sense of taste as they get older. I once could tease out many of the flavor components you all discuss but not anymore. Now it’s “cherry” or “grapefruit” and that’s about it. This has happened gradually over the past decade, so no, it’s not covid. The upside is that I enjoy less expensive wines just as much, or nearly as much as aged rarities, which is a good thing because I’m no longer laying down wines that need 20 years. My mother used to drink “Silver Satin”, a fortified jug wine that I’m sure gave her the daily buzz she needed to cope with three sons. It was horrid stuff but she liked it. That’s what mattered.

39

Just bring nice stuff when you see them, and they’ll either dig it or they won’t. At the very least, you’ll enjoy it.

40

No matter how nice the wine, my dad would drink it over ice.