Category: Wine Tasting Tips

Where we grew up, “Get lost!” (with an exclamation point) meant something between “fuhgeddaboudit” and a term unprintable in a genteel journal like Power Tasting.  However, we mean it as respectful suggestion: when you’re in Wine Country, allow yourself to get a little lost.  Sometimes that means you’ll miss the best known wineries along the best known roads, but there are also the cases in which the owners of premier vineyards deliberately placed them where caravans of tourists would not be passing their front gates.

By all means, travel on the main drags, such as Route 29 in Napa Valley, the Route des Grands Crus in Burgundy and the Strada della Badia di Sant’Antima in Montalcino. But also prepare yourself for the little excursions off the central roads and you’ll get to experience Wine Country the way the locals do.

Photo courtesy of France.fr.

• Do a little preparatory homework. Get a map of the region, which is a lot easier these days with everything on the Internet.  But having a good paper map is a good idea because it will show many more minor roads.  It’s all right to get lost but it’s smarter to know in general where you’re getting lost.
• Don’t trust your GPS. Even in the primary winemaking areas in the United States, the satellites don’t know every back road.  And it’s those back roads you want to drive on.  In fact you might find, as we have, that the GPS will take you around in circles when you’re looking for a specific remote winery. This goes double in some European sectors of Wine Country, where road signage is an arcane art form.
• Have several destinations in mind. That way, if you pass a gate with a placard announcing one of them, you’ll know to stop.  Then, when you’ve tasted their wines ask the server about the others on your list.  He or she might say, “Oh, it’s the next vineyard on this road” or contrariwise, “Oh, that’s quite a way from here’.  If the latter occurs, ask for a recommendation for another good winery nearby.

 

• Enjoy what you see while you get lost. There won’t be any palatial architecture, but there should be some beautiful farmhouses and vineyards.  This can be even more fun at harvest time, when the fields are full of active workers (who might just give you a little help getting un-lost). When you stop by a working vineyard, you get the feel for the reality of the farming that goes into winemaking.  If you get “good” lost, you can go for miles without seeing a winery, but you will see vines as far as the eye can wander.
• Don’t get too If you really don’t know where you are nor where you’re going, look for pointers back to someplace you do know.  Despite the previous comment about road signs, you’re bound to come across a sign somewhere that points to San Francisco or Paulliac or Florence or the Long Island Expressway.  Follow one of indicated roads and things will begin to look a little more familiar.  When all else fails, ask somebody how to get back home.

Let’s say a few things right up front: Wine contains alcohol.  Alcohol is not a good thing to consume when driving.  Going wine tasting means drinking alcohol and usually requires some driving.

That’s a bit of a conundrum, isn’t it?  Here are some of our tips for wine tasting safely.

• Know your limit. Even the most stringent state laws allow a little bit of alcohol in your blood, so it’s important for you to know how much you can sip before you hit that limit.  You can’t wait until you feel the alcohol; by then it’s already too late.
• If you don’t know your limit, be the first driver. For one thing, don’t go wine tasting alone.  If you know you can’t take a lot, do your share of the driving before the sipping begins.

Photo courtesy of Cal Limo.

• Or hire someone to drive. There are cabs, limo services and Lyft/Uber.  Yes, it adds to the cost.  But it ensures your safety from being pulled over and surely reduces your vulnerability to accidents.
• Sip, don’t drink. That should be the motto for all wine tasting.  The idea is to taste the wines so you know what to buy later on.  If you’re finishing every glass put in front of you, you’re drinking too much to be safe on the road.
• Share a tasting. If you and your companion share a tasting and only sip; and if you taste, say, five wines at any given winery, you’re likely to consume around a half a glass of wine each.  If you figure in the time for looking around the winery, talking with the server, maybe buying some wine, it will take up an hour.  Thus, if you visit six wineries and take an hour for lunch, you’ll consume three glasses in seven hours.  Is that within your limit?  If so, you have a plan for a fine day of tasting in Wine Country.  If not, see the advice above.

Photo courtesy of Texas Lone Star Valet.

