"Wine?" I reply "I love wine, I think we have some at home every night, it's excellent for digestion I've heard and for the heart". He gives me one of those looks, the kind that you know has enough judgment to slow down any enthusiasm you might have been broadcasting.
"Do you know about wine? The good stuff?" he says as he gets up to walk towards his fancy wine rack. "Well... I know I like it, that's about it... but, I've developed some preferences over the years". Without hesitation he remarks with no filter "I'm sure you've only had grocery store garbage... I'm sure".
Now, as someone who has swam these waters before, I know not to react. It's not personal, it's for lack of a better way to describe it: Social Ineptness. Because anyone who has both feet grounded in reality could, or at least should be able to calculate the weight of such remark. He proceeds.
"You see, wine is not supposed to be sweet, not red wine, its supposed to have a dry sensation, and it must come from the right type of grape" He continues, I'm just staring attempting to hide the one eyebrow that is completely unimpressed - "The way they make those, the ones you buy at grocery stores, those are just rubbish, full of sulfites, that is what you are tasting sulfites...."
At this point I had enough, I don't want to continue the "fi fi fi" talk as I find it as productive as counting grains of sand. I paused and jammed a stick in the conversational spokes....
"I think that's it... I love sulfites..."