Suck It Wine Snobs!

So someone commented a while back how beer could never compare to wine. I have just found the definitive proof of how that is wrong.

I just opened a bottle of 2006 vintage Old Stock barleywine by North Coast Brewing. Umm... wow. This is more amazing than most $60/bottle wines I've sampled.

It has indeed aged like a fine wine, but developing different flavor notes. Rich dark chocolate, caramel, and cherries. It is amazing.

I have a bottle of 2003 still. I'm excited by the thought of that, and really need a good reason to indulge in that.

I compare good beer with good wine. Wine snobs can indeed suck it.

This has been a good beer day. Tried Chimay Blue for the first time. Excellent. And had another couple discoveries.

Samiclaus ale was an incredibly happy surprise. Truly excellent. If you can find some, buy it. No, it's not "cheap". Do it anyway. It really is surprising and will not be what you're expecting.

This 2006 Old Stock... I think is the finest alcoholic beverage I've had the privilege to enjoy. I have a $70 bottle of Stranahan's Colorado whiskey that has been a favorite, and I've had a few exemplary wines. I think this beer may be my all-time winner. It smells like the finest chocolate covered cherries.

New resolution: 4 4-packs of this beer every year, and after the first two years, just open 1 bottle each year for a vertical tasting evening.

It is a proven fact that boxed wine has the best alcohol:dollar ratio of any drink, and that it is delicious. Drink wine to get drunk. Drink beer cuz it tastes good.

I'm slowly becoming a wine snob (I have a TON to learn, though), but good beer is good beer, for sure.

The beer you're talking about sounds like super beer snob beer, anyway. I'd hope it's awesome.

I'll add some snobbery, though--

We ate upstairs at RM Seafood in Vegas last month (and met Chef Rick Moonen himself--really nice guy, BTW)

...and we had the 5-course tasting menu w/ wine pairings. The (French) sommelier (named Bernard) pretty much seduced me w/ his pairings. The 4th course (venison) was paired with a 2003 Chateau Margeaux that just about gave me a stroke. It was berkeleying epic. A decidedly non-grassroots dinner

So yeah--something to be said for great wine.

I'm NOT drinking BERKLEYING MERLOT!

Wine is just spoiled grape juice.

What has to spoil to get beer?

In any case beer is drinkable -wine is not!

'We have a Dom Perignon '58 at $150 a bottle"...

carguy123 wrote: Wine is just spoiled grape juice. What has to spoil to get beer?

Rotten grains... and plants; usually a close relative of marijuana (hops-humulus lupulus-is in the same family).

gamby wrote: I'm slowly becoming a wine snob (I have a TON to learn, though), but good beer is good beer, for sure. The beer you're talking about sounds like super beer snob beer, anyway. I'd hope it's awesome.

Yeah, I'm slowly become wine-snob-ish (after learning what tannins are, I'm pretty sure every wine person talks about them purely because non-snobs don't know what they are). This is super beer snob beer... sort of. A non-snob could see why this beer is different from, say, Guinness. This was the beer that first opened my GF's eyes to why beer was good (I think that was an '04 she drank in 2006).

On the wine-snob front, the gal and I are now enjoying a good Chilean Carmenere. I've decided I really like South American wines. They geography is great, but they don't yet have the reputation of France or Napa, so a SoAm wine is equivalent of one worth about twice the price from either of those regions. And typically, you need to wade through fewer to find the prime examples.

Yes, I'm a wine snob. Hate me if you must, but there's nothing quite like the feeling of twisting off the cap on a bottle of Night Train.

http://www.bumwine.com/

You one side guys are funny.

I'm a wine and beer snob. Although I don't drink beer much, it tends to be small craft size, and always very rich in flavor.

But I do love my wine.

By far, my favorite is Barolo, and a recent trip to Italy taught me a LOT more about that wine. Wine of Kings, King of Wines.

If I had a recommendation for both sides- ALWAYS sit at the bar, and talk to the bartender. More often than not, you will be 1) given a tasting and 2) served a little more.

Eric

I don't get it I had some aged Cousin Eddie's from June 2010 and it tasted exactly like the Cousin Eddie's from November 2010. How do you age beer?

Wine is like sex, I'm no expert but I know what I like!

I like red wines. I was very surprised by Bully Hill's Banty Red, tasty, not heavy, not light, not sweet. Costs $9 a quart.

