IT GUESS this will anger wine snobs, Then again, it may delight them. Snobs are like other people. They need reassurance. This piece will confirm their dark secret. Which is that they think they are better than non- wine snobs. I won't bore you by confessing that I was once on the road to becoming a wine snob myself. EL actually rose to the point that CBC Radio once asked me for my suggestions for some decent fittle Christmas wines, One of my choices was Rothschild’s Mouton Cadet. In those palmy days I could afford to buy it by the case. It was $2.40 a bottle. I was in the long trough of 20 years between marriages. A jug of Mouton Cadet, a sweet litile din- ner in my suite prepared by a sweet young thing with foolish aspirations, and | had all the fix- ings for an evening of heartbreak and disappointment, 1 even began to make lists of wines. I graded them according to which had led to evenings of the least heartbreak and disappoint- ment, But even at the pinnacle, the apex, the zenith and the peak of my wine snobbery, | could never get within the distance from Kelowna Rotgut Red toa, Bordeaux grand cru to the current crop of wine snobs. To demonstrate, I will choose a single column by a wine columnist whom I will not identify, ‘It is a classic, maybe. I’m too low-born to know what a classic is. But probably littie different from many of its kind. Some of the lingo, or argot, is . standard Winespeak. Such as call- ing a wine ‘‘complex.” ; I suspect that’some of the wines _, swilled around thoughtfully on the tongue by the nouveaux riches” who can afford to buy them-are actually more comp!ex in nature than the swillers, many of whom are simple folk who made their money straightforwardly in ce- ment, or in selling Surrey cow pasture, or in swindling. Bul this writer gets far. more exotic than that. I have to admit f envy his tongue, or nearby parts, like his palate. l It, or they, can pick up all kinds of flavors mine can’t. One wince is, relatively simply, described as “floral” and ‘‘frui- ty.” Well, true, wine is made from “fruit. But 1 don’t know how the flowers got into it. But that problem pales com- pared with another that is ‘bigger and more complex with added herbal, peppery flavors.’" Bigger? You mean it’s in 1.5- litre jugs, instead of the usual 750-mL size? The herbs and the peppers are another matter entirely, As are “‘the grapefruit flavors that skate along on beautifully balanced, crisp.acidity."’ That's the verdict on another wine. Herbs? Peppers? And now MUSICAL MONDAYS Enjoy the music of SILVERLODE Every Monda ay Night p.m. to 10 p. my Ne Cover. 2427 Marte Dr. West Vancouver 926-8838 GARDEN OF BIASES grapefruit? How the hell did grapefruit get into the vat? As for skating along on acidity, ig that good or bad? I thought acicity was what you took Pep- to-Bismal for, Or whatever is be- ing advertised on television these days that eats up twice its weight, or volume, or perhaps height, in the acids that cause upset stom- ach. Maybe even pausing along the way to the tummy to attack the heartbreak of psoriasis. KASTL LE VERTECH SK Value 600.00 : 1/2 PRICE ENTRY | LEVEL SPECIAL PALE ADULT SKI w/LOOK GP BINDING 149° value to $451.98 ROSSIGNOL STi. w/iGEZE G-53 BINDING value to $456.98 ROSSIGNOL STS w/SALGMON 777 value to $702.00 KASTLE X-5 wiSALOMON QUADFIAX 5 value to $727.00 ALL PACKAGES INCLUDE INSTALLATION 239” 359° 389" 44 Bigger? You mean it’s in 1.5-litre jugs, instead of the usual 750-mL size?¥? But let’s drink on. A “clean, lemony white” at least doesn’t sound so complex to drink, Although, if it’s like lemon pie, I wonder if it gives you the runs. But 1 would be really startled — maybe even ask for my money back — if f paid $15.50 for an “elegant wine offering butter- scotch and oak nicely blended with fresh apple and citrus fruit.’’ Look, if | wanted butterscotch, I'd buy butterscotch. The real stuff from Scotland and a damned sight cheaper than $15.50 too. As for the oak: | figure that if I liked the taste of acorns, God would have made me a squirrel. The apple I'd prefer in an apple’ pie. Which doesn’t give you the | runs. It goes on. , The wine columnist also detects “interesting ripe pear, citrus and slightly resinous favors’ ina LANGE X7 SKI BOOT wine he describes as a ‘‘great buy.” What — with those contami- nants in it? And if resin is OK in wine, can [ offer you an intriguing and complex Chateau de MacMillan Bloedel, a company that ought to know more about resin than all the winemakers outside of Greece in the world? Another is described as ‘‘open knit and easy drinking with rich cranberry fruit, sweet oak and stemmy complexity.’’ Cranberries. Lemons. Apples. Even grapefruit. You mean those European peasants who happily stomp barefoot through vats of grapes don’t even notice when they step on a grapefruit? And “‘stemmy”’ — meaning they cheat by throwing a lot of grape stems into the vat? 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But it still sounds dishonest to me Another, the wine columnist says, has ‘*forward complex aromas of tobacco, cedar and fruit.”” Tobacco? You can only drink that one in a restaurant’s non- smoking section, right? Yet another ‘‘is loaded with up-front berry fruit, oak and cin- namon spice that doesn’t finish quite so assertively.”” By not finishing ‘‘assertively,’? I presume that this is the code- phrase for: not the wine for the bounder trying to get a sweet young thing drunk as a skunk. Either that, or in addition he’l have to urge her to have some ' Madeira, m’dear, if he plans to have his evil way with her. Then there’s the cinnamon in this particular wine. It sounds as if the wine should be poured over that apple pie. They’re meant for each other. Looking over the whole col- umn, I conclude that none of these wines contain what I used to . think is the one essential i ingre-, dient of wine. : ALL TYROLIA & ESS 20-70% DESCENTE HEAD NEVICA KAELIN COLUMBIA | COLLTECH MILLET - FERA-JUPA BILABONG 30-50% OFF ALL SCOTT KERMA — TUNE UP SPECIAL 19.99 25-40% OFF ASK ABOUT OUR LAY-A-WAY PROGRAM