• Deal with the exceptions. There are some wineries that only have seated tastings and don’t permit sharing.  Often these are the makers of some of the finest wines in their region and you don’t want to restrict yourself to a sip or two.  It is not for us to discourage you from some of the best experiences in wine tasting.  But if you particularly want to taste the Cabernet Sauvignon, go light on the Chardonnay.  And maybe avoid seeing the bottom of the glass of the Merlot and the Malbec.  These tastings tend to be longer, so perhaps they will account for half your day.  And if you find you have consumed more wine than you expected to, cut the day short.
• If you’re going to consume alcohol, put some food in your belly too.  Always have breakfast before going wine tasting.  Keep some crackers, chips or pretzels in the car to have something to nibble on, along with a bottle of water.  Always stop for lunch.  In fact, you should generally make lunch a part of your wine tasting experience.  As a rule, areas where people appreciate wine have good restaurants, too.  And picnicking at a winery is a treat.

 

 

We know many Americans who are dedicated wine lovers and who enjoy going wine tasting.  They love French wines but can’t pronounce them properly. Here’s a little guide by Power Tasting to help American wine tasters through the thickets of pronouncing French wines.

• For some reason, we Americans find the red wines of France easier to pronounce. We have no problems with Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Merlot and Malbec.  If there’s one that needs a little help, it’s Petit Verdot, the blending grape of Bordeaux.  It’s pronounced peh-TEE VAIR-doe.
• Sauvignon Blanc – The legend, perhaps apocryphal, is that Robert Mondavi decided not to call his Sauvignon Blanc by its proper name because he thought Americans couldn’t pronounce Sauvignon. He called it Fumé Blanc instead.  The irony is that we all do very well with Sauvignon but get the Blanc part wrong.  Most Americans say “blonk”.  The right way is “blah” with your voice going down at the end.  The “c” doesn’t get mentioned at all.
• Chardonnay – We’ve got that one right.

Photo courtesy of the Wine Scholar Guild.

• Sémillon – This is the primary white grape of Bordeaux and as such deserves respect. Saying “seh-MILL-un” is not right.  It’s pronounced “say-MEE-yon” and it’s even sweeter when it’s made into Sauternes, which, by the way, is pronounced “SO-turn”.  Do not pronounce the “s” at the end.
• Champagne – This is a tough one. Americans know how to say “SHAM-pain”.  But the French say “shahm-PAH-nya”.   This is one case where Americans are better off with the American pronunciation.
• Loire whites – We’ll let Americans off the hook with the “r” in Vouvray, since that back-of-the-throat thing isn’t even universal among French speakers. But Sancerre is “SAHN-sair” and Muscadet is “MOS-ca-day”.  And there’s Chenin Blanc.  We’ve already covered the Blanc part; the first word is sheh-NAN and you never pronounce the “c” at the end of Blanc.
• Rhône whites – Marsanne and Roussanne are pieces of cake, as long as you pronounce the “a” in each of them as “ah”. Viognier is “VEE-on-yay”.  We think Americans had these down anyway.
• Alsatian whites – No problem with Riesling, but Gewürztraminer needs work. For one thing, it’s a German grape, not a French one.  For another, that umlaut over the “u” causes no end of trouble.  Finally, there are several acceptable variations on how to pronounce it.  So here goes: ge-VOORTZ-tram-un-er.  Except for that pesky umlaut, which makes you try to say OO and EE at the same time.  Americans, stick with OO.  Now, there’s a family of German grapes called Traminer, pronounced the way you’d think it should be, TRAM-in-er.  Gewürz means spicy, so Gewürztraminer means spicy Traminer.  But that confuses the pronunciation for some people, who would prefer to say ge-VOORTZ-tra-MEE-ner.  Both pronunciations are correct, which is why most Americans just say “ge-WURTZ” and get on with it.  You really can’t blame them.

 

When you go wine tasting, you don’t expect to like everything you try.  In most cases, that’s simply a matter of taste.  No winery is capable of appealing to everyone and no visitor is required to like everything he or she samples.  But here we’re not talking about a wine you just don’t enjoy.  It doesn’t happen often but in some rare cases, the wine that’s put in you glass is simply tainted.  Sadly, it happens with bottles that you bring home from the store, too.

Photo courtesy of Sentara Healthcare.

When it happens in a tasting room, it’s fairly important to recognize the flaw in what you’re tasting and report it to the server or the tasting room manager.  They want to know if there’s a problem and prevent shipment of wines that are simply bad.  Each of the following instances has happened to us at one time or another although, as we say, it’s been rare.

