There are a small number of situations in which it might behoove you to pretend to be good at wine.  These are the situations:

1.  You are on a date with a man or lady and you want them to think you are “discerning” even though you are not discerning and you want them to think you are “sensual” even though you are not sensual.  People like to think that they are attracted to “discerning sensuals” even though that is code for “promiscuous snobs.”  When pursuing a long term relationship, it is to your advantage to present yourself as being more attractive than you actually are because then it is easier to trap someone into entering into a co-dependent spiral with you, after which you can present your true, repulsive self and enjoy the “intimacy” that ensues.  People would rather foster destructive psycho-sexual bonds with “that cultured man” than with “that man over there.”

2.  You are at some kind of company event with alcohol and you want your co-workers and superiors to think that you are “educated” and “have good taste” instead of that you are a “wino” and “have an alcohol problem.”  There is a fine line between these personality traits; I contend that it doesn’t really exist.  Middle-class people like to think that they are “scholars of viticulture” instead of “total alcoholics,” and the way that they propagate this myth is to make comments like “Woah, I can really taste the malolactic fermentation in this Chard” and “Straw wines are totally overrated, y’all.  Recioto della Valpolicella is the rich man’s Mad Dog 20/20.”  This strategy is actually amazingly effective, and allows your petit-bourgeois colleagues to act exactly like homeless people with no social repercussions.  So if you’re the kind of person who finds getting tanked in front of their boss “enjoyable” rather than “nerve-wracking,” and you’d like to be able to do this “fairly frequently” without implicating yourself as a “loser,” oenology may be for you!

3.  Same as above, except substitute “increasingly brittle wife” for “co-workers/boss.”

4.  You’re one of those people who like to be “on-trend” and “up on the latest craze” and “part of the zeitgeist.”  You like to talk about “seizing the cultural moment” and “the big buzz in the hive mind.”  If you’re not sure if you’re one of those people, here is a simple test.  Don’t lie.

a.  Have you ever, for any reason, worn a fedora on a day other than Oct. 31?  (NO EXCEPTIONS FOR ANYBODY OTHER THAN DON DRAPER.)

b.   (Ladies only) Have you ever worn a bandanna on your head in a non-housecleaning/painting context?

c.  How many times have you gone swing dancing?  Is it “a bunch”?

d.  Do you own a Jetta?  Have you in the past?

e.   Have you ever owned a “crazy” pet, such as a pig or ferret?

f.  Do you want to work in PR?  Do you already?

Congratulations!  If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, you don’t have a personality: you have a conglomeration of current and outdated marketing campaigns.  In the part of your leg where a personality would normally live, you have a Tazmanian devil tattoo.  If you think wine is “cool” and that it might be a good “hobby/personality trait” to develop, this article can help you.

Now that we’ve established all the reasons that one might need to pretend to be an aficionado*, on with the “life hacks” and trickses!

Trick#1: Ask Dumb Questions

Here are some dumb questions:

1.  “Was this wine estate-bottled?”  Estate bottling means that the wine in question was grown, made, and bottled all by the same company.  The vintner has controlled the wine-making process from top to bottom.  This is not as significant a factor as people like to think it is.  Small wineries like to use “estate bottled” as a kind of folksy marketing ploy, much in the same way that potato chip or soap companies like to have little stories on the backs of their products about how it all started in Old Man McManus’s penny kitchen or whatever.  The fact that their wine is estate bottled is supposed to mean that it is higher quality and more authentic.  This is not necessarily true–there are some great wines produced by committee–but, as with all snob hobbies, it’s important to pretend that you’re some kind of flipping historian from down home on the Grand Cru, i.e. that you are disgusted by the faintest whiff of fabrication and you just want things to be pure, man, like way back when it was just you and Iggy Pop hanging out in a basement, shooting heroin and rubbing noble rot all over each other’s faces while Emperor Lothair I sat in the corner and made rag rugs.

2.  “Can I smell the cork?”  Smelling the cork proves nothing, but it looks fancy.  Ostensibly, the purpose of smelling the cork is to see if the wine is spoiled in some way, but the way you determine this is by smelling and tasting the wine, not the flipping cork.  If you wanted to know if a Twinkie was bad, would you ask to smell the wrapper?

3.  “Is this wine [adjective]?”  The fastest way to trick people into thinking you know something about a topic is to use some buzzwords.  So throw some adjectives around–it doesn’t really matter which ones, because–at heart–wine is always “wine-flavored.”  When faced with a bottle of wine, go ahead and ask if it’s “big” or “fruit-forward” or “possessive of slate-tinted undertones.”  You will always be safe if you remember that Merlots are “tannic,” Cabs  “complex,” Chards  either “oaky” or “crisp,” Pinots  “light and delicate,” Rieslings “apple-y,” Shirazes “berry-inflected,” Cote du Rhones “full-bodied” or “gamy,” and Zinfandels “fucking grape soda.”

Trick #2:  Act like Martha Graham

Tasting wine is ultimately all about theatre–it’s the way you swirl the glass, peer at the label, swish the wine about in your mouth.  The way you lean back and hold your glass up to the light, twirling its delicate stem in order to watch the way the wine clings to the side of the glass, contemplating the colors hidden in its depths.  You roll your shoulders about, sighing and exhaling, rolling and closing your eyes in ecstasy.

In other words, it’s a big bullshit performance.  You have to act EXTREME and INTENSE and PASSIONATE and LIKE YOU INVENTED A NEW LANGUAGE OF MOVEMENT.  What you have to do is become Martha Graham.

