Without parsing what "wine snobs" means, I'll assume it translates to something like "those who really know wine will 'prefer reds'".

Here's my experience: the first good bottle of wine I ever had was a Chalk Hill chardonnay... and I just experimented from there... this varietal, that varietal... with NO REGARD for pairing with food.

Eventually, as with the title of this post, I found myself gravitating more towards reds. They're richer, more dramatically flavored (in their own way), and have that brilliant hue in the glass... And that went on for a few years.

Until one day a friend brought a bottle of gewürztraminer to a Thai BYOB dinner. That was it... still one of the most impressive food/wine pairings I've ever experienced. From that moment forth... to me it's been all about pairing food and wine... because for my palate regardless of how good any single wine is on it's own, it's better paired with the correct food, and frankly a poor beverage paired with the wrong food. Because at least to my palate this is 100% true, I have absolutely no preference red / white / dessert / sparking, etc. It just comes down to what makes for the best drink with the meal at hand.

That's a long way of saying in a sense I agree with the subject line... that I do see neophytes gravitating to red wine, but eventually I think that fades away when you start pairing wines correctly. Interesting topic.

Sorry, but I must admit that I loved the first 10 paragraphs of this tome... but when I scrolled ahead and realized I had another 40 paragraphs to go, I began to lose interest....

The core rant of this post, to the extent I understand it, is that there is a disconnect between wine aficionados and Johnny-come-lately "experts"... and the whole online social media situation is another twist in the whole thing...

But as I was reading all this I realized that there is enough information being shared, in real time... that the worries and regrets of any one person or person doesn't mean much

I'm not aware of any claim that good Root Beer has hop flavoring. To that extent maybe the term "beer" is unfortunate. Because, for example, a fruit-infused beer usually retains the hoppy beer "base" and just infuses some fruit. Whereas it looks like the RB may never really have a hoppy beer as it's base...

... but the other question is, does it need to have pronounced hop flavor in order to be considered a "craft" -brewed product? I personally don't think so.

That said, I can accept the possibility that this stuff may be little more than "syrup" added to a purified alcohol base, rather than a skillfully fermented brew of various roots and herbs. What about Kuhnhenn's version, and others out there... are they all just syrup and grain alcohol?

Interesting about NYFRB... Now, what about this description of Coney Island RB:

"To extend the argument over whether these things are beer or not, the promotional material for Coney Island Hard Root Beer states, “Coney Island Hard Root Beer is a beer made with all natural, traditional root beer flavors. It begins with 2-row malt, caramel malt and European hops. It then undergoes a secondary fermentation with additional sugars and ale yeast, which is filtered to develop the perfect root beer base. From there we add the final all natural flavors from the best ingredients available, including Madagascar vanilla.” Sure sounds like beer, but it’s an FMB."

Is that a "real" beer or a malternative?

Curious, is your opinion based on actual tasting or a bias you have against flavored beers?

Reading up on the history of RB it seems that it has historically been brewed with and without alcohol, so offering an alcohol version is bringing back an interesting traditional flavor that alot of people like.

I have no bias and just go with my palate. I've found good-tasting beers infused with fruit, coffee, chocolate, pumpkin, bourbon, and other flavorings... Re Root Beer I'm hardly alone, the distributor for this entire region is out of NYFRB.

Without reading the article, I'm an unapologetic RP fan...

... when I started tasting wines in the mid-80's his books were hands-down the best wine references out there for real-world wine shopping... region by region, varietal by varietal, producer by producer... I would often take a Parker Annual to the wineshop with me and just walk aisle by aisle, using Parker's books almost as if I was in a library...

I might not agree with all of his tasting notes, and his "rating" process may have become somewhat corrupt or corporate over the years, but none of this detracts from what he contributed to the industry and to individual drinkers, especially in his early days...

Definitely true, the larger the figure, the bigger the target, and Parker-bashing now seems quite fashionable.

Skunky probably means slightly different things to different tasters. In fact I can't describe it but I know when I taste it... perhaps sourish/stale or what I might envision swamp water to taste like? And my tasting notes are almost exclusively mouth-based, not purely aromas. I find that beer, as with wine, often tastes quite different than it smells.

But the key for my palate is that "skunkiness" as I define it is not a total negative if it is brief and then evolves into other flavors... as with HH, for my palate it had "slight" initial skunkiness... I only find it a major negative if it's the predominant and lingering flavor note, which certainly wasn't with SN-HH.

The tagline on the article says it all "drinking bland beer for 100 years"... that's looking in the rear-view mirror. I'd say that the U.S. has more than made up for those years of poor beer, and now the U.S. offers more great beers than any other country... can't think of a close 2nd. What other ingle country produces great wheats, PA's, stouts, barleywines, belgians, all in the same country?

And judging by my friends who up until a few years ago were dedicated drinkers of the most worthless swill, at least 1/2 of them have picked up on great micro brews and wouldn't go back.