• Brett This taint is caused by the presence of a yeast called Brettanomyces, or brett for short. It is a bit difficult to discuss, for two reasons.  The first is that brett is only described in euphemisms, most often as “barnyard smell”.  It’s easy to get the point: Brett makes wine smell and taste really bad.  But the other difficulty is that some people (including winemakers) actually like a little bit of that smell.  And who’s to say much is “a little bit”?  Brett seems more prevalent in Pinot Noir, especially French Burgundies and is much sought after by some connoisseurs.  But if brett shows up in your glass and it’s clearly too much, mention it to your server, but be prepared to be told, “It’s supposed to taste that way.”
• Corked wine Winemakers are not responsible for corked wine, but cork manufacturers are. There are some fungi in cork trees which may appear when the bark of trees is turned into bottle closures.  It’s a chemical called TCA (2,4,6 – trichloroanisole) or simply TCA.  Once in contact with the wine, it imparts an aroma and taste that is often described as wet cardboard.  Once corked, the wine cannot recover, no matter how long it’s aged or left to air out.  We were once at a renowned winery that is famous for their attention to the science involved in winemaking.  After a tour, we were served in a pleasant tasting room.  And to our dismay, the first Chardonnay served was corked.  We immediately told the server, who was abashed to be sure and she quickly took the cork.  The manufacturer and batch were identified on it.  She took it to the lab people in the back so they could eliminate those corks from future production. That’s why servers should smell the wine before pouring from a new bottle, avoiding serving corked wine to visitors.  This one did not.
• Wine fault There are some cases in which a wine has an off taste, such as rotten eggs, discarded motor oil or swamp. In our experience, this problem occurs rarely, most often following a below average harvest.  Some winemakers, rather than accepting the fact that they won’t get good wine that year, play with it, adding chemicals and using techniques to “boost’ the wine.  In a few cases, all that effort just makes a poor wine into a bad one.  We well remember tasting the poor 2011 vintage at one of Napa Valley’s most famous wineries.  One of the wines tasted…rotten.  Our server told us that the wine was still young and would improve with age.  We tried using a Clef du Vin to see if age would make a difference, but it didn’t.  We have since been back to that winery, but we’re always on our guard when we taste there.

Of course, you can always taste wine at home.  We do so every day, with our dinner.  But that’s not the same thing as a wine tasting.  A true wine tasting requires more than glasses and bottles.  It requires attention to the aromas and tastes that emanate from your glass, to the way the glass affects your senses, to the color and viscosity of the liquid and, most of all, to the pleasure one wine gives as differentiated from another.

So since you won’t be in a winery’s tasting room in the immediate future, here’s an idea for having a wine tasting experience in the comfort of your own home.  It will work at any time, and we have tried it out in the past.  It’s particularly fun in these difficult days.

Photo courtesy of Wine Cooler Direct.

• Choose your glasses. If you’re like us, you probably have a lot of wine glasses.  Some are for everyday use, others for special occasions.  Maybe you have some for reds, others for whites and still others for Champagne.  And perhaps there a few of those little tasting glasses that you might use for dessert wines. For this experience, choose several of them.
• Choose a wine you know you enjoy. This is no fun with plonk.  (Oh, that’s right, you don’t have any plonk in your cellar.)  No matter how fancy the glass, lousy wine is never going to taste good.  Now pour some of the chosen wine into each glass.
• Experience the wines in each glass. This is the real effort you need to make.  Don’t just sniff and sip.  Think about what you’re doing and how the same wine differs from glass to glass.  Smell the wine in each glass before tasting any.  Really breathe them in.  Notice any differences?  Try to put those into words.  Now do the same after tasting each one.  Discuss with your significant other.  We have been surprised how much aroma we get from a tasting glass. This is because of the shape of the glass, which wraps around your nose while smelling the wine.
• Decide which glass you prefer and use that glass for the rest of the bottle. You might be surprised and you might not agree.  That’s okay.  The whole reason for wine tasting is to suss out what you like and don’t like (or at least like less).  And it’s just fine if the two of you like different glasses.
• You’ll get the maximum advantage of such a test if you can articulate why you prefer one glass over another. “It tastes better” doesn’t say much.  “I get an immediate impact right at the front of my tongue with this glass and the taste seems to linger longer.”  Now that’s saying something, and since everybody’s mouths and tastes are different, it’s not unusual to get different opinions.

