Say No to Wine Snobs

Wine Snobs or Wine Ninjas?

We should probably be sad about the emotional state of Wine Snobs, but we aren’t. Admittedly, we’ve made a few of them cry. But we don’t train those types of people. We train Wine Ninjas. The following is a list of our recent “deviling” of the Snob set.

We’ve been a thorn in the side of wine snobs for quite a while. We wrote the first draft of this article in 2012. Since then, we have been working to promote the idea that wine isn’t just for a bunch of old white guys wearing bowties.

Say Goodbye, Sonic Decanter

Right before Christmas, a few years ago, we burst the bubble on thousands of wine snobs when we worked with the Washington Post on an exposé on the latest wine gadget: the Sonic Decanter.

It was an expensive wine gadget that claimed to make wine taste more expensive. A Wine Snob spewing pseudoscience? What a surprise. It disappeared from store shelves pretty quickly after that.

Dropping the F-Bomb Onstage at UPenn

Keith Wallace was a featured panelist at the Food Summit at UPenn with Kevin Sbraga and Ellen Yin. In his TED-style talk,  Keith started by saying.

“I have run the Wine School for fifteen years. We have been hugely successful, despite the fact that I fucking hate wine snobs. My calling is to implode elitism. Wine is for everyone.”

He went on to talk about how his upbringing and his academic background informed his wine career. It’s not all that surprising that the son of a New England pastor and a school teacher didn’t buy into the whole “wine elitism” thing. He also talked about his secret spell for turning Wine Snobs into Wine Ninjas.

Putting Pennsylvania Wineries on the Front Page

Wine Snobs love putting their noses up at the local wine trade, especially wineries in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Keith was interview by Cheers Magazine, talking about the promising American Viticultural Areas of Lehigh Valley (PA) and  Outer Coastal Plains (NJ).

Keith is an expert source for the Pennsylvania Wine Association, but that doesn’t stop him from speaking his mind. For example, he recently riled up some PA wine folks  (and the media) when he stated a leadership vacuum in the PA wine trade.

Championing Marsala on Bloomberg Business

Marsala is just nasty cooking wine.  Right? Right?  Wine Snobs have been decrying Marsalla for decades now.  The Wine School championed a bevy of  top-notch Marsala wines to Bloomberg Business for a feature article.  I’m having a snort of Cantine Florio Marsala as I write this. Damn delicious

Working for Healthy Wine Habits with Today.com

Wine Snobs think that wine is just about prestige and exclusion. We think wine can be a healthy part of every adult’s life.  Here at the Wine School of Philadelphia, we are a healthy bunch even though we drink for a living.  Part of that is because we drink all the time, but never in excess. We worked with the writers at NBC News and Today.com to bring out a balanced story on the subject of healthy wine habits.

Getting Your Wine Shipped Legal-like

Wine Snobs love to keep secrets, and we love to share them. So is it any wonder they hate us?  This one is a doozy: how to get wine shipped nearly everywhere in the USA, including our home state of Pennsylvania.

We worked with NerdWallet on publishing all the ways to get wine shipped to your home legally (or at least semi-legally). Unfortunately, only one of our recommendations made it into the piece, but we supplied the author with much of the legal framework of the article—damn editors.

Swapping out Wine For Beer in Food Pairings

You may not realize that we love everything fermented—beer, wine, cheese, pickles, kimchi, herring, etc. When the Tribune News Service asked Keith about his favorite beer & food pairings, he didn’t just give them an interview. He gave them the equivalent of the oral history of the Roman Republic.  The article was published in dozens of newspapers around the country.  His advice: It’s all about balance, not the type of booze being paired. Whiskey with sushi, anyone?