Martha Graham was the Chuck Norris of dance.  Everything she did was unbelievably hardcore.  She started dancing when she was totally over the hill for a dancer (late twenties) and went on dancing on stage until she was 76.  At the point, she tried to kill herself with alcohol, because she was pissed that she was too old to dance.  She got wasted all the time until she was 79, after which she got her crap together and went on writing new ballets and choreographing until her death at 96!!!  She basically invented modern dance.  When she wasn’t freaking people out constantly she was freaking her young male co-stars.  She was totally awesome.

Watch this video below (start at 1:15.)

Her dancing is tense and visceral and very Expressionistic.  This is who you must become when you drink wine.  Manhandle that glass like it is some ripped avant garde dude.  Toss your head around like you are trying to rediscover your primal drives.  Flail around like this wine is reconfiguring your very relation to time and space.  People will think you are serious, rather than just a serious tippler.

Trick#3:  Engage in Some Hard-Core Negging

Negging is such an effective technique that it even works for THIS “man,” who is some fucked up shit my cat dreamed up.

This isn’t a very complicated trick, but it always works–not just in the case of wine, but in the case of LIFE ALL THE TIME.  All you have to do to impress/manipulate people is neg them a little bit.  People hate being negged because it makes them feel insecure.  Their solution for this is to try to impress you forever until you yield and validate them.  Just not being that into them makes them totally into you.  This is how to apply that to wine:

1.  “You’re having [name of wine]?  What an amusing choice!”

2. “I think it’s so admirable that you’re not really up on all the latest trends.  You always make such classic selections.  Some might call them boring, but I think they’re real homey.”

3.  “Oh you don’t know about [wine term]?  Hmm.”  Here is a nifty list of terms to use!  Make sure that you remember the meaning yourself before dropping them.  Try such bon mots as “I suspect the hand of carbonic maceration in this Lambrusco–it’s just a touch too sparkling,” or “What a charming monocepage!  I had no idea that a Grenache  could be so delicious on its own.”

Trick#4: Just Throw Money Around

So many tips!  Here they are:

1.  Build a wine cellar (or have one built.)  Spend tons of money making it all temperature controlled.  Make guests look at it every time they come over.  You’re not a souse, you’re an Edgar Allen Poe guy!

2.  Or you could install a wine rack.  This isn’t as impressive as a whole friggin’ cellar, but it still proves something important about you, namely that you have enough self-discipline to not drink a bottle of wine on the same day you buy it.  There’s an old, annoying wine saying that “Americans age wine in the backseat of their cars on the way back from the store.”  It is annoying because it is true.  If you have an actual wine shelf, and fill it with actual bottles of wine, and let them stay there for actual amounts of time, like a whole week or whatever, it will signal to people that you are a high-falutin’ collector.  Awestruck, they will start whispering questions to you about your collection, to which you will simply nod and smile, and say something about young wines being “too tightly knit,” which is why you need to allow them time to “bloom.”  You get extra points if you manage to talk about aging your wines in the exact way a pedophile might talk about a particularly hot 11-year-old girl.  In wine circles, this is not considered “creepy”; rather, it comes across as endearingly “European,” which is important because the whole goal of all wine people is to go back in time and get born in Europe, thereby becoming “actually European,” instead of just “aspirationally European.”

3.  Buy expensive wine.  Buy it in a restaurant, buy it for your parties, buy it at the store while a sexy individual looks on.  There are two great reasons to buy expensive wine: one, it makes you look committed to wine, because Americans equate money with love.  Two, wines over $30 always, always taste good.  If you spend the money, people will think you have good taste, because the product will be high-quality.  There’s an important exception to this rule, which is: never buy wine by the glass.  I don’t care if it costs $20; it will be bad unless it comes from a previously unopened bottle.  This is because wine by the glass usually comes from open bottles, which means the wine has been exposed to air.  A little air can be good for wines, but over time, it causes them to degrade.  It’s also a crappy value.

4.  Go to wine tastings.  That way you can casually mention that you go to wine tastings.  You will get to know the wait staff at the restaurants that host the tastings, which will increase your cred when you strategically take your date there.  He or she will feel like they’re really getting “a taste of the wine world’s underbelly,” although we all know that all they’ll be getting is “a taste of how customer service people are super willing to pretend to like people who are fiscally indiscreet.”

5.  Buy a Moleskine notebook and put your “tasting notes” in it.  Again, this speaks to the need to elevate wine-drinking from “carousing” to “total science, man.”  It’s a great prop for when you are out at bars alone: people will think you are a food critic, rather than just a guy or gal who can’t get a date and thus is drowning their sorrows.  A guy with a notebook isn’t a drunk; he’s a professional!

6.  Staying with the theme of props, you should also buy some handsomely photographed wine books.  Display in your home or upon your person.  Be all blase about them like an Antonioni character.  You’ll have to use a sander to scrape the babes off you.

7.  If you are really poor and have no other option, you can always resort to . . . .

. . . buying wine with a cool label.  This is a very entry-level trick, and won’t work with advanced bourgeois people, but in a pinch it suffices.

Thus ends my guide to pretending to be good at wine.  I hope this was a helpful guide.  I hope it helps you hide your alcoholism from yourself, your family, and your friends.  Cheers!

*For a full discussion of why trying to be an aficionado turns you into a hell person, see The Sun Also Rises.