Reidel is surely the world’s largest manufacturer of quality stemware (and some wares without stems).  We’re not sure how many different types of glasses they make.  We looked at their catalog and stopped counting when we realized that they make hundreds of different kinds.  No one, maybe not even the Reidel family, uses hundreds of glasses but if you do have several in your cabinet, it’s a lot of fun to test them with the same wine, one next to the others.

 

It is well known that wines in many parts of the world taste different than they did a generation ago.  Perhaps those with superior taste memories can testify to what wines used to smell and taste like, but all of us can be aware of certain changes. Taken overall, today’s red wines are more robust, more alcoholic, ready to drink at a younger age and more likely to come from a large corporation.  Whites are also more alcoholic and more full-bodied; in most of the world, they are quite likely to be either Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc, to the exclusion of other grapes.

How did this happen?

Some attribute this, with some justification, to the influence of wine critics, in particular Robert Parker.  Others see the broadening of the market to include younger, less experienced wine drinkers whose tastes run towards boldness rather than subtlety.  The trends may be attributable to better science and technology that make bigger, more alcoholic wines easier to produce.

A wine tasting focus group.  Photo courtesy of Find Focus Groups.

The simplest answer is that wine producing companies and their winemakers have simply responded to the demands of the wine-buying marketplace.  They are catering to the tastes of the people who are buying wine.  That makes sense, but how do they know?  They surely hold focus groups and monitor retail sales, but these are fairly blunt instruments.  Focus groups don’t necessarily tap into a meaningful cross-section of the people who buy most of the wine.  And sales figures reflect a lot more than taste.  Price, location, pretty labels and bottles, and the dominance of certain distributors also enter into the calculation.  How else to explain the past popularity of Two Buck Chuck?

A big factor in influencing the producers is the feedback that wineries receive from visitors in their tasting rooms, who are the more avid sector of the wine-drinking public.  Those of us who enjoy traveling to sample wines can offer direct and immediate feedback to the wineries.  They can see what people prefer, up close and personal.  Do most visitors smile at that unoaked Chardonnay or do they wince and pour it out?  Are the people who are enjoying a 16% alcohol Zinfandel just partiers out to get drunk or are they expressing pleasure at the fullness and depth of flavor that extra ripeness bring along with the alcohol?

There are things that we can do to affect the market when we go wine tasting.

• Speak up. Let the server know what you like and why.  If you get a chance to chat with the winemaker or the tasting room manager, be vocal about your likes and dislikes.
• Ask questions. If you have been familiar with a wine for a long period of time and it seems different to you now, it’s fair to ask if that’s the case and why it’s happens.  Not all tasting room employees are knowledgeable enough to answer these questions, but if you are just a little persistent, they’ll find someone who is.
• Vote with your wallet. If you particularly like a certain wine, buy some right there in the winery.  If you really like the broad production of a winery, join their wine club.  The bean counters (or are they grape counters?) in the back office are acutely aware of who their locked-in buyers are and what they like.

Wine tasting voyagers have the power to influence what wineries produce.  So go ahead and use your power.  That’s what Power Tasting is all about.

In certain European corners of Wine Country, there are laws that determine what sort of wine can be made there.  To use two examples near each other, in the Northern Rhône winemakers in Condrieu must only make white wine.  Down the road a piece in Cornas, they are restricted to red wine and only Syrah at that.  We Americans (and Australians and Sicilians, too) are more used to visiting wineries in our own country, where almost all make both red and white wines.

Now, we at Power Tasting have a preference for red wine.  We have been known to say, only half facetiously, that white wine is something to do with your hands at parties.  But when we enter a tasting room, we are almost invariably offered a glass of Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay to begin our introduction to their wines.  Should we go ahead and sip something we’re less likely to enjoy or skip right ahead to the red wines?

Photo courtesy of Bay Ridge Wine & Spirits

There are good reasons for either decision.  Among those in favor of trying the whites are:

• It’s worthwhile to be open-minded. It’s not as though we dislike white wines, we just don’t like them as much.  So if we try it, we might like it.  After all, we do eat dinners of fish and salad, especially in the summer.  It’s a good idea to develop our noses and taste buds for the wines that go with those meals, too.
• You learn a lot about a winery by sampling the complete range of a winemaker’s art. If we are particularly enamored by, say, the Cabernet Sauvignon at a particular winery why not try the Sauvignon Blanc as well?  We’re pretty sure that the winemaker didn’t consider it an afterthought.  Care and attention go into all the wines.  No one goes to a concert and listen only to the violins, so why leave out a part of what a winery has to offer?

