In any case, what is it about wine that permits it to be subjected to the indignity of a popularity contest? J.K. Rowling has sold a lot more books than Saul Bellow, and given the choice, most people would probably prefer to read Ms. Rowling. But does that lead to the conclusion that Nobel-winning authors like Mr. Bellow are for suckers?

Authors of these gotcha wine exposés may know better, but they publish them anyway because they understand that an American audience will find them particularly gratifying.

Wine in American culture has long been a synonym for snobbery. I’m sorry to say that wine culture has partly brought this on itself with its history of pretension, its equating of wine with connoisseurship, and the absurd vocabulary and rituals that many people assume must be mastered simply to enjoy wine.

[For a practical approach to wine, read our wine guide.]

No politicians, no matter how much they enjoy wine in private, would dare be seen campaigning with a stemmed glass in hand — not when a can of Bud could be brandished instead. As much as people love wine and as important as it is to the economy of several American states, it is still viewed by American society as somehow foreign, un-American, effete, prissy and intellectual.

In the public imagination, wine writers embody these characteristics. They represent a subject that is Old World in origin. Wine is anti-democratic in the sense that, all other things being equal, aristocratic terroirs will win out , even if, like the wayward child of a billionaire, bad farming and winemaking squander this built-in advantage. The wine writer often seems to speak a foreign language (and often does, with words like “terroir”).

In the populist vision, the critic is simultaneously fastidious and intimidating, comic and sinister. Wine is the official beverage of the sneering elites, who think they are smarter and better than everybody else, and thus is a natural target for fear and resentment.