You sit at the bar. The sommelier approaches. And sometimes the posture changes. The recitation begins.

Not always. Not with everyone.
But you’ve seen it.

This isn’t a hit on somms.
Most of them love wine. Most of them are trying to help. Some of them are the reason a table relaxes. They take the pressure off. They translate. They land you on something right.

But the room rewards a certain kind of expertise.
The kind you can see.
So the ritual grows teeth.

The bottle becomes a prop. The wine becomes background. And the average drinker — the person who just wants a good glass — starts to feel like an audience.

Expertise used to be a tool. A quiet tool. Which wine will travel. Which will pair. Which will last. It was practical. It served the drink.

Then the problems got easier. And the knowledge had nowhere to go.
So it turned inward.
It became about itself.

Now you get the show.
The glass. The tilt. The swirl. The inhale over the rim like the wine is about to confess. The long stare into the bowl like the answer is hiding there.

Sometimes it’s real. Sometimes it’s just the script.

And the script has a language. Not for clarity. For distance.

Distance is where authority lives. If they spoke plainly, the space collapses.
So the words come out like passwords. Minerality. Tension. Structure. Energy.
Words that can mean something. Words that can also make a normal person feel like they walked into a class halfway through the semester.

That is the part I care about.

If you feel smaller while someone is “helping,” you are not being helped.
You are being managed.

Your role becomes: nod. Smile. Don’t interrupt. Ask one simple question and sometimes you can feel it — the flicker. Not rage. Not cruelty. Just irritation. Like you stepped on a line taped to the floor.

Here is the truth: you are not on trial. You are buying a drink.

So speak plain.

“Something smooth.”
“Red that won’t punish me.”
“White that isn’t sweet.”
“Your favorite under $70.”
“I like Cabernet. I hate anything that tastes like a candle.”
“I want cherries and wood — not homework.”

Good somms love this.
Because now they can do the real job. They can translate you into a bottle.

And if someone gets annoyed by a simple question, that is not expertise. That is ego wearing a uniform.

When the glass is poured, the theater is over anyway.
What’s in the glass is real. Your taste is real. Everything else is noise.

You don’t need the script.
You don’t need the vocabulary test.
You don’t need permission.

Take the bottle. Open it. Pour it. The silence after that isn’t awkward. It’s honest.

And in that silence you can finally hear the only critic that matters.
Your own gut.
It doesn’t lecture.
It doesn’t perform.
It just knows.

© Jake Ruse — Austin Texas Wine Society. All rights reserved.