 

On the other hand…

• Don’t waste your precious alcohol capacity. If we are going to be tasting all day, we are going to take in a lot of alcohol.  We have techniques to preserve sobriety (sharing, pouring out, sipping gently and others) but we – and everyone – need to be conscious of the risk and of our own level of intake.  So if we know at the outset that we won’t enjoy white wines as much as reds, there’s a good reason not to add to the load.
• The idea is to enjoy yourself. We go wine tasting for many reasons and education is indeed one of them.  So if we do take some white wine, we are being broadminded and dutiful.  But are we having fun?  If the answer is “no”, then maybe it’s not worth doing.  It’s wine, for Pete’s sake, not spinach.

As can be seen, there’s no universally correct answer.  We tend to go both ways, often with both white and red wine early in the day and only red as the shadows get longer.  And of course if you favor white wines over reds, all the above applies in reverse.

Back in the day, there was a pop song called, “Kisses Sweeter than Wine”.  That singer wasn’t talking about an ultra-brut Champagne or a Chianti.  Today, most people who enjoy wine tasting are sipping table wines, not dessert wines.  Sweet wines have been around since Biblical times, but they aren’t the focus of winemaking in most parts of Wine Country.

Sauternes grapes, shriveled with botrytis.  Photo courtesy of Decanter.com.

Now there are some great sweet wines available.  The best known are from Sauternes in France and Portugal, with Château d’Yquem the best known in the former and a lot of great producers of the latter.  There is Passito from Sicily, or more properly from the tiny island of Pantelleria near Sicily.  In Valpolicella you can find Recioto, which is Amarone for which they stop fermentation while much of the sugars remain.  The Australians make some great ones and call them “stickies”.  And many Canadian and American wineries make fine dessert wines as well.  But with some notable exceptions, these sweet wines are the encore, not the main show.

Photo courtesy of Wine Enthusiast.

If you’re in most of Wine Country and you want to find out what the wineries have to offer for after-dinner sipping, there are some things you ought to do.

• Find out if they have dessert wines. Few wineries list dessert wines on their tasting lists, but many have some below the bar.  When you’ve finished your allotted tastes, there’s nothing wrong with asking, “Do you make a sweet wine”.  Note that we don’t recommend asking if they have any available for tasting.  Many wineries only make dessert wines when conditions (weather, size of the crop, spread of a fungus) permit.  So they may make some but not have it for tasting.  By asking as we suggest, you stay on the right side of politeness.
• Know what you’re tasting. Too many California wineries make what they call a Port, but really they’re just red dessert wines, never approaching what you can find in Portugal.  Whites include late harvest, ice wines (and fakes made by putting grapes in the freezer) and wines made from grapes affected by botrytis, a fungus also known as the Noble Rot.  These are listed in order of rarity and cost. They each have their own character, some but not all of which is apparent at a wine tasting.  The best ones change in color, sweetness, density and concentration as they age.  What you’re going to get in a tasting room are young wines, which may very well be your preference.  But remember that the ages of Ports and Madeiras are measured in decades.
• Sip s-l-o-w-l-y. If a winery has a dessert wine available for tasting, you’re likely to get one or two thimblefuls, served in a tiny glass.  Take a small sip and let it spread in your mouth.  Think about the flavors: honey, peach, pear, citrus, honeysuckle and other delights.  Then, once your mouth has been primed, try another sip.  It may not seem the same, because you’ve passed the shock of the sugars on your tongue.  This is when the real character of a dessert wine becomes apparent.

Dessert wines are made from shriveled grapes, in which the juice is extremely concentrated.  Naturally, you don’t get a lot of wine from a bunch of scrawny grapes and that’s what makes dessert wines so expensive.  They are often sold in half-bottles, so maybe allow yourself a luxury purchase after you’ve tasted some that you liked.

Wine tasting in Napa Valley has become quite expensive.  As reported elsewhere in this issue, it is common to spend $45 or more for tastings of the better wines in the better wineries.  For some people, this isn’t an issue, but there are many others who might be dissuaded from visiting America’s premier winemaking area because of the cost.  Here are some ideas for making a Napa Valley visit more affordable (although not cheap).

Photo courtesy of Vox.

