Astrid Joosten is causing outrage with her wine snobbery. The presenter looks down on wines sold in Albert Heijn, but that would be ungrateful. “Elitist pseudo-experts!”
Astrid Joosten’s wine lover takes quite unusual forms: the presenter almost cried recently when she took a sip of red wine. It was a Pommard from Burgundy, made by the Belgian winemaker Sofie Bohrmann. And according to her, you won’t find something like that in the local supermarket.
Wine snobbery
A glass of wine from Albert Heijn? Astrid would never buy that, the NPO millionaire emphasizes. “Absolutely not. Together with Thérèse Boer, I have had an online wine shop for more than ten years, so I drink my own wine or I buy a wine that I am sure is delicious,” she says in the LINDA.
This wine snobbery is quite misplaced, says Ton Stoffels (86), who held management positions in the food sector for many years, in a letter to the editor. He is very annoyed by Astrid’s statements.
At the bottom
That Astrid should be grateful to Albert Heijn, according to Ton. “The Netherlands was once at the bottom when it came to the consumption of wines.”
Wine was not a mass product for a long time, he emphasizes. “As a vinologist, Mrs. Joosten must know, or must have learned, that the influence of the elitist wine importers, connoisseurs and liquor stores, in a qualitative and absolute sense, did not exactly contribute to the popularity and consumption of wines.”
‘Exactly Albert Heijn!’
Supermarkets have made the wine industry great, according to Ton. “Albert Heijn, and it cannot and should not deny this, has made wines popular in the Netherlands with the start of self-service stores. And in such a way that the food trade became the largest seller of wines, leaving all those experts behind.”
“Yet these elitist pseudo-connoisseurs continued to regard these wines as trifles, as Mrs. Joosten still does. Not everyone, like those with an above-average income, can afford more expensive wines. Let Mrs. Joosten be grateful to Albert Heijn and the people for her right to exist!”