Wine, Music & Snobbery

If you live in the Twin Cities, and have any interest at all in good food and the restaurants that serve it, you probably don't need me to tell you who Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl is, or that she has a new book out which purports to make sense of the oh-so-highfalutin' world of wine. She's been all over the local airwaves in the days since the book hit stores, which has been an interesting thing to see and hear, since it turns out that she speaks very differently than she writes. (Isn't it always interesting when that's the case? Because I think that most of us tend to write in much the same style that we speak in. I certainly do.)

Anyway, I bring Dara up because she's also a blogger, and she had an interesting post up shortly after her media blitz began, mentioning that not everyone seemed to be happy with her take on wine and how to buy/rate/enjoy it. She didn't really mince any words in response:

"One of my greatest anxieties in writing my book was that I’d be a magnet for what I think of as the Gotcha-Squad of Wine Weenies. Who are wine weenies? They’re those baseball-stat-nerd-like people intent on making wine as confusing and elite as possible, because it makes them feel good...

"I feel I should just get this out on the table: Look Wine Weenies, you and I are not going to be friends. You want to be right, and I want to help the people you went to high school with have less stress in their lives when they bring wine to your house. The battle is on!"

Now, that's all somewhat tongue in cheek, of course, but it did get me thinking about the way I tend to react on the occasion that Sarah and I hear from someone who attended an Inside the Classics concert and came away positively outraged by everything they saw and heard. These aren't people who disliked one element of the show, or who thought I talked too fast, or that Sarah's theory explanations were boring, and just wanted to let us know since we asked for feedback. They aren't even people who attended a show, decided it just wasn't their thing and shot us a note saying so.

No, these are people just barely containing a boiling cauldron of rage brought on by our concert format, people who believe that on the rare occasion that anyone must speak from the stage at an orchestra concert, that speech must be couched in the gravest possible language, imply nothing but the utmost respect for every note on every page of every piece on the program, and generally impart to the audience just how serious and important classical music is.

We hear from at least one of these people after nearly every ItC concert we do. Usually, they're Orchestra Hall regulars who have been coming to traditional concerts forever, have never heard of Inside the Classics, and bought the ticket accidentally because they like the piece we were featuring and didn't bother to read anything else in the brochure/ad they were looking at. And the way I've always reacted up to this point has been to be as apologetic as possible for having wasted the person's evening, to acknowledge the obvious truth that ItC shows aren't for everyone, and if necessary, to point out how few of them we do in a given season compared with all the concerts in which neither Sarah nor I says a word.

But Dara's got me thinking. Maybe what we really need isn't apologies, but pushback. We could start handing out manifestos in the lobby before every ItC concert that begin, "Look, Concert Weenies, you and we aren't going to be friends..."

Eh, maybe not. Our PR staff probably wouldn't be big fans of that approach. But the irony in both the complaints we get and the flak Dara's taking over her tear-down-the-ivory-wine-cellar approach to grape juice is that the supposed offenders are actually big fans of the traditions they're accused of sullying. Sarah and I both love traditional orchestra concerts. Dara loves great wine. What we don't love is the idea that, if you haven't spent half your life reading extensive treatises on music or wine, you aren't worthy or capable of truly appreciating the experience.

I'm actually one of those baseball stat nerds that Dara mentioned. I toss around terms like OPS, VORP, and Win Share like they mean something (which they do, actually) and I get very exercised whenever I hear a broadcaster refer to Nick Punto as "scrappy," which is stat-geek for "not very good at baseball." This is how I choose to enjoy the National Pasttime. I get a lot out of it, and objectively, my obsession with the numbers means that I probably know more about the analytics of the game than most other people at the ballpark. But it would never occur to me to think that this somehow makes me a better baseball fan than the guy who's just trying to enjoy a day game with his kid and thinks Nick Punto sets a terrific example by always giving 100%.

Basically, there's nothing wrong with being an expert until you start looking down on everyone who isn't and assuming that the only reason they're not is because they're too dumb to think up to your level. And it's a shame how many people still want to put classical music (and wine) up on that pedestal...

Anna Russell 23, Pedestals 0