Chef Charged with Wine Snobbery!

by Mark R. Vogel

Moreover, the biochemistry of a particular terroir may be uniquely optimal for a specific grape, due to that grape's own unique biochemistry and the way it interplays with the microclimate in question.

Therefore, it is a fact, not opinion, that wine made from Cabernet grapes grown in Bordeaux, will taste different than wine made from Cabernet grapes grown in California. The subjectivity creeps in when asserting which wine is better, because now personal taste comes into play.

The fact that my palate is more amenable to French wine does not, in and of itself, render me a wine snob. Besides, I'm not totally dismissive of California wine.

I think it's fine for cooking. In any event, I would like to remind the court that snobbery embraces contempt for the individuals whose knowledge or taste is considered subordinate.

At no point did I criticize my friend Mark for his approval of California wine, or even consider his opinion inferior to mine for that matter. On to the second count of the indictment.

In regard to cooking with wine virtually all chefs embrace the axiom: "If you wouldn't drink it, do not cook with it." It doesn't take an oenophile, (a wine expert), to understand that a higher quality, better tasting wine will create a better tasting dish.

Be it fresh herbs vs. jarred, a higher grade of beef, or even spring water as opposed to tap, the better the quality of the ingredients in a recipe, the better the final product.

Instead of the $3 bottle of rotgut that Roseann suggested, I employed a wonderful Cotes de Bourg (from the Bordeaux region of France), for the sauce on the lamb chops. (The Cotes de Bourg was only $11 a bottle by the way.)

The defense would now like to call attention to exhibit two: At dinner, Don and Roseann proclaimed my lamb chops to be better than any restaurant they ever had them in.

And again, returning to the crux of the definition of snobbery, at no point did the defendant deem himself superior, or Roseann inferior, for suggesting I defile my cuisine with a $3, no-name, low-life bottle of street-wino swill.

The defense rests.