I was picking up a bottle of Dogfish Head 120 at my local good beer store, who also sells good wine. They have a serving license, and do beer tastings on Wednesdays and wine tastings on Thursdays. This was a Thursday...
I knew the distributor (he also distributes good beer like Maui, Jolly Pumpkin, and Mikkeller), so I decided to stay for a bit and try some wine, and have a glass of Unibroue Cassis, since it's such a wonderful and light abv beer. Bad idea. Not the wine part, but ordering the beer. I had several wine drinkers make comments like, "You come to a wine tasting and you order beer?" and "I've been around the world and have tried beer, and it is just not good."
The best comment was a guy sitting at the bar. He was well dressed, tall, handsome, obviously successful. Somewhat of a loud mouth and a bully perhaps. I guess he and one of the employees have had arguments over beer in the past, and this guy overheard me talking to said employee about beer. He suddenly erupted, "Beer is disgusting!" He went on with some drivel about how beer smells and tastes like body odor. The guy obviously had no problem blathering about his opinion of beer. The store employee smiled and said, "Here try this [Unibroue Cassis]," and poured this stuffy prick a sample. He told the guy, "It is part of the cause to change your mind, just try it." The guy and his girlfriend had a smell. She seemed to like the aroma on the beer (this is a very fruity smelling beer), and was quite surprised by the taste. He took a sip and proclaimed, "Is this beer? This isn't cider?" Apparently, the girlfriend wasn't allowed to disagree with this dude, so she stayed quiet.
So, I finally chimed in. I said, "I like this beer; it is made with real fruit, not extract." Our wine drinking friend retorted something to the effect that fruity beers are effeminate. So, I said, "You drink wine, what is the difference?" Apparently the guy thought that the beer was made, and then some fruit was added to back sweeten it... which made no sense because one of the wines being served was sweeter than Unibroue Cassis. I informed him that no, the fruit was fermented as well. Apparently I broke some weird preconception this guy had about fruit in beer, so he awkwardly turned his back and ignored me, which was fine by me because I started to get a little aggravated by the guy's stubborn, misguided opinions and his lack of interest to be educated.
How do you deal with snooty, ignorant wine drinkers? I understand that beer isn't for everyone. However, some wine drinkers are just really, really opinionated about it. Some of these opinions are really off-based. I don't like tea, but I don't go into a cafe and loudly proclaim that tea is disgusting. So, how do you deal with this? I got pissed off about it, really. I am pretty passionate about beer, and I at least want people to get the facts straight, even if they can't appreciate beer.
