You nailed it, man. Great piece. I love the analogy to cars. That’s it exactly. Drivers (of cars) don’t apologize for not knowing what a rear differential does. (Well I have to admit to a little shame for my almost complete lack of understanding of how my car works, but, you’re 100% right, it doesn’t detract in any way from my enjoyment of my car. Traffic and asshole drivers do that quite well. Might be cool to know a bit more about the people who made my car or not. Likewise drinkers (of wine) need less, not more, experts and expertise between them and the wine in their glass. I like wine. I do like to know a bit about who made it and where they come from, but that’s me. I used to this for a living. Totes agree about the foolish claims made by wine startups that they have discovered some magic formula to map out your taste preferences! Please. Shit, that’s why it matters so much when we support our indie wine shops (and they need it. Retail is a bitch man. I know.) You can’t scale the relationship you have with your local independent wine shop worker. You can’t create an algorithm that reproduces it. It’s called close encounters of the human kind and they happen mostly IRL. I guess I’m a little bit more optimistic about the future though. Unlike even five years ago, there is a pretty robust community of wine insiders who actually do get it, like Asimov in the Times, wine shops like Chambers Street in nyc, red and white, wine goddess, independent spirits et al here in Chicago. And let’s not forget the jeremiads of Joe Dressner, may he rest in peace, and the patron saint of anti-insiderism in wine himself, the one and only Kermit Lynch, who has been calling out ersatz wine expertise-ism, vintage chart-ism and drinking by the number-ism for close to 40 years, God bless him. He’s always maintained that the only two people who matter in wine are the person drinking it and the person who made it. Period. Yeah, there’s always going to be a preponderance of douche bags who will continue to profit from this misguided but still widespread misconception that you need to be an expert to enjoy wine. Phoeey on them. And yes, wine lends itself splendidly to manipulative windbaggery more than most pleasurable pursuits. God bless ‘em all. I raise my glass to the miracle, mystery and blessing of fermentation and invite my friends to break bread with me at the non-expert table in what I think is a far more meaningful and richer reationship with what’s in the glass right in front of us. L’chaim, Ryan! Great article. As you can tell it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot recently. I look forward to hearing more.