Me More Wino Than You
(or, how ego keeps getting in the way of real connection in wine)
There’s a song that keeps popping up on my Instagram by The Brudi Brothers called Me More Cowboy Than You—a sharp, funny critique of Nashville’s country scene and the artists who dress the part but haven’t lived the life. After ADHD hyperfixating on it (read: listening to it over and over until I got sick of it), I couldn’t stop thinking about the wine industry.
The song mocks the idea of needing to prove one’s authenticity: wearing the boots, buying the tools, learning the lingo because they want to be seen a certain way. Or, as Maxim Mower said in his article on Holler about the song, “They’re all hat, no cattle.”
Sounds mighty familiar, don’t it?
In wine, we do a version of this all the time. Obnoxious tasting notes, obscure cult bottle flexes, humblebrag harvest stories. Me more wino than you.
And I’m not exempt from this. I can posture with the worst of them. I’ve caught myself at tastings trying to prove I know what I’m doing, using terms like “flabby” and “voluptuous” as if that will somehow convince everyone that I belong there. It’s so dumb and makes me look like such a twat.
Why the fuck are we like this?
We’ve built an industry where ego and dickishness are celebrated and rewarded. We elevate the posturers and gatekeepers while making people who are new to wine feel like they need to do more homework before they can sit at the table.
And that’s a problem for so many reasons, including because it scares off people who might otherwise fall in love with wine.
The irony is that wine is supposed to be about connection. That’s what makes this whole thing so absurd. When we’re busy performing, we’re not listening. We miss what someone is trying to share because we’re too caught up planning our next clever riposte. And the wine—this incredible, messy, living thing in the glass—gets lost in the dick waving.
There’s a lyric in the Brudi Brothers’ song that goes:
“They all just want to be heard and seen / Speaking their minds and taking their stance.”
And I think that’s what it all boils down to, right? We all just want to be heard and seen. We want to be taken seriously. And in wine, that often means trying to prove ourselves instead of just… being.
But some of the best wine conversations I’ve ever had came from folks who weren’t trying to prove anything. They were just sharing what they loved, asking questions, and gushing. The people who clearly have a big fat crush on the wines they are drinking are the ones I really want to learn from.
What would wine culture feel like if we stopped needing to be the smartest one in the room?
Kristin and I may be sitting on a solution to this problem. But more on that later.