Ever encounter a wine snob? I have—far too often, alas. And dealing with wine snobs is an art form calling for subtlety. Rule No. 1: laughing out loud is verboten. Still, you’d simply not believe some of the things I’ve heard over more than 40 years of drinking wine. Bad times often happen when buffoons are in charge of the wine selections. There was the time a guy brought to a dinner a bottle of 1969 Chateau Latour. He displayed it with a flourish and proudly said it was a First Growth (it is), implying that the wine had to be very good. It was swill. The 1969 vintage in Bordeaux was horrid. Then there was the Burgundy from the 1940s that was so maderized, only the guy who brought it would drink it—while waxing poetically about its ethereal existence. And I can’t count the number of sparkling wines that …