How to be more annoying than wine snobs

Wine snobs are deeply annoying. But there’s a fix — out-snob them. That’s right. Do something so toecurlingly snobby it holds up a kind of funhouse mirror to their antics, driving the point home faster than they can say Chardonnay. Here are 18 ways to do it.

1. Make sexual allusions to describe wine, especially when talking to a member of the opposite gender. Tight, muscular, voluptuous, hard, long. You get the idea. Best done while making soft moans before and after the sentiment.

2. Never overtly criticize a wine. Simply walk boldly over to the nearest sink and pour it out.

3. If you absolutely must criticize a wine, be bold. Don’t hedge. If it tastes like a firewater martini with a dribble of rancid raspberry juice stirred in a prison bedpan, say so.

4. Bring a personal spittoon to a party when you’re driving so you can still “taste” the wine. Remember to ask the host to empty and rinse your spittoon before you leave.

5. When using your spittoon, spit like the oenophile you are. Sip, swish, hold, suck in air audibly through pursed lips, hold again, then propel the wine in a perfect laser- stream into the spittoon. (Practise in the bathtub beforehand.)

6. Hold your glass by the foot, not the stem or bowl.

7. Before every sip of wine, swirl and sniff it with a serious expression and slightly furrowed brow.

8. When holding a glass of wine (by the foot of course), continuously swirl it in small circles without ever glancing down at it.

9. Open a screw cap by grasping the top in the crux of your arm. Then, turn the bottle to crack it, roll the cap down your forearm to untwist and stop when it reaches your palm where you quickly remove it. Follow with a slow, sly smile. 10. When given an obviously aver- age wine glass at a restaurant, tell the server you would prefer their “better” glasses to “ensure the wine shows well.” If they say that’s all they have, frown and shake your head. No words.

11. Bring your own set of glasses to restaurants and parties.

12. Describe a fine wine as “la force tranquille” or “nudging sublimity.” 13. When tasting a wine over $50, always use the phrase, “excellent value.”

14. Bring a bottle of wine to a party already decanted, and tell the host you’d like it poured at a precise temperature. 15. Speak French when talking about wine at dinner parties.

16. When at a restaurant, grill the wine waiter about the wines. Ask how a certain bottle is “showing,” whether it’s “fruit-forward” or “restrained,” and whether the champagne on the list has undergone “malolactic fermentation.”

17. Like stony whites? Proudly call yourself a “mineral slut.” 18. Hold champagne with a half bored, half secretly aroused expression. (No. Don’t try it now; it only works when you’ve got a stem of good bubbly in your hand.) Carolyn Evans Hammond is a Torontobased wine writer. She is also a Londontrained sommelier and two-time bestselling wine book author. Reach her at carolyn@carolynevanshammond.com.