Appleseed wrote: I'm NOT drinking BERKLEYING MERLOT!

cooking with it is great tho. In a few week I am going to do a bone on rib roast in red merlot, 8 hour's in a crock pot. It is berkleying awsome

alfadriver wrote: If I had a recommendation for both sides- ALWAYS sit at the bar, and talk to the bartender. More often than not, you will be 1) given a tasting and 2) served a little more.

We do this at our favorite restaurants. Funny--when you tip well and become a regular, the service is incredible.

This is how I was introduced to the aforementioned Carmenere

Salanis wrote: This is more amazing than most $60/bottle wines I've sampled.

There's your problem right there...$60 in a restaurant is the same as $20 at the grocery store.

Personally, I think you have to have a pretty discerning palette to appreciate the really pricey stuff. I have tried a few $$$ wines, and I just don't get it. A sommelier once told me that wine snobs were the worst thing to happen to wine. He said to forget price, label and origin and drink what you enjoy. Cheers!

xd wrote: How do you age beer?

While cleaning out a house I once bought I found a case of PBR old enough to still have the real pull tabs on the cans.

It did not age well. Even the underage kids helping me move weren't that desperate for a beer.

pinchvalve wrote: There's your problem right there...$60 in a restaurant is the same as $20 at the grocery store. Personally, I think you have to have a pretty discerning palette to appreciate the really pricey stuff. I have tried a few $$$ wines, and I just don't get it. A sommelier once told me that wine snobs were the worst thing to happen to wine. He said to forget price, label and origin and drink what you enjoy. Cheers!

Quoted for truth...

ugh, any snobs are the worst!

the next time i get crap from some tool about why i'm "drinking that swill" i swear i'm going to deck him.

worst wine snob i've dealt with was behind the counter at a winery giving tastings. guy went on and on about how california wines were all crap and texas wines are way better but nobody give them any credit, blah blah blah. then he goes down the line basically insulting everyone there that had ever drank cali wine. guess what toolbag, thats the same crap cali wineries went through, and the best survived, get over yourself.

My son's been thru the CIA, worked for many of the top restaurants with many of the top chefs, worked & lived in Napa and taken all the wine courses. All this tannins, nose, hints of this and hints of that is gimmickery to sell more wine. It's all creative writing - of which there are several courses just for the wine industry.

It's called the placebo effect in medicine. If you think a medicine has a certain effect it does. Same thing with the wine. The wine culture is rife with losers who can't excel at anything else so they say they can discern things that mere mortals can't. It's their one way to be special.

There's one winery in Napa that practices new age mumbo jumbo to give their wine mystique. It's amazing to stand in their tasting room and watch the people lapping up the garbaaage (that's french for garbage). The wine snobs are the worst, but even the more normal people finally begin to taste this indefinable something extra in the wine. Of course that's after many tastings.

The vines are planted, harvested, fed and watered at the proper cycles of the moon. They have specially trained people with special clippers to clip the sucker limbs off and then they are burned at special places in the vineyard to reduce them to elemental carbon that is more beneficial than regular carbon to the plants.

Face it guys, you've been had!! You'd be laughing your a$$es off if someone this naive came on the board and posted.

Bottom line is you like the taste of a wine, no matter it's price, drink it. It's nothing special or magical and keep in mind drinking of wine began cause they couldn't drink the water without being sick due to health standards of the day.

I've got a couple of cans of Billy Beer - wonder how well they've aged??? I do like a nice belgian ale now and again. I like the german reislings/spatlese/auslese stuff and a few reds - but mostly I really only drink a few times a year and usually with friends/family so it's what's there. Sounds like there's lots of people listening to marketers about "branding".

Where does this register on the snob-meter?

pinchvalve wrote: Personally, I think you have to have a pretty discerning palette to appreciate the really pricey stuff. I have tried a few $$$ wines, and I just don't get it.

That's definitely true with champagne (or Method Champagnoise, for you snobs). There's a drinkable range between about $12 and $30 a bottle. Less or more than that and it is only painful swill, but within that range, it's super tasty and makes me feel funny.

oldsaw wrote: Where does this register on the snob-meter?

That's awesome. The label alone is worth 9 bucks. The fact that there's alcohol in the bottle is just a bonus.