Why are Wine People so Likeable?

I’m not much interested in end-of-the-year retrospectives largely because I prefer moving forward to looking back. But a cursory jaunt through my porous memory banks reveals no article on wine that I enjoyed more than Peter Pharos’ recent article at Tim Atkin’s site entitled “Why I Like Wine People.”

I suppose you could argue that I like the article so much because I’m a wine person,  and so I’m flattered that Peter thinks I’m swell. But I don’t care all that much about what people think of me. No. I like it because it resonates with my experience, and I have often wondered why wine people are so likeable.

Peter qualifies his thesis by specifying exactly who he considers “wine people.” Essentially, it is limited to people who taste wine regularly and thoughtfully, whether professionally or not, and who enjoy wine for its intrinsic virtues rather than as a commodity, status symbol, or alcohol delivery system. Wine people have devoted considerable attention to learning about wine, and use that knowledge to enhance their enjoyment rather than show off their education.

Suitable qualified, I agree that such people are inordinately likeable. He writes:

Why then do I like real wine people? There is something romantic, and contagious, in an enthusiasm for something objectively trivial. I am hardly objective, but I find something additionally noble in earnestly engaging with an activity that, in many contexts comes with so much societal baggage… Wine is one of the few interests that others are not content with simply professing a lack of interest in it – they find it suspicious you don’t.

The variety of backgrounds among wine people, a diversity that is expanding rapidly as he points out, and the variety of ways people get into wine, suggest that the wine community is largely very accepting:

I’ve wandered the wine world for a while, armed with little knowledge and less understanding and, while I’ve encountered many gatekeepers of the wine business, I’ve encountered few of wine connoisseurship. Indeed, the only people that have ever been actively unpleasant, actively exclusionary, or brazenly pulling rank are self-declared consumer champions.

As noted, my experience resonates with his. In the thousands of wineries I’ve visited, the countless seminars, tastings and other events I’ve attended, I can count on two hands the number of unpleasant experiences I’ve had when interacting with what Peter calls “wine people.” (as opposed to casual consumers which is a different matter.) The same cannot quite be said of “music lovers” or “lovers of philosophy,” the other two activities to which I’ve been devoted in my career.

Why are wine people generally pleasant to be around? The enthusiasm for something “objectively trivial” is the key. For wine people, wine serves no function aside for the enjoyment we get from tasting. When people are enjoying themselves yet focused intently on an object of aesthetic attention,  there are no benefits and burdens to be balanced or stakes to be assessed other than does the wine show well or not. Negative emotions play a diminished role since that interferes with the sole purpose of the activity which is enjoyment.  People put their best foot forward when under no pressure except to enjoy.

The only exception to this might be blind tasting sessions where performance anxiety is present. But anyone who has done much blind tasting should know it’s a crap shoot in which even the best routinely get it wrong. If you’re so wrapped up in your decision tree that you forget to enjoy the wine, that is a shame and a mistake.

But all of this raises a question. Are wine people likeable because being likeable is part of their character more generally, or are they likeable only under the specific conditions in which there is an open bottle on the table. Most wine people I know I have encountered only over an open bottle. Wouldn’t it be peculiar if a taste for wine tended to characterize those who were better than average on some “likeability” scale?

Or is it more plausible to think that even the disagreeable and obnoxious can seem charming over a bottle of wine?

Another burning question for the social scientists to sort out.