Читать книгу The Wine Etiquette Guide - Your Defense Against Wine Snobbery - Chuck Blethen - Страница 6

“In victory you deserve champagne, in defeat you need it”

- Napoleon

Assuming that you have mastered good table manners and learned all about food etiquette (if not, see Appendix A), you are prepared to move on the next level of social sophistication – wine etiquette.

Wine is often the beverage of choice at a dinner party, yet frequently the hosts, as well as the guests, do not have a basic knowledge of wine etiquette & protocol. Some etiquette rules are throwbacks to that stuffy, bygone era when you could not enter the best restaurant in town without a coat and tie. However, there is an explicit relevance to the etiquette of wine.

To be clear, there are oenophiles, those foremost connoisseurs of fine wine, and there are wine lovers, or those who just appreciate wine. The former tend to be more severe in their treatment of wine. The basic tenets of wine etiquette and consumption that follow are for those of us who enjoy a glass or two now and then, perhaps even collect and own a small wine rack or cellar and want to enhance our knowledge, appreciation and, above all else, enjoyment of wine.

Have you ever sat across the table from someone who has atrocious table manners? Like someone who was eating mashed potatoes with their fingers? That is how a well-mannered person with good wine etiquette skills views a person who ignores proper wine etiquette. My intention in writing this book is to provide the reader with sufficient information about wine etiquette to be able to be seen as a well-educated person around wine – not as a person eating mashed potatoes with their fingers.