• There are still some top wineries that don’t charge an arm and a leg and there are still a few that are free (although who knows how much longer that will last). Foremost among these is Heitz Wine Cellars, a Napa Valley pioneer that has never charged for wine tasting.  Do a little homework before you go to find wineries within your budget.
• Share a tasting. This is good advice on its own merits, since you can taste more wines without consuming more alcohol.  Of course, you need to travel with a fellow taster – your Significant Other is the best idea – and you may have to forego gulps in favor of sips.  But that’s what wine tasting is all about, anyway.
• Join a wine club. All the wineries have clubs, which are a way for them to lock in customers.  In almost every instance, membership enables free wine tasting, often for a group, not just an individual.  Of course by being a club member you commit yourself to buying 2, 4 or 6 shipments of their wines per year and that can become costly.  Recently we have learned that some wineries allow you to communicate requests to welcome your friends as if they were members as well.  So if you have friends who are members of some clubs, ask them to call on your behalf.  If you are a member of some other wineries, you can make such requests reciprocal.
• Buy a bottle. In many cases, wineries will waive tasting fees if you make a purchase.  This is a triple deal.  You get to taste for free, determine your favorite and take a bottle of that one home.
• Taste wines on the less expensive menus. We do recommend tasting the reserve lists, but on occasion there are very nice wines to taste among the recent releases.  If you want to enjoy a particular winery for its architectural beauty or its views, it might be just fine to taste the regular wines and enjoy the winery.
• B.Y.O.B. to a restaurant. There are many restaurants that will charge a corkage fee if you bring your wine.  And some don’t charge at all.  Even with the corkage fee, it is often cheaper to bring your own bottle than buy it at the restaurant.   Also, you’ll have a taste for the bottle you’ll buy for tonight’s dinner.
• Splurge on just one special winery. There may be a Napa Valley wine that you particularly like.  Or one that is very famous and that you always wanted to try.  Yes, you’ll pay a lot to taste these wines but if you limit the number of such wineries, it will lower the economic pain.
• Go wine tasting somewhere else. There are great wines in Sonoma County, Santa Barbara and the Central Coast.  You don’t have to be in St. Helena or Rutherford to have a very pleasant tasting experience.  As for us, we’ll be back to Napa Valley for sure, just not as often.

There really is no justification for being a wine snob, not even (maybe especially even) if you know a little bit about wine.  If you are a wine expert, it’s still not excusable to be a snob because the whole idea of snobbery is to make others around you feel small.  What you do in the privacy of your own home is your business;  snobbism should be avoided when visiting tasting rooms in Wine Country.

Let’s say you have entered a tasting room.  Who’s there?  Anyone accompanying you, a few servers and some other wine tasters.  Your significant other is unlikely to be impressed with your vast knowledge.  The servers already know a lot about their own wines.  And the other guests are strangers who you’ll probably not see ever again.  So who is there to be snobbish for?

Courtesy of the Mercury News.

Here are some simple tips for avoiding wine snobbery when you’re out tasting.

• Only ask a question if you want to know the answer. That sounds basic enough, but a true snob is only asking in order to show off when the answer is given.  The snob may not even listen to the answer, so eager is he or she to preen.  By all means ask questions in order to increase your knowledge or just to add to your pleasure about the wines you’re sipping.  But if you already know the answer, don’t ask.
• If you’re trying to confirm you’re understanding, say so. Sometimes you think you know something but you’re not sure.  In that case, it’s polite to say, “I think I know, but would you remind me about…”.  For example, you might ask, “I think I remember that this vintage softer/ more tannic/ more fruit forward than previous vintages. Is it?”  The wine snob would simply pronounce his or her opinion, not ask.  But if you’re polite about it the server might reach below the bar for an older vintage for you to compare.  Impolite wine snobs might not be invited to try.
• Listen to the answer. Snobs aren’t eager to hear; they are primed to speak as soon as the response to a question begins.  Often the answer to a specific question might lead to another question followed by another answer and so on.  We call that a conversation.  If you are knowledgeable, most servers are happy to converse.  Being lectured at is not likely to increase their interest in serving you.
• Talk to others like you talk with friends. A lot of wine snobbery is attitude rather than words or actions.  It’s hard to look down your nose and sip at the same time.  If you are in discussion with someone who really knows wine, keep your tone conversational, the same way you would with a loved one or a friend.  If another guest asks what you think of a wine, give simple answers in plain English until you have reason to believe that the other person knows enough wine lingo to start using it yourself.