James Griffin: A matter of knowing your place

It starts like one of those old jokes, but in a new setting. A man and his wife walk into a wine store. It's a wine store neither the man nor the wife has been into before. They just happened to be passing and the man thought he'd drop in, see if they've got this rather nice pinot noir he had in a restaurant a while ago and hasn't been able to find since.

The shop is bereft of customers. The only person in the shop, other than the man and the wife, is the wine guy, who is sitting behind the counter, and says nothing as the man starts surveying the shelves for the pinot noir, hoping like hell it won't turn out to be on the upper shelves where they keep the exorbitantly priced wines. The wine guy steps out from behind the counter. "May I be of assistance?" He looms over the man.

The man's heart sinks; he has this guy pegged from the first syllable that. He is one of those wine guys; the show-off ones. This is not what the man needs or desires right now. He simply wants to find the bottle of wine and move on. He thinks for a split second that he'll mutter a simple "I'm good, thanks," but in his heart he knows this will not deter wine guy, who will seize upon it as an opening to make suggestions.

Mind you, no matter what the man says, the wine guy will make his suggestions, because that is what he lives for. So the man decides he might as well give it a shot, because, who knows, the wine he's looking for might (a) actually be here and (b) there is a tiny, tiny chance the wine guy might even approve. "I'm looking for this wine I had that I really liked," says the man. "I think it's called 7 Terraces or some number of terraces that may or may not be 7." "Oh," sniffs the wine guy. "We don't stock that. They stock that in supermarkets."

As the man stands there wondering what the word "supermarkets" had done to deserve being dipped in bile before usage, the wine guy says something the man doesn't quite catch about how the people who shop in his wine store don't normally buy wine stocked in supermarkets. The man looks towards his wife. He can't help but notice she is already edging towards the door. But the man is something of an optimist, so he asks the wine guy about a Californian pinot noir he'd had recently, wondering if they imported wine from California. This turns out to be a big mistake, as the wine guy dismisses all Californian wine, all of California and, indeed, the United States in general, in the same tone he saves for supermarkets.

The wine guy goes on to recommend a much superior wine to anything that California can produce. A wine from one of the upper shelves, naturally. In the course of recommending it the wine guy speaks loftily about the way this wine sits gently on the palate and tastes of boysenberry with a rich, velvety, caramel aftertaste.

Or something along those lines, because - to be honest - the man has stopped listening; he really hates it when wine guys play the game of Who Has the Most Educated Palate in the Room? The man looks again to his wife. She is halfway out the door. "Look, mate," says the man to the wine guy, "I get that you've got over-educated tastebuds when it comes to the vino. I get the fact that compared to you I am an ignorant peasant who should stick to buying wine in supermarkets. And I don't have a problem with that.

In fact, I expect someone who works in a wine shop to know significantly more about wine than me. But today, right now, I'm not in the mood to play that game of charades where I pretend to know what the hell you're talking about, dutifully nodding my head like one of those stupid dogs you used to see in the back of cars, while you prattle on about 'a hint of lychee and summer grasses'.

You know the game I'm talking about, right? The one where you know, from the blank look in my eyes, that I have no idea what you're talking about, which validates your wine supremacy over me. We're not playing that game today, because I'm off to the supermarket where, apparently, I belong."

Actually, the man said none of that. And it was only after he'd nodded, said "thanks, mate" and had followed his wife out of the shop that the speech started to form in his mind. Oh well, thought the man, at least I'll